The New Chinese Leadership: Challenges and Opportunities after the 16th Party Congress(Series Number 4 The China Quarterly Special Issues)

This volume presents a concise history of how China's Communist Party (CCP) selected a new generation of leaders in late 2002 and why the individuals, in their late 40s and 50s, were so well qualified to govern China. These leaders are trying to lead China to become a regional and world power in which their people can enjoy a modest living standard and take pride in the nation's achievements. Addressed to the expert or ordinary reader, these essays see China's leaders as challenged by a new trend, visible only in the last decade, of a widening gap between the losers in society and the winners of the recent economic and political reforms. The leaders of the largest, single ruling party and state authority in the world must somehow reverse that trend if China is to survive as one nation. This volume explains they are doing that by reconfiguring their huge command economy, promoting a market economy, and undertaking gradual political reforms. It is unflinching in its discussion of how China's leaders face mounting political corruption, spreading unemployment, growing disparity of wealth and income, and a crisis of belief.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: The 16th Party Congress: New Leaders, New China Yun-han Chu, Chih-cheng Lo, and Ramon H. Myers; Leadership Change and Chinese Political Development Lowell Dittmer; The New Generation of Leadership and the Direction of Political Reform after the 16th Party Congress Suisheng Zhao; Jiang and After: Technocratic Rule, Generational Replacement and Mentor Politics Yu-Shan Wu; The Changing of the Guard: China's New Military Leadership David Shambaugh; Social Change and Political Reform in China: Meeting the Challenge of Success John W. Lewis and Xue Litai; State and Society in Urban China in the Wake of the 16th Party Congress Dorothy J. Solinger; Old Problems for New Leaders: Institutional Disjunctions in Rural China Jean C. Or; The International Strategy of China's New Leaders Gerrit W. Gong; US-China Relations in the Wake of the 16th Party Congress and Tenth National People's Congress Kenneth Lieberthal; Power Transition and the Making of Beijing's Policy Towards Taiwan Yun-han Chu; Systematic Stresses and Political Choices: The Road Ahead Richard Baum.

About the Author :
Distinguished Research Fellow of the Institute of Political Science, Academia Sinica and Professor of Political Science at the National Taiwan University. Associate Professor of Political Science at Soochow University and Executive Director of at the Insitute for National Policy Research. Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and also curator of the East Asian archives.