Susan Shirk on China's Regime Power Shift
Power Shift in China – Part III
04/20/2012
Susan Shirk,
YaleGlobal
NEW HAVEN: The spectacular fall of one of China's leading politicians, the Chongqing party secretary Bo Xilai, reminds foreign policy watchers about the uncertainty that lurks behind the impressive gates of Zhongnanhai. As we look forward to the next decade, the greatest uncertainty – and the greatest risk – in Sino-US relations is what happens in Chinese domestic politics. Domestic politics drives foreign policy in all political systems. In China, national politicians have to worry not just about winning the next election, but about keeping the Chinese Communist Party in power.
Behind the headlines we read every day about China's rise is a country with a political leadership that is extremely insecure, constantly fretting that it might be reaching the end of its reign. It's also a country with a dysfunctional policy process dominated by powerful interest groups, many of them within the state itself.
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Susan Shirk is the chair of the 21st Century China Program and Ho Miu Lam Professor of China and Pacific Relations at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) at UC San Diego. She also is director emeritus of the University of California system-wide Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) and chair of the IGCC International Advisory Board.
In 1993, she founded, and continues to lead, the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD), an unofficial “track-two” forum for discussions of security issues among defense and foreign ministry officials and academics from the United States, Japan, China, Russia, and the Koreas.
