Little attention has been devoted to studying Chinese politics at the elite, or national, level. It is particularly important to pay attention to the elite level at a time when Dengist China has given way to the Jiang Zemin era, when issues of China's role in the world stir controversy, and debates about China's "democratization" are prevalent. This book, by one of the leading Western authorities on the subject, describes China's national political climate in a manner that seeks to abstract the political dynamic at work.

Introduction : China's political elites and their challenges -- pt. I. Who governs : China's political elites. 1. Top leadership. 2. Central committee. 3. Institutional representation. 4. Factional balance -- pt. II. How to govern : challenges. 5. Snowstorms in the South. 6. The Tibet issue. 7. Sichuan earthquake. 8. Beijing olympic games -- Conclusion : China's prospects for democratization

'China's Elite Politics' provides a theoretical perspective on elite politics in China to explain power transfer from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao, and political dynamics between different factional groups since the Sixteenth Party Congress of November 2002.

A discussion of elite politics in contemporary China. While a great deal of the text is descriptive, much of the emphasis is on drawing out and abstracting the political dynamic at work. The past half-century has seen many hopes raised and some dashed, a succession of fears and false alarms, and both triumphs and calamities that were almost entirely unexpected. This work offers a short but sweeping history of world politics since 1945: America's postwar pre-eminence and the hopes that attended the creation of the United Nations; the Cold War and the emergence of a volatile Third World; economic transformations and the twin threat of nuclear and ecological disaster; the crumbling of the Soviet system and the short-lived promise of a peaceful, prosperous and democratic new world. The author describes these momentous changes concisely in an effort to show how we got here from there and what we might have learned along the way.

Contemporary Chinese Politics: Sources, Methods, and Field Strategies considers how new and diverse sources and methods are changing the study of Chinese politics. Contributors spanning three generations in China studies place their distinct qualitative and quantitative methodological approaches in the framework of the discipline and point to challenges or opportunities (or both) of adapting new sources and methods to the study of contemporary China. How can we more effectively use new sources and methods of data collection? How can we better integrate the study of Chinese politics into the discipline of political science, to the betterment of both? This comprehensive methodological survey will be of immense interest to graduate students heading into the field for the first time and experienced scholars looking to keep abreast of the state of the art in the study of Chinese politics.

This book examines the new equity-enhancing politics in China in the context of Chinese traditional cognitive patterns of political legitimacy and its implication for Chinese political development in the near future. Based on an analysis of the new governing philosophy, the generation of political elite, and a new set of public policies, the book reaffirms the emergence of a new Chinese polity that infuses one-party rule with limited electoral and deliberative democracies. Unlike many scholars who perceive the contemporary Chinese history as a constant search for democracy, this book takes a very different approach. It asserts that the enduring question in political development in China today is no different from what was sought after throughout Chinese history, namely, the constant search for political legitimacy. Even though the quest for democracy is instrumental to that end, it may not ultimately lead to the embrace of a full-fledged liberal democracy. The new politics is not only a rationalization of the efficiency-based development, but also a major paradigm shift in China's developmental strategy.

This book provides fresh insights into the study of Chinese elites at the county level and below. By shifting the analytical focus onto the agency of elites at the local level and away from the institutional structures within which they operate, it fills a number of significant gaps in the field. In particular, this book addresses the lacunae through an empirically rich and diverse set of case studies. It proceeds from the premise that the study of local elites can be most fruitful through examining their relations with each other and with the groups that wield power in the community. Particularly pertinent to the analyses are three major relations, namely the relationship between the elites and their environment, between particular types of elites, and between the locality and the upper and lower scales. Ultimately, it concludes that these relations are not only essential to understanding local elites in post-Mao China but also in accounting for socio-political change and in distinguishing China from other types of societies. As a study of local elites in China, this book will be useful to students and scholars of Chinese politics, political sociology and Chinese Studies in general.

China's Futures cuts through the sometimes confounding and unfounded speculation of international pundits and commentators to provide readers with an important yet overlooked set of complex views concerning China's future: views originating within China itself. Daniel Lynch seeks to answer the simple but rarely asked question: how do China's own leaders and other elite figures assess their country's future? Many Western social scientists, business leaders, journalists, technocrats, analysts, and policymakers convey confident predictions about the future of China's rise. Every day, the business, political, and even entertainment news is filled with stories and commentary not only on what is happening in China now, but also what Western experts confidently think will happen in the future. Typically missing from these accounts is how people of power and influence in China itself imagine their country's developmental course. Yet the assessments of elites in a still super-authoritarian country like China should make a critical difference in what the national trajectory eventually becomes. In China's Futures, Lynch traces the varying possible national trajectories based on how China's own specialists are evaluating their country's current course, and his book is the first to assess the strengths and weaknesses of "predictioneering" in Western social science as applied to China. It does so by examining Chinese debates in five critical issue-areas concerning China's trajectory: the economy, domestic political processes and institutions, communication and the Internet (arrival of the "network society"), foreign policy strategy, and international soft-power (cultural) competition.

How social networks shaped the imperial Chinese state China was the world’s leading superpower for almost two millennia, falling behind only in the last two centuries and now rising to dominance again. What factors led to imperial China’s decline? The Rise and Fall of Imperial China offers a systematic look at the Chinese state from the seventh century through to the twentieth. Focusing on how short-lived emperors often ruled a strong state while long-lasting emperors governed a weak one, Yuhua Wang shows why lessons from China’s history can help us better understand state building. Wang argues that Chinese rulers faced a fundamental trade-off that he calls the sovereign’s dilemma: a coherent elite that could collectively strengthen the state could also overthrow the ruler. This dilemma emerged because strengthening state capacity and keeping rulers in power for longer required different social networks in which central elites were embedded. Wang examines how these social networks shaped the Chinese state, and vice versa, and he looks at how the ruler’s pursuit of power by fragmenting the elites became the final culprit for China’s fall. Drawing on more than a thousand years of Chinese history, The Rise and Fall of Imperial China highlights the role of elite social relations in influencing the trajectories of state development.

A comprehensive but accessible examination of how elite Chinese politics work covering the period from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping.