October 19, 2017The 19th Party Congress is a “Xi Jinping Show” and China’s political system, under Xi’s rule, has lost much of its flexibility. That’s the rather blunt assessment of David Shambaugh of George Washington University in Washington D.C. Shortly before the start of the 19th Party Congress, Shambaugh visited Berlin and discussed China under Xi Jinping with Willy Lam of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who was equally sober in his assessment of the state of the People’s Republic. The exchange between the two renowned China experts on September 28 was jointly organized by the Robert Bosch Foundation and Merics and was moderated by Merics researcher Kristin Shi-Kupfer. You can listen to an edited version of the public event in our new Merics Experts podcast.