ChinaTalk

Imperial Legacy Part 2: 1949 to Xi's Death

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Welcome back to part two of our interview with Yasheng Huang 黄亚生, the author of The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success and Why They Might Lead to Its Decline.

We cover a lot of ground in this two-hour installment. During the first hour, we discuss…

  • The aspects of imperial China’s governance Mao chose to embrace, and those he chose to abandon,
  • The factors enabling Mao’s radical policies compared to imperial rulers,
  • Why China was able to grow so much faster than India, despite the setbacks of the Cultural Revolution,
  • Statistical approaches for evaluating the effectiveness of autocratic development models,
  • China’s economic reforms and rural development policies in the 1980s,
  • How the events of 1989 permanently altered China’s trajectory,
  • Whether the rise of Xi Jinping was inevitable,


    • In the second hour, we discuss...

    • The Steelman case for why China needed a leader like Xi Jinping,
    • What sets Xi apart from his predecessors,
    • Succession challenges and the importance of term limits in authoritarian states,
    • Why engagement with China failed to produce political liberalization,
    • How the US could have better leveraged economic relations with China,
    • Creative approaches to human rights advocacy in China.


      • Outro music: Nothing to My Name (一无所有) by Cui Jian (崔健) (Youtube Link)

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