I recently saw a post here commemorating Xi on his 70th birthday. Quite the accomplishment in terms of how well he is doing as a leader, and in terms of personal health.
However, this also got me thinking. What comes after Xi? Sadly he is not immortal, and is rapidly approaching an age where he will not be able to as effectively carry out his duties. Plus he deserves to retire at some point to also enjoy his life.
From this, are there plans for who will take Xi’s place? Who are the candidates with the most potential in terms of being elected? What will be China’s path after Xi’s resignation in terms of economic, geopolitical, military, and social development? Will Xi’s path be continued, or will a new leader decide to change course? Will a continuation of Dengist policies be committed to, as Xi did, or will there be a return to the policies of the Four?
Preferably Comrades who are Chinese, have ties to China, or are knowledgeable in the subject could give their observations and opinions, but for everyone else, what are your thoughts?
Unrelated question, but how do both/either of you find “unbiased” information in English on the political environment within China. I have found it very difficult myself. (Assuming you don’t speak Mandarin, that is.)
There are many Chinese news agencies, government agencies, and bloggers that also hold English speaking channels and sites. Reading directly from the source is also very good and is an effective way to build your own opinion, but the most important thing is comparing a variety of sources to see what is corroborated. Chinese government sources, Chinese news, Russian news, bloggers, American news, various political analysts across the globe and so on. Everyone has their own bias which is unavoidable, so you have to sift through it all to put together the bigger picture, and you can never take anything at face value.
Basically, even if you don’t speak Mandarin, many Chinese sources will have English translations, and even a basic “site translate” built into a service like google chrome is better then nothing.
Like the other commenter said, there isn’t really any unbiased media anywhere. I read both western news (Reuters, AP Financial Times, or Foreign Policy for example), Chinese English language news (Xinhua, Global Times, Sixth Tone is decent too and more critical) and will sometimes read Guancha.cn which is in Chinese but easily translated by Google, etc… Guancha also has a user forum which I find more interesting to get an idea of what people think.
I spend more time searching out and reading academic papers from authors in China. Off the top of my head, many publish in World Review of Political Economy, China Political Economy, Review of Radical Political Economics, International Critical Thought, and Economic and Political Studies. Or translating Chinese papers with Deepl or Google, which are harder to find. I’ve been slowly tracking down papers mentioned by Roland Boer in SwCC A Foreigners Guide (Boer, if you are reading this, fuck you for using pinyin without tonal marks and not including the Chinese characters in your citations), and by Isabella Weber in How China Escaped Shock Therapy. A few places that translate newer papers is CSIS (lol don’t their intros and own essays, they are terrible), Reading the China Dream (translator is a lib, keep that in mind as to what he selects and how he introduces them. Less academic), The Center for Strategic Translation (newer and relatively neutral), Pekinology, and The East is Read (both a bit more capitalist centric in their choices). I’m always looking for more of these regardless of the translators political bend.
A sidenote: anyone that tells you there isn’t a wide and open range of political discussion in China is lying to you. From what I’ve seen there is a far wider range than what is allowed in the west.
None of this will really give you the gossip type stuff that exists around politics in the west so knowing about rumors about what is happening within the party is pretty inaccessible from where I am (with sub-preK level skill in mandarin lmao). I once read a book on inner party politics, but it was so western centric and essentialist that I couldn’t really recommend it lol, and it’s outdated at this point as iirc it was published before Xi.