This open access book captures and elaborates on the skill of storytelling as one of the distinct leadership features of Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and the President of the People’s Republic of China. It gathers the stories included in Xi’s speeches on various occasions, where they conveyed the essence of China’s history and culture, its reform and development, and the principles of China’s participating in global governance and cooperating with other countries to build a community of common destiny. The respective stories not only convey abstract and profound concepts of governance in comparatively straightforward language, but also create an immediate emotional connection between the narrator and the listener. In addition to the original stories, extensive additional materials are provided to convey the original context in which each was told, including when and to whom Xi told it, helping readers attain a deeper, intuitive understanding of their relevance.

The apparent contradiction between China's rapid economic reforms and political authoritarianism is much debated by scholars of comparative political economy. This is the first examination of this issue through the impact of a series of administrative reforms intended to promote government transparency and increase public participation in China.

Now available in a substantially revised 3rd edition covering the changes of the Seventeenth Party Congress and Eleventh National People's Congress and other recent developments, this major text by a leading academic authority provides a thorough introduction to all aspects of politics and governance in post-Mao China.

Many studies of government in China either simply describe the political institutions or else focus, critically, on the weaknesses of the system, such as corruption or the absence of Western-style democracy. Authors of these studies fail to appreciate the surprising ability of China’s government to rapidly transform a once impoverished economy and to recover from numerous crises from 1978 to the present. This book, on the other hand, takes a more balanced, more positive view. This view is based on a study of changes in China’s institutions for coping with critical crises in governance since 1978. These changes include better management of leadership succession, better crisis management, improved social welfare, the management of society through treating different social groups differently depending on their potential to rival the Party state, and a variety of limited, intra-party and grassroots democracy. This book applies to the Chinese model the term “pragmatic authoritarianism.” It explains changes to and the likely future direction of China’s governance model. It compares current risks in China’s governance with threats that terminated dynasties and the republic in China over the past four thousand years and concludes that the regime can be expected to survive a considerable period despite its existing flaws. "Few topics in Chinese politics are as significant as the nature, state and prospects of the political regime. While the topic had been unduly understudied for a long period of time, a young generation of scholars has emerged on this subject. Among others, the book by Hongyi Lai stands out and provides a comprehensive and penetrating analysis on this topic....I am confident that his book will make a significant contribution to the study of Chinese politics and may well define the debate on China’s political development, governance and model for years to come." - Yongnian Zheng, Director, East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore

This book elucidates fundamental governance features and issues in contemporary China. While especially focusing on principal governance areas, it offers comprehensive coverage, capturing the dynamics of governance across vertical and horizontal connexions. The book is succinctly written and systematically addresses essential governance aspects that to date have only been dealt with separately and sporadically: state governance, the executive branch and administration, organization of production and approaches to production, and governance conventions and protocols. Further, it examines the evolution of governance practice in terms of both political and legal superstructure and economic base/infrastructure. Adopting a purely analytical approach and making no value judgments on the country’s social institutions and political systems, the book offers a vital resource to help readers grasp the complexities of governance in China.

This book provides an all-round analysis and exploration of the course, status quo and future of the Chinese Government's governance reform under the framework of government governance modernization. The authors bring their decades of experience in crafting policy in China to explain the relationship between China's government and market, between government and society, between the central government and local governments, functional transformation, organizational structure optimization, reform of public institutions, allocation of fiscally supported personnel, the building of a law-based government and other major issues, while also laying out a case for structural changes in the years to come.

One of the first analyses of the impact of US-China rivalry on the governance of global trade.