The proposal for the 15 th  Five-Year Plan (FYP), approved by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party at its 4 th  plenum in late October 2025, is substantively similar to the proposal for the 14 th FYP. The most important message conveyed in this document is that the party will continue to pursue the security-centered development strategy unveiled in October 2020. Based on the more pessimistic assessments of China’s external environment, the proposal for the ne

The 21st National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, which will convene in late 2027, will continue the Xi Jinping leadership as he enters his fourth term as supreme leader.   When Xi secured his third term as party leader at the 20th Party Congress in 2022, he effectively abolished the term limits that had been in place since the 1990s, so it is unrealistic to expect that he will not seek a fourth term at the forthcoming Party Congress. Regardless of widespread rumors

Minxin Pei, The Broken China Dream: How Reform Revived Totalitarianism. Princeton University Press, December 2, 2025, 344 pp. ISBN-13: 978-0691223346 Insights Interview What distinguishes your book from other works on post-Mao China? In the field of political science, most scholarly books on post-Mao China focus on specific or narrow topics. They help us understand certain developments or issues, but they do not provide a broad narrative of political changes during the last

The defining question at the next Party Congress in 2027 more likely will be whether Xi identifies an heir-apparent rather than whether...