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CLM Insights Interview with Fiona S. Cunningham
Fiona S. Cunningham. Under the Nuclear Shadow: China’s Information-Age Weapons in International Security (Princeton Studies in International History and Politics). Princeton University Press, January 2025. 400 pages. ISBN-10: 0691261032; ISBN-13: 978-0691261034 Insights Interview In your book you advance a novel theory of “strategic substitution” that explains the decisions made by successive Chinese leaders in the post-Cold War era to modernize the military. Can you brief
Fiona S. Cunningham
Feb 289 min read
Editor's Note
At its Central Economic Work Conference in December 2024, the Chinese government made an unprecedented call for a “comprehensive rectification of involutionary competition.” The party’s invocation of a term that until then had been mostly applied to China’s test-based education system, whereby students spend many after-school hours cramming to gain an edge over their classmates. Unfortunately, because virtually all students engage in this same arms race, such an exercise cost
Minxin Pei
Nov 30, 20253 min read
Punching Down: Beijing’s Playbook for Unwinding “Involutionary Competition”
How does an authoritarian government that has leaned heavily on “performance legitimacy” for decades sidestep popular ire amidst a prolonged economic slowdown? The discursive career of “involution” (内卷) from online meme to policy object reveals how Beijing adopted and then rebranded a social media buzzword to shift popular blame away from the center. On the surface, Xi’s new campaign to stamp out “involutionary competition” (‘内卷式’竞争) targets collusive practices between local
Patricia Thornton
Nov 30, 202526 min read
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