Editor's Note
- Minxin Pei
- 4 hours ago
- 3 min read
Judged by its plunging birthrate, China seems to be caught in a demographic doom loop. As its population began to shrink in 2022, China’s leaders—whose infamous one-child policy bears much of the responsibility—adopted pro-nationalist policies in an attempt to reverse the trend. However, as Patricia Thornton’s research shows, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is unlikely to make much progress in dealing with China’s fertility crisis because of the unforeseen consequences of the party-state’s success in suppressing births through coercion. The one-child regime was socially transformative, resulting in a neo-familist, high-investment, “low fertility trap” of the party’s own making. This is a trap from which the party is unlikely to escape.
Most outside observers hold the view that China is actively exploiting the perceived missteps by the Trump administration and filling the void that Washington has left in the world. But Yun Sun shows that the reality is more complicated. While American allies and partners may have growing concerns about the reliability of the U.S., they have not edged closer to China. China also seems reluctant to invest in what appears to be an emerging strategic opportunity, as evidenced by the marginal increase in its bilateral aid budget in 2026. Instead of increasing, Beijing’s appetite to fill the void left by the U.S. is decreasing. To be sure, China’s long-term ambitions may remain unchanged, but there is no evidence that it is ready to take on more global responsibilities simply because the U.S. is retreating from them.
China’s economy confounds most analysts. On the one hand, China has made rapid progress in science and technology and its exports are booming. But, on the other hand, China’s broad domestic economy is stagnating. Alicia Garcia Herrero argues that this is a prominent feature of the long-term strategy of Chinese leaders. Motivated by the goal of winning their strategic competition with the United States, Chinese leaders have resorted to financial repression to generate resources for state-directed investments in high-end manufacturing and technological self-sufficiency. However, this model may be under growing pressure. Brutal competition has shrunk corporate profitability, and it is destroying the margins even of China’s best companies. Wage stagnation is hollowing out domestic demand. The rapid rise of debt since 2008 constrains the government’s ability to stimulate the economy from its doldrums. Externally, this strategy is encountering pushback from China’s trading partners. The only feasible way out is for China to undertake painful structural reforms. But because Beijing is unwilling to embrace such reforms, the dual economy’s internal contradictions will continue to intensify.
China has long harbored an ambition to lead the world’s developing nations in their pursuit of prosperity and autonomy. Henrietta Levin argues that China has recently crafted a narrative in which it simultaneously can be a developing nation and a great power in competition with the U.S. Yet, behind its rhetoric as a natural leader of the Global South, China has its own political and economic agendas. In the Global South, China is trying to lay the foundations for a new world order by finding new markets, securing access to critical commodities, popularizing Chinese technology standards, and projecting power. Taken together, China’s investments in the Global South may create a durable advantage in its competition with the U.S. However, China faces real risks because such endeavors have caused huge imbalances in its relations with the Global South. If China fails to establish a more reciprocal and mutually beneficial relationship with its partners in the Global South, its advantages are likely to dissipate over time.
Factional fighting within the CCP has fascinated scholars for decades. But the opacity of politics at the highest levels of the party makes these dynamics difficult to understand. In an attempt to explain the recent purges, Guoguang Wu provides a new framework for analyzing factionalism during the Xi Jinping era . Borrowing from Aristotle’s distinction between oligarchy and tyranny as two different regime types, Wu argues that the “tyranny” framework offers a more useful perspective for understanding factional dynamics under Xi’s rule. Similar to the late Maoist era, Xi has replaced “collective leadership” (parallel oligarchic factions in Aristotle’s conceptualization) with one-man rule (tyranny). But factionalism continues to exist in a different form as Xi’s hegemonic faction contains sub-factions consisting of Xi loyalists. Wu analyzes the prominent features of the new factional dynamics and its implications for the distribution of power, the impact of policy, and leadership stability.
Joseph Fewsmith (1949–2025) was an outstanding and prolific scholar on Chinese elite politics. He was also a regular contributor to China Leadership Monitor. The passing of Joe in November of last year is a huge loss to the China-watching community. In this issue we publish a moving tribute by Evan Medeiros that celebrates Joe’s life as a China scholar and highlights his many contributions to the China field.
