Beyond China's Black Box

In this episode of Pekingology, CSIS Senior Fellow Henrietta Levin is joined by Minxin Pei, author of the new book, "The Broken China Dream: How Reform Revived Totalitarianism." Minxin traces the evolution of China's political and economic system through the post-Mao era, highlighting key moments in which the Party's efforts to strengthen collective leadership inadvertently planted the seeds of Xi Jinping's eventual power grab. To hear more from Minxin, check out the 2024 episode of Pekingology: The Sentinel State.

In this episode of Pekingology, CSIS Senior Fellow Henrietta Levin is joined by Philip O’Keefe, Professor of Practice at the University of New South Wales Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research and one of the world's leading experts on demographic trends in China and across Asia. They unpack the rapid aging of Chinese society, exploring the impact of a shrinking population on China's politics, economy, and innovation ecosystem, as well as its trade imbalances and Beijing's global ambitions.

In this episode of Pekingology, CSIS Senior Fellow Henrietta Levin is joined by Cobus van Staden, Managing Editor of the China Global South Project, host of the China in Africa podcast, and a leading scholar of China–Africa relations. Ahead of the Johannesburg G20 Summit, they unpack China’s Africa strategy as well as China's bilateral ties with South Africa. Henrietta and Cobus discuss Beijing's diplomatic ground game, key trends in Chinese investment and BRI projects in Africa, how China's slowing economy is shaping its engagement, and what China is ultimately seeking to achieve on the continent.

In this episode of Pekingology, CSIS Senior Fellow Henrietta Levin is joined by Ning Leng, assistant professor at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy and a Wilson Center China Fellow. They discuss her new book Politicizing Business: How Firms Are Made to Serve the Party-State in China. Henrietta and Ning explore the relationship between politics and business in China, what the Party really wants from Chinese firms, and why a malfunctioning wastewater treatment plant in southwest China has so many decorative fish.

In this episode of Pekingology, CSIS Senior Fellow Henrietta Levin is joined by Sarah Beran, who managed the U.S.-China relationship in senior roles at the State Department, the American Embassy in Beijing, and the White House National Security Council. Ahead of President Trump's potential meeting with President Xi on the margins of the 2025 APEC Leaders Meeting, Sarah explains how U.S.-China diplomacy and summitry actually work. Sarah unpacks the tough negotiations that set the stage for conversations between the two nations' leaders, what Chinese officials want most from these dialogues, and how President Xi has evolved as a diplomat over his long tenure.

In this episode of Pekingology, CSIS Senior Fellow Henrietta Levin is joined by Dinny McMahon, Head of China Markets Research at Trivium China, and Andrew Polk, Co-Founder and Head of Economic Research at Trivium China. Dinny and Andrew discuss their new Freeman Chair report, China’s Economic Transition: Debt, Demography, Deglobalization, and Scenarios for 2035. The conversation unpacks the structural challenges facing China’s economy, why the next decade will be decisive in whether China can escape the middle-income trap, and who really matters when it comes to economic policy-making in Beijing.

In this episode of Pekingology, CSIS Senior Fellow Henrietta Levin is joined by Jon Czin, the Michael H. Armacost Chair in Foreign Policy Studies and a fellow with the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution. Jon is a former member of the Senior Analytic Service at CIA, where he was one of the intelligence community’s top China experts, and he also served as Director for China at the White House National Security Council. Jon and Henrietta discuss his recent China Leadership Monitor article “Plotting the Course to Xi’s Fourth Term: Preparations, Predictions, and Possibilities.” The conversation dives into who President Xi actually trusts, what to expect from Xi's fourth term, his succession dilemma, and what it all means for the U.S.-China relationship.

Pekingology is excited to feature a new CSIS podcast called State of Play, where CSIS experts unpack the biggest geopolitical developments of the week. In this State of Play episode, Henrietta Levin and Rick Rosso discuss the China-India relationship, alongside host Will Todman. President Xi and Prime Minister Modi greeted each other warmly at the SCO summit in China last weekend. But how real is the China-India rapprochement, and what does it mean for the United States?

In this joint episode between Pekingology and the ChinaPower Podcast, CSIS Freeman Chair Senior Fellow Henrietta Levin and co-host CSIS China Power Project Deputy Director and Fellow Brian Hart are joined by Dan Wang to discuss his new book, Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future. The conversation unpacks China’s monumentalism in its grand engineering projects, the advantages and consequences of building at such scale, China’s push to lead in key technologies, Beijing’s social engineering efforts, and much more. Dan Wang is a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover History Lab. Previously, he was a fellow at the Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center and a lecturer at Yale University’s MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. From 2017 to 2023, he worked in China as the technology analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics, based in Hong Kong, Beijing, and then Shanghai. For more from Dan Wang, please read his latest piece in Foreign Affairs titled The Real China Model: Beijing’s Enduring Formula for Wealth and Power.

In this episode of Pekingology, CSIS Senior Fellow Henrietta Levin is joined by M. Taylor Fravel, Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and Director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They discuss Dr. Fravel's recent Foreign Affairs article, "Is China’s Military Ready for War? What Xi’s Purges Do—and Don’t—Mean for Beijing’s Ambitions." The conversation unpacks corruption, modernization, and sudden disappearances at the highest levels of the People's Liberation Army.