2022 Fair Winds Lecture: Domestic and International Situation after Xi Jinping’s Third Term

The Chinese Communist Party is about to hold its 20th National Congress, and Xi Jinping will become the first General Secretary and President in the history of the Chinese Communist Party to win three consecutive terms. With the establishment of Xi’s three consecutive terms, will China’s internal governance become more authoritarian? Will foreign policy become more hardline? Will it affect the international situation of U.S.-China confrontation? In addition, what changes will there be in cross-strait relations? Will Xi Jinping deal with the so-called “Taiwan issue” within the next five years? These are all global focal points. In order to enable the people of Taiwan to grasp the latest developments in the situation, the Fair Winds Foundation will invite Dr. Cheng Li, a world-renowned expert on China issues and Director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution, to come to Taiwan to give a lecture at the first time point after the closing of the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party and the announcement of the latest list of members of the Political Bureau Standing Committee. He will have an in-depth analysis of the background of the latest leadership of Communist China, and then analyze the most important domestic and foreign policy trends of Xi’s  third term, as well as the most concerned about the U.S.-China confrontation and the situation of cross-strait peace and war with Professor Wu Yushan, an academician of Academia Sinica.

Lecture Title: Domestic and International Situation after Xi Jinping’s Third Term

Speaker: Cheng Li (Director, John L. Thornton China Center, Brookings Institution)

Cheng Li is Director and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center. Dr. Li is also a director of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, a Distinguished Fellow of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at University of Toronto, a nonresident fellow at Yale University’s Paul Tsai China Center, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Li’s research areas include the transformation of political leaders, generational change, the Chinese middle class, public health, Chinese think tanks, technological development in China, and U.S.-China relations.

He is the author and editor of 17 books, including more recently Chinese Politics in the Xi Jinping Era: Reassessing Collective Leadership (2016), The Power of Ideas: The Rising Influence of Thinkers and Think Tanks in China (2017) and Middle Class Shanghai: Reshaping U.S.-China Engagement (2021). He is currently completing a book manuscript with the working title Xi Jinping’s Protégés: Rising Elite Groups in the Chinese Leadership. He is the principal editor of the Thornton Center Chinese Thinkers Series published by the Brookings Institution Press.

Dr. Li has advised a wide range of U.S. government, education, research, business and not-for-profit organizations on work in China. Dr. Li has frequently been called upon to share his unique perspective and insights as an expert on China. He recently appeared on BBC, CCTV, CNN, C-SPAN, ABC World News, NPR, and PBS. Li received an M.A. in Asian Studies from the University of California at Berkeley and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Princeton University.

Discussant: Wu Yu-shan (Academician, Academia Sinica) Time: Sunday, October 23, 2022, 3 PM—5 PM

Venue: Socrates Hall, GIS NTU Convention Center, B1, No. 85, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Rd., Da’an Dist., Taipei City 106

Speaker: Li Cheng, Director, John L. Thornton China Center, Brookings Institution, and Senior Research Fellow

Discussant: Wu Yu-shan (Academician, Academia Sinica)

Wu Yu-shan is an academician of Academia Sinica, a distinguished research fellow at the Institute of Political Science, Academia Sinica, a joint professor of the Department of Political Science at National Taiwan University, and the first Luo Jialun Lecturer at Central University. Since 2017, he has been an honorary professor at Sun Yat-sen University, and since 2018, he has been a lecturer at National Chengchi University. He has served as the convener of the political science discipline of the National Science Council and the chairman of the Chinese Political Science Association. His research fields include political and economic transformation of socialist countries, democratization and constitutional design, cross-strait relations and international relations theory. His research areas include Taiwan, mainland China, Eastern Europe, and Russia. He has long led the theoretical research on Taiwan’s semi-presidential system and cross-strait relations. He has published 25 monographs in Chinese and English and more than 160 journal and book articles in Chinese and English.