China’s New Leaders: Implications for Foreign Policy and U.S.-China Relations

• November 19, 2012

China’s top leaders, headed by Xi Jinping as Party General Secretary and President and Li Keqiang as Premier, formally take power at the Chinese Communist Party’s  Congress in November (with state and government positions formally conferred at the National People’s Congress meeting the following spring). The full line-up of the ruling Politburo Standing Committee remained uncertain on the eve of the meeting, with a once-orderly if secretive arrangement thrown into tumult by the Bo Xilai affair.  Even in less tumultuous times, China’s leadership succession process means that observers have only limited clues about future leaders’ policy agendas. Further complicating the implications for China’s foreign policy and U.S.-China relations is the U.S. presidential election, held just days before China’s Party Congress.  An FPRI webinar discusses what to expect from China’s new leaders in terms of policy toward the U.S., East Asia, cross-Strait relations, international economic and security affairs and issues of domestic policy that affect China’s place in the world. Panelists include FPRI senior scholars Jacques deLisle, June Teufel Dreyer, and Vincent Wang.