xi jinping

A bonus episode from The Global Story podcast. What keeps China’s president up at night? The Global Story brings you one big story every weekday, making sense of the news with our experts around the world. Insights you can trust, from the BBC, with Katya Adler. For more, go to bbcworldservice.com/globalstory or search for The Global Story wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

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On today's podcast:

(1) Left-wing disrupter George Galloway won a seat in the UK Parliament in a special election that underscored how the Israel-Hamas war has exacerbated community tensions and sowed division across British politics.

(2) Scores of Palestinians were killed and injured on Thursday during an outbreak of violence in which Israeli troops opened fire near a convoy of food trucks attempting to deliver humanitarian aid in northern Gaza.

(3) China's factory activity shrank for the fifth straight month in February, suggesting weak demand remains an obstacle for the economy.

(4) The Federal Reserve's preferred gauge of underlying inflation rose in January at the fastest pace in nearly a year, helping explain policymakers' patient approach to start cutting interest rates.

(5) UK retail traffic fell the most since the pandemic due to train strikes, squeezed budgets and one of the wettest Februarys on record, fueling concerns about the strength of the economy. 

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There are few stories that are more crucial to the world’s future than what’s happening in China. Take any of the most important issues of our time — climate change, geopolitics, the global economy, advanced technologies — and China is at the center of them. American politics itself has increasingly come to revolve around competition with China.

In other words, what happens in China doesn’t stay in China — it reverberates through the global economy, the American political system and the international order. And a lot is happening in China right now. In November, China experienced what many have called its most significant protests since Tiananmen Square in 1989. In response, Beijing loosened its “zero Covid” policy, demonstrating a level of public responsiveness that shocked many observers of the increasingly authoritarian regime. However, that policy shift also unleashed a huge wave of infections and hospitalizations that puts the country’s immediate future in question.

Yuen Yuen Ang is a professor of political economy, a China scholar at Johns Hopkins University and the author of “China’s Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption.” Her basic argument is this: In order to understand what’s happening in China today (and what all of it could mean for its future) you need to first understand China’s unique, often misunderstood political system — one that Ang calls “autocracy with democratic characteristics.” Because we in the West are so fixated on how China selects its leaders, she argues, we’ve overlooked a more subtle but far more consequential revolution in how China is governed. That transformation of the Chinese political system is the deeper story behind both the country’s economic success — as well as its current troubles. And it provides an illuminating lens through which to view American politics as well.

Mentioned:

“An Era Just Ended in China” by Yuen Yuen Ang

“The Problem With Zero” by Yuen Yuen Ang

“The Procedure Fetish” by Nicholas Bagley

Book Recommendations:

From The Soil by Fei Xiaotong

Fei Xiaotong and Sociology in Revolutionary China by R. David Arkush

The Fractalist by Benoit Mandelbrot

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Carole Sabouraud and Kristina Samulewski.

Over the weekend, protests against China’s strict coronavirus restrictions ricocheted across the country in a rare case of nationwide civil unrest. It was the most extensive series of protests since the pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

This is what these demonstrations look and feel like, and what they mean for President Xi Jinping and his quest for “zero Covid.”

Guest: Vivian Wang, a China correspondent for The New York Times.

Background reading: 

• Demonstrations against coronavirus restrictions in China have evolved into broader demands. What are protesters calling for?
• In a country where protests are swiftly quashed, many who gathered to voice their discontent — under the watchful eye of the police — were uncertain about how far to go.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

Four years ago, Xi Jinping set himself up to become China’s leader indefinitely.

At last week’s Communist Party congress in Beijing, he stepped into that role, making a notable sweep of the country’s other top leaders and placing even greater focus on national security.

Guest: Chris Buckley, chief China correspondent for The New York Times.

Background reading: 

• At the congress, Mr. Xi didn’t mention two long-repeated maxims. To many, it’s a warning of the turbulent times to come.
• Mr. Xi has created a new ruling elite packed with loyalist officials primed to elevate his agenda of bolstering national security and turning China into a technological great power.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

The spotlight is on China as the Communist party’s 20th National Congress takes place this week. At a critical moment when President Xi Jinping prepares to stay on for an unprecedented third term as leader, there’s an important problem: China’s economy is slowing down. The FT’s China correspondent Edward White explains why this has happened and whether or not it's too late for Xi to make the changes necessary to put the country on a path to strong growth again.   

Clip from the South China Morning Post 

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For further reading:

Xi Jinping’s last chance to revive the Chinese economy

China’s property crash: ‘a slow-motion financial crisis’

China growth to fall behind rest of Asia for first time since 1990

China delays key GDP data in middle of Communist party congress 

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On Twitter, follow Edward White (@edwardwhitenz) and Michela Tindera (@mtindera07)

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

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Ryan and Emily fill in for Krystal and Saagar, covering the Russian drone attacks, China's party congress, Happiness in America, Trump's anti-semitism, Dem dark money, Pfizer censorship pressure, & turmoil in Haiti!

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