Susan Shirk is a former U.S. government official and one of America's leading scholars of modern Chinese politics. She is a research professor in the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego, where she chairs the 21st Century China Center. She first traveled to China in 1971, with the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars. From 1997 to 2000, she served as a U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs. Her books include China: Fragile Superpower, The Political Logic of Economic Reform in China, and Changing Media, Changing China. What follows is a lightly edited Q&A.
Q: You have written extensively about Xi Jinping’s turn to a “personalistic rule.” What do you mean by that term and how do you think that shift is impacting Chinese domestic politics?
A: Xi has concentrated authority in his own hands. He has become the leader of most of the “Leading Small Groups,” which make decisions and
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