Minxin Pei is a political scientist who specializes in China's modern development. He is a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in California, and a non-resident senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. His 2006 book, China’s Trapped Transition (2006), explored the difficulties of reforming the country’s political and economic systems. Later, in China’s Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay (2016), he looked at how corruption had grown rampant during the nation's economic development. His forthcoming book, due to be published next year, focuses on the country’s “surveillance state.” Pei earned degrees from the Shanghai International Studies University and the University of Pittsburgh and was awarded a PhD from Harvard University. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of a recent conversation.
Minxin Pei.Illustration by Kate Copeland
Q: You wrote many years ago about the “trapped transition,” and China’s
Subscribe or login to read the rest.
Subscribers get full access to:
- Exclusive longform investigative journalism, Q&As, news and analysis, and data on Chinese business elites and corporations. We publish China scoops you won't find anywhere else.
- A weekly curated reading list on China from David Barboza, Pulitzer Prize-winning former Shanghai correspondent for The New York Times.
- A daily roundup of China finance, business and economics headlines.
We offer discounts for groups, institutions and students. Go to our
Subscriptions page for details.
