Kenneth G. Lieberthal is one of America’s leading authorities on China’s political system, including its elite politics and its foreign policy. Lieberthal taught for decades at the University of Michigan. He served in the Clinton administration as special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Asia on the U.S. National Security Council. He has also served as an advisor to various branches of the U.S. federal government, and from 2009 to 2012 served as director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution. He is the author or editor of nearly two dozen books, including Governing China: From Revolution Through Reform (1995) and Managing the China Challenge: How To Achieve Corporate Success in the People’s Republic (2012). In honor of Lieberthal’s work, the University of Michigan has renamed its China center the Kenneth G. Lieberthal and Richard H. Rogel Center for Chinese Studies. What follows are excerpts of a recent