How Resilient Is the CCP?

Issue Date July 2022
Volume 33
Issue 3
Page Numbers 77–91
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Under President Xi Jinping’s personalist rule, the CCP’s formula for authoritarian resilience has evolved, and so too have the risks it confronts. While Xi has drastically weakened some dimensions of institutionalization—particularly limits on his own power—he has not eliminated all of them. The CCP still commands a high-capacity and selectively adaptive bureaucracy; it has tightened political control; and U.S. animosity toward China has inadvertently helped Xi rally the party and nation behind him. Yet Xi’s concentration of personal power has reintroduced the risk of succession battles and amplifies the effects of his ideology and decisions, which are felt not only within the PRC but around the world.

About the Author

Yuen Yuen Ang is the author of How China Escaped the Poverty Trap (2016) and China’s Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption (2020).

View all work by Yuen Yuen Ang