CHINA’S FIFTH GENERATION OF LEADERS: an Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove

The CIDOB Foundation of Barcelona think tank has published an analysis of the new leadership of the Chinese Communist Party by Seán Golden, member of the Inter-Asia research group that comments on the following topics:

• The 18th National Congress of Communist Party of China has replaced half the members of the Central Committee..
• The Red Guard generation born after the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 have come to power.
• There was a strong internal struggle between the children of veteran revolutionaries (taizidang) and the meritocrats who had risen to power through the Party’s selection processes (tuanpai).
• The taizidang promote liberalization in order to generate more wealth; the tuanpai promote redistribution of wealth to combat social inequality.
• The results of the 18th National Congress seem to indicate that the taizidang faction is winning the struggle.
• There are signs of political change in China: the social media allow people to organise themselves and publicise information the official media suppress.

The full text can be consulted here.

10th EastAsiaNet Research Workshop

The East Asian Studies and Research Centre of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and the CIDOB Foundation of Barcelona think tank organised the 10th EastAsiaNet Research Workshop at the CIDOB Foundation on 25-26 October 2012 in collaboration with the Inter-Asia Research Group of the UAB, the Masters degree in European Union-China. Culture & Economy of the UAB, the Confucius Institute Foundation of Barcelona, the Spanish Ministry of the Economy and Competitiveness and the Residence for Researchers of the Spanish Higher Research Council (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas- CSIC).

The Speakers were:

• Alain-Marc Rieu (University of Lyon 3, France): Japan after Fukushima: toward a new governance arrangement
• Lau Blaxekjær (University of Copenhagen, Denmark):  Post-Fukushima Governance – Institutional Dissonance and Post-Normal Governance?
• Kristin Surak (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany): Civil Society and Migrant Labor Recruit Schemes in East Asia: Possibilities and Pitfalls in Lobbying for Reform
• Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard (Copenhagen Business Sxchool, Denmark): Murder, Sex, Corruption: Will China Continue to Hold Together?
• Andrea Revelant (University of Venice - Ca'Foscari, Italy): Between state and society: political parties in Japan
• Stéphane Corcuff (Lyon Institute of East Asia, France): Local, national, cross straits, global: Do Taiwanese voters establish a hierarchy of identification references in their voting behaviour?
• Xavier Ortells-Nicolau (Inter-Asia, UAB, Spain): Major trends in English-speaking scholarship on China’s civil society, 1989-2000s
• Sean Golden (Inter-Asia, UAB, Spain): “Social construction”, “social management”, and “social system reform” versus “‘civil society’ is a ‘Western pitfall’”: official discourse on civil society and governance going into the 18^th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party
• Joaquín Beltrán (Inter-Asia, UAB, Spain):  Culture and the Confucius Institute: Soft power to meet global governance and external challenges
• Laura De Giorgi (University of Venice - Ca'Foscari, Italy): History education and civil society in contemporary China
• Thomas Boutonnet (University of Lyon 3, France): Consumerism as a Risk for Social Stability? Governance and Risk Management in the "Eight Honours and Eight Disgraces" Campaign
• Carmen Amado Mendes (University of Coimbra, Portugal): The role of Macau’s governance and civil society in promoting lusophony: the manipulation of a concept for managing risk in China’s relations with the lusophone world