A review of Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing by Ian Buruma.
About the Author
Arthur Waldron is director of Asian studies at the American Enterprise Institute and Lauder Professor of International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania.
Xi Jinping undercut China’s political norms to cement his own power and brand of rule. But in so doing the “Chairman of Everything” has introduced new vulnerabilities for the regime.
Like all contemporary nondemocratic systems, the Chinese system suffers from weak legitimacy at the level of regime type. The most likely form of transition for China remains the model of…