Countdown to the 18th Congress: Lessons from the Bo Xilai / Wang Lijun Affair

The Fairbank Center at Harvard University presents a roundtable discussion on the recent political turmoil in Chongqing.

Speaker: Richard Baum, University of California Los Angeles

This informal roundtable discussion will focus on the causes and broader implications of the recent political turmoil in Chongqing, which some analysts have called the most important--and potentially most divisive-- development in Chinese elite politics since the 1989 Tiananmen disturbances. As conflicting rumors continue to surround the abrupt downfall of Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai, the attempted flight of former Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun, the suspicious death of British business consultant Neil Heywood, and the possible connection of these events to an alleged plot against Chinese vice-president and heir-apparent Xi Jinping, a number of questions remain unanswered. Roundtable participants will examine  these extraordinary events and place them in the context of the run-up to the 18th National Party Congress, scheduled for next fall.

Panel discussants:
Alastair Iain Johnston, Governor James Alpert Noe and Linda Noe Laine Professor of China in World Affairs
Roderick MacFarquhar, Leroy B. Williams Professor of History and Political Science
Elizabeth Perry, Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government

Richard Baum is professor emeritus of political science at UCLA and former director of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies. His books include Prelude to Revolution: Mao, the Party, and the Peasant Question, 1962-66 (1975), Burying Mao: Chinese Politics in the Age of Deng Xiaoping (1996), and China Watcher: Confessions of a Peking Tom (2010). Dr. Baum is the author and presenter of a 48-part audio/video course, "The Fall and Rise of China," produced in The Great Courses™ series (2010). He is also founder and list manager of Chinapol, a dedicated listserv for professional China scholars, journalists, diplomats, and policy analysts.