tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca-fr/topics/18th-national-congress-4236/articles18th National Congress – La Conversation2012-12-12T03:08:09Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/112582012-12-12T03:08:09Z2012-12-12T03:08:09ZReflecting on Australia and China, 40 years young<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/18581/original/m2dmm6zg-1355269810.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">This week marks the 40th anniversary of Australia's bilateral relationship with China.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The optics of this week’s official celebration to mark the 40th anniversary of diplomatic relations with China could not be more pertinent.</p>
<p>Culminating in tonight’s banquet hosted by Julia Gillard at the Great Hall of Parliament House, Australia’s first female Prime Minister will be seated alongside the only woman reputedly in contention for a top position at China’s recent 18th Party Congress.</p>
<p>Madam Liu Yandong, Politburo member, State Councillor and protégé of outgoing paramount leader Hu Jintao has supreme state responsibility for China’s vast education, culture and science and technology portfolios.</p>
<p>In a party-state parallel power structure where traditional patriarchal notions of statecraft are still the norm, Liu is China’s most powerful woman in politics and, given China’s increasing importance to global affairs, is one of the most powerful women in the world.</p>
<p>Rewind to 1972 and the world was, in many respects a vastly different place. Whilst the election that swept Gough Whitlam to power spelled the epitaph of 23 years of Coalition rule, the 28th Parliament was home to only two female senators, with none in the lower house.</p>
<p>For China too, it seemed the sum total of women’s representation in politics amounted to the sinister involvement of Mao’s wife Jiang Qing (the B-grade actor-cum-revolutionary) in the Cultural Revolution.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.china.embassy.gov.au/bjng/20120223anniversary.html">Two-way trade amounted to a mere $100 million</a>, there was not a single Chinese student at an Australian university, and the idea that China would one day underwrite 21st century Australia’s prosperity would have verged on the fanciful.</p>
<p>To Australians living in the Asian Century, the China story is fast becoming a fact of life.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.china.embassy.gov.au/bjng/20120223anniversary.html">Annual trade with China is worth more than $100 billion</a>, more than 167,000 Chinese students attend Australian universities, and China has surpassed the UK as our largest source of both inbound tourists and migrants.</p>
<p><a href="http://acbc.com.au/deploycontrol/files/upload/media_nat_hhrep_2012.pdf">Research commissioned by the Australia China Business Council</a> demonstrates this generates $13,400 in income equivalent earnings per Australian household.</p>
<p>For all the political discourse emanating from Canberra about Team KRuddLard navigating Australia through the treacherous waters of the GFC, China’s demand for bulk commodities undoubtedly gave us the wherewithal to weather the storm.</p>
<p>The cynics will tell you that the Lucky Country’s recent terms of trade boom is hardly the product of creative ingenuity and rather our lucrative endowment of natural resources.</p>
<p>Yet this is an all too easy analysis.</p>
<p>Whilst record export earnings were generated on the back of unprecedented demand, too frequently we overlook the Chinese investment that accompanied resources boom mark II.</p>
<p>Canberra has approved more than <a href="http://www.minister.defence.gov.au/2012/06/06/minister-for-defence-australia-and-china-partners-in-the-asia-pacific-century/">$75 billion</a> in Chinese investment since 2007. This is underwriting almost a third of the $268 billion in the current resources pipeline.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/18575/original/yxgtzzkn-1355266129.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/18575/original/yxgtzzkn-1355266129.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/18575/original/yxgtzzkn-1355266129.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/18575/original/yxgtzzkn-1355266129.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/18575/original/yxgtzzkn-1355266129.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/18575/original/yxgtzzkn-1355266129.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/18575/original/yxgtzzkn-1355266129.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/18575/original/yxgtzzkn-1355266129.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Politburo Member and State Councillor Madam Liu Yandong in Australia to celebrate the 40 years of Sino-Australian diplomatic relations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UNSW</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Few appreciate the skills required from deal makers and company boardrooms to actually pull off the high volume transactions and too many underestimate the intense competition for Chinese dollars in the OECD and around the world.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.australiachinaquarterly.com.au/en/business-and-politics/item/450-a-long-march-%E2%80%93-the-australia-china-investment-relationship.html">A recent study</a> by former UBS China president John Larum and former Ministry of Commerce official Qian Jingmin shows that Australia’s traditional status as the top destination for Chinese investment has been slipping in recent years.</p>
<p>It demonstrated that while Australia is falling behind the US and Canada in its ability to attract the high value deals, it is still ranked number one.</p>
<p>This is an impressive feat and is testament to corporate Australia’s deal-making capacity, as well as a solid overall performance from the Foreign Investment Review Board and mostly consistent messages from the federal government.</p>
<p>That said, although Australian investment into China has increased from only 0.7% in 2008 of total FDI output to a little more than 3%, this is a massive imbalance and we should be investing more directly in our largest trading partner.</p>
<p>So what does the Sino-Australian future look like?</p>
<p>While commodity prices have recovered from their earlier 2012 lows, they are below their post-GFC highs. It is a truth almost universally acknowledged that they will remain pegged to the Chinese economy for the foreseeable future.</p>
<p>It seems that although China is slowing, there is a school of thought that contends commercial decisions will regain momentum after Party positions in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and relevant agencies are finalised in the months after the Party Congress.</p>
<p>Although another wave of massive top-down infrastructure based stimulus looks unlikely, China’s new wave of SOE bosses and cadres will be keen to make their mark if, as expected, China continues its global investment push.</p>
<p>At least over the short to medium-term, Australia’s political engagement with China is dependent on the electoral fortunes of the Gillard Government and the panda hugging credentials of a potential Abbott premiership.</p>
<p>Whilst the messages accompanying Andrew Forrest’s recent <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/foreign-affairs/business-building-bridges-to-china-to-repair-ties/story-fn59nm2j-1226443474575">business alliance initiative</a> would have you believe otherwise, government-to-government engagement, as well as bilateral dialogue with industry, has increased dramatically over the life of the ALP administration.</p>
<p>Australia must continually strive for stronger mechanisms to facilitate greater dialogue in areas outside our immediate strengths in energy and resources.</p>
<p>That Beijing sent its top brass in education and research to celebrate the 40th anniversary suggests China is interested in forming a wider strategic engagement. Australia must accept this challenge if it is to thrive in the Asian Century.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/11258/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laurie Pearcey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The optics of this week’s official celebration to mark the 40th anniversary of diplomatic relations with China could not be more pertinent. Culminating in tonight’s banquet hosted by Julia Gillard at the…Laurie Pearcey, Director - China Strategy & Development/Director, Confucius Institute, UNSW, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/106542012-11-14T04:43:20Z2012-11-14T04:43:20ZHeeding the echoes of history as global leadership shifts<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/17486/original/k693hzwc-1352676456.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">US President Barack Obama meets with his soon to be Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping earlier this year.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Martin H. Simon</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>CHINA IN TRANSITION: As China goes through its secretive but widely anticipated leadership transition, the rest of the world is watching. This week, The Conversation takes an in depth look at the National Congress of the Communist Party of China.</em></p>
<p>The obsession with changing world orders and premature assumptions that the world is in flux is endemic to the human character. In this sense, we have never stopped being millenarian, hoping that somewhere along the line, the true order of things will stand before us, crystal clear and optimistic. </p>
<p>Two significant events have and are taking place: the concluded US presidential elections, and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/chinese-whispers-the-delicate-art-of-allocating-power-in-beijing-10523">18th Communist Party Congress</a> in China. Several other states in the Northeast Asian region, notably South Korea and Japan, will also see transitions in their leaderships over the next six months. The urge is then to speculate if these might actually change the contours of power, if at all.</p>
<p>In 1991, US President George H.W. Bush <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byxeOG_pZ1o">spoke</a> of a “New World Order”, buttressed by the nonsensical claims of Francis Fukuyama that history had ended with the triumph of liberal capitalism. With the end of the Cold War, the tedium of peace would set in, until the butcheries of Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia muddied the idyll. </p>
<p>In <a href="http://www3.unesco.org/manifesto2000/uk/uk_manifeste.htm">2000</a>, it was again assumed that a world of peace would descend upon the earth, only for this vision to be marred a year later by acts of spectacular violence when planes flew into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. The language of fundamentalism and weapons proliferation replaced the language of hope, creating a new collection of concerned powers keen on preventing others from acquiring nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.</p>
<p>The leadership transitions that are now taking place do not change the current global order, tempting as it may be to think so. Our age is characterised by fears of <a href="http://www.fundforpeace.org/global/?q=fsi-grid2012">“failed states”</a>, transnational networks of terrorism, porous borders that are being penetrated by those seeking asylum from vast belts of poverty and institutional failure, and the emerging powers, notably the <a href="http://www.brics.utoronto.ca/">BRICS</a> (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). </p>
<p>According to Joseph S. Nye Jr., we are witnessing a <a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2068114,00.html">“power transition”</a> in the rise of a region that is in actual fact its recovery. China’s current leadership transition is evidence of this. It should be remembered that in 1750, “Asia”, that broadly defined expanse of product and populace, had half the world’s population and produced half the world’s product. </p>
<p>Now there is a conspicuous emphasis on the shift of power from West to East. This has caused concern in terms of how existing powers will react. As James F. Hoge, Jr., <a href="http://www.udel.edu/globalagenda/2005/student/readings/FA-Hoge-GlobalPowerShift.html">claimed</a>, the awareness of that power shift “has not yet been translated into preparedness. And therein lies the danger: that Western countries will repeat their past mistakes”.</p>
<p>Where powers decline and others rise, conflict is often irresistible unless managed. <a href="http://slantchev.ucsd.edu/courses/pdf/doran-power-cycle.pdf">US scholar Charles Doran</a> suggests that integrating China into the global system in a peaceful manner is the greatest challenge of the 21st century. </p>
<p>The strategic language from the United States to the emergence of various other powers has proven to be a motley mix – on the one hand welcoming the prospects of greater trade with such a power as China, but remaining concerned that its modernisation and muscle in various theatres will challenge Washington’s primacy. (Beware, for instance, the Taiwan Strait). This has led to the use of what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has termed <a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2097973,00.html">“smart power”</a>, code for another way of making sure that the 21st century is as American as the 20th. The language being used, as is so often the case in international relations theory, has simply been brought out of cold storage for immediate adaptation. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/17496/original/mqcsp3g3-1352681071.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/17496/original/mqcsp3g3-1352681071.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17496/original/mqcsp3g3-1352681071.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17496/original/mqcsp3g3-1352681071.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17496/original/mqcsp3g3-1352681071.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17496/original/mqcsp3g3-1352681071.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17496/original/mqcsp3g3-1352681071.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Delegates at the 18th Communist Party Congress in China are set to elect their new president.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Diego Azubel</span></span>
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<p>A most conspicuous example of this is the <a href="http://thediplomat.com/flashpoints-blog/2012/10/29/the-softer-side-of-americas-pivot/">“pivot” to the Asia Pacific</a>, involving an increased presence of US ships in the Pacific and relocation of forces to bases in Australia. Few familiar with its historical currency will forget that the term <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/jun/19/usa.comment">“the geographical pivot of history”</a> came from Halford John Mackinder’s 1904 address to the Royal Geographical Society. There, the imaginative geographer spoke of the “World-Island” comprising Europe, Asia and Africa, islands such as Japan and the British Isles, and further outlying islands (the Americas and Australasia). The pivotal centre of global politics, argued Mackinder, lay in the heartland of the World-Island – the land mass comprising Eurasia, much of it dominated by Russia.</p>
<p>There is now a flurry of speculation that the chess pieces are being moved in the Asia-Pacific region, as seen in the enthusiastic and somewhat vacuous <a href="http://asiancentury.dpmc.gov.au/">white paper</a> released by the Gillard government on Australia’s role in Asia. </p>
<p>American power is diminishing but will remain superlative. But what we need now are not nostrums about a century that has yet to come, rather a regime of cooperation that will cope with such matters as climate disruption, non-proliferation and militant fundamentalism. Such objectives will include following through with Barack Obama’s <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7983963.stm">Prague Agenda</a> for a world without nuclear weapons, establishing ground rules on global market engagement, and dealing with international financial behaviour. </p>
<p>But as with so much, these challenges will simply be an echo of what has come before. Not the repetition of history, as Mark Twain would say, but its rhyming.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/10654/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Binoy Kampmark does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>CHINA IN TRANSITION: As China goes through its secretive but widely anticipated leadership transition, the rest of the world is watching. This week, The Conversation takes an in depth look at the National…Binoy Kampmark, Lecturer in Global Studies, Social Science & Planning, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/106752012-11-13T03:41:17Z2012-11-13T03:41:17ZThe secret to the Chinese Communist Party’s success<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/17523/original/mwss5942-1352697154.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Delegates at the 18th China Communist Party Congress listen to outgoing president Hu Jintao's address.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/How Hwee Young</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>CHINA IN TRANSITION: As China goes through its secretive but widely anticipated leadership transition, the rest of the world is watching. This week, The Conversation takes an in depth look at the National Congress of the Communist Party of China.</em></p>
<p>The 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and the expected inauguration of Xi Jinping is a curiosity from afar.</p>
<p>During the congress, taxis in Beijing have <a href="http://www.scmp.com/comment/blogs/article/1073882/no-fresh-air-beijing-taxis-during-party-congress">been told</a> to keep passengers from rolling down windows to prevent the distribution of protest materials. Street vendors are <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-20233101">not permitted</a> during this period. There are reports kites have been banned.</p>
<p>Seemingly, over the past six decades the Communist Party has continued to be the legitimate single party that governs mainland China, a feat which raises the question: how has this been accomplished?</p>
<p>There are potentially five reasons to explain the party’s resilience, which gives us insight into not only party behaviour, but also the potential for political reforms that the West has long hoped for.</p>
<p>The first reason for the party’s resilience is an intuitive one: a result of repression. The regime has used repression as a means to suppress political dissent and decreasing rights and freedoms in the name of social stability. Since market reforms in 1978, repression, although still present, has declined sharply.</p>
<p>For instance, there were fewer political prisoners after the <a href="http://www.chinatourdesign.com/introduction_of_Tiananmen_Square/April_Fifth_Movement.htm">Tiananmen Square protests</a> than at the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. This decline, coupled with modest improvement in rights and freedoms, reduces the argument to some extent that the Communist Party’s regime resilience is solely the result of massive repression.</p>
<p>Another theory is that the Communist regime survives because it is able to manage elites well. The <a href="http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/an-intimate-look-inside-the-eighteenth-big/">83 million members</a> of the Communist Party, accounting for 6% of the country’s population, are rewarded for their loyalty with access to influence in various aspects of political, economic and social life. The nine active members of the Politburo Standing Committee (which is rumoured to be reduced to seven), and the 2,270 delegates of the National People’s Congress who forge an even further elite cohort are managed through closed-door dialogues and compromises, and are represented in the public under the guise of little to no dissent.</p>
<p>In this setup, it is easy to suggest that the larger population does not matter – reinforcing the theory of mass repression. Whereas in the early stages of the party’s history, the masses were repressed during the “Great Leap Forward” and the “Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution”; following the events of Tiananmen Square in 1989, we see the party were graphically reminded that the mass citizenry mattered.</p>
<p>In fact, the increased maturity of the present-day Communist Party lies in the fact that it pays close attention to popular attitudes. In this vein, the third theory suggests that the party’s ability to monitor popular sentiment, via methods such as using secretive opinion polls, monitoring rumours, and anti-regime thoughts on the internet, and even attempts to control internet usage and traffic via the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/challenge-4-authoritarian-rule-and-the-internet-7544">Great Fire Wall</a>”, have proven to be useful regime.</p>
<p>The fourth theory suggests that the party survives because it is able to maintain popular legitimacy via its social compact with society. The modern social compact is performance-based, and founded on economic grounds. Crudely put, in the words of former leader Deng Xiaoping, <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/940833">“to get rich is glorious”</a>. In post-reform China, the state encourages (via laws, regulations and slogans) both the elites and masses to pursue increasing their wealth portfolio.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/17525/original/gkc68w3y-1352697881.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/17525/original/gkc68w3y-1352697881.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17525/original/gkc68w3y-1352697881.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17525/original/gkc68w3y-1352697881.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17525/original/gkc68w3y-1352697881.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17525/original/gkc68w3y-1352697881.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17525/original/gkc68w3y-1352697881.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Police keep a close watch outside the Communist Party Congress at Tiananmen Square.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Diego Azubel</span></span>
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<p>If both groups continue to increase their wealth, then the legitimacy of the party is maintained. With robust growth in the economy, the resilience of the Chinese Communist Party lies in its ability to deliver economic prosperity to the majority of its citizens.</p>
<p>Embedded within the present social compact is the party’s ability to adapt and reuse political strategies of the past. While no longer on the propaganda trail of history, recent Chinese leadership has shown that it can still drum up intense domestic support by exploiting external situations.</p>
<p>For example, by fostering anti-Japanese sentiments over the <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203922804578082371509569896.html">Diaoyu Islands</a> it has generated national support and a degree of certainty amongst the masses that the party is the one body that ensures stability in the present and future. The final theory thus suggests that such political strategies play a role in ensuring the endurance of the Communist Party.</p>
<p>The current Communist Party’s resilience suggests China may not see any meaningful political institutional changes in the near future, in spite of a new Xi Jinping administration. Nevertheless, the new administration will have to show an increased commitment to improve the livelihoods of those who do not benefit from the current social compact. Against this background, there are a growing number of Chinese citizens who have not achieved higher incomes, and have experienced reduce social services.</p>
<p>The redistributive commitments of the central state may have to increase in order to ensure the future of its regime. In this sense, if in no other, there is shared ground with the recent election in the US: economic rejuvenation is the key to success. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/10675/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Reza Hasmath does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>CHINA IN TRANSITION: As China goes through its secretive but widely anticipated leadership transition, the rest of the world is watching. This week, The Conversation takes an in depth look at the National…Reza Hasmath, Lecturer, University of AlbertaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.