Fewsmith on All Things Considered on Xi’s Anticorruption Campaign
Joseph Fewsmith, Professor of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, was recently interviewed on the anticorruption campaign of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Fewsmith was interviewed for an October 25, 2016 segment on NPR’s All Things Considered entitled “Behind China’s Anti-Graft Campaign, A Drive To Crush Rivals.”
From the segment:
“These issues could, in the future, be one of regime survival,” warns Boston University political scientist Joe Fewsmith.
He argues that this is how Chinese Communist Party leaders rise to power — by eliminating rival factions. Chairman Mao Zedong did it some seven decades ago, and Xi appears to be doing it now.
He says these winner-take-all feuds break out “because you don’t really have a mechanism to sort out who legitimately rules.”
You can listen to the entire segment below:
Fewsmith is Professor of International Relations and Political Science at Boston University. He is the author or editor of eight books, including, most recently, The Logic and Limits of Political Reform in China (January 2013). Fewsmith travels to China regularly and is active in the Association for Asian Studies and the American Political Science Association. Learn more about him here.