By Dr. Willy Lam The apparent leitmotif of this year’s meeting of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the top advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), (more…)
By Dr. Willy Lam It is a standard policy of authoritarian regimes to divert the attention of its disgruntled citizens by engineering a foreign crisis. Beijing considers Taiwan issues (more…)
By Dr. Willy Lam The year 2016 being the 50th anniversary of the start of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) (1966-76), not only intellectuals but relatively liberal officials (more…)
By Dr. Willy Lam Efforts by the Xi Jinping administration to suppress embarrassing stories about his career in Fujian Province in the late 1980s and 1990s were behind two (more…)
By Dr. Willy Lam A series of internal speeches has confirmed President Xi Jinping’s arch-conservative view that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will choose its own survival over “subversive” (more…)
By Dr. Willy Lam Beijing has ruled out any military action against the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) despite having made vehement calls to punish the executioners (more…)
By Dr. Willy Lam The ostensible motive for the historic handshake last Saturday between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Taiwan counterpart Ma Ying-jeou is to anchor cross-Strait relations on (more…)
By Dr. Willy Lam China’s 13th Five Year Plan (13FYP), which covers the years 2016 to 2020, has put emphasis on state-directed innovation and heightened military-civilian synergy in high-tech (more…)
By Dr. Willy Lam President Xi Jinping has shocked even pro-establishment academics and businessmen by openly calling on officials to “attain the goal of Communism.” Xi’s exhortation came in (more…)
