Club Lunch – Beyond the Trade War: The Fight for China’s Future

While the world’s attention has been focused on the Sino-American trade war, another confrontation may have even more far-reaching consequences for China’s internal politics and its future — the Communist Party’s battle against the country’s growing civil society movement. From human rights activists to underground Christian churches to those pressing the boundaries of media freedom, civil society in China is posing a challenge to President Xi Jinping’s authoritarian rule. Veteran China watcher, journalist and commentator Willy Wo-Lap Lam examines the stakes and the possible outcomes in his new book, “The Fight for China’s Future: Civil Society vs. the Chinese Communist Party”.

   

Willy Wo-Lap Lam, adjunct professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Centre for China Studies, has been described as a quintessential China watcher and analyst. He was a longtime journalist, with posts including Beijing correspondent for The South China Morning Post until the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and as the SCMP’s China editor during Hong Kong’s 1997 handover. As an academic, his research has focused on Chinese elite politics, political and economic reform, foreign policy and civil society.