EU’s Indo Pacific Strategy and How China is Placed in that Particular Strategy

Date: April 4, 2022

11:15-12:00 Helsinki Time/ 10:15-11:00 Central European Time

Presentation: EU’s Indo Pacific Strategy and How China is Placed in that Particular Strategy

Speakers: Stavros PETROPOULOS and Apostolos GERAKOPOULOS

European External Action Service (EEAS) ASIAPAC.1 Relations with the Indo Pacific

European External Action Service (EEAS) ASIAPAC.4 China, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Mongolia

Contact Julie Yu-Wen Chen for access to the webinar!


The Adaptability of the Chinese Communist Party

3 May, 15:00-16:15 Helsinki Time
This event is organized by Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) celebrated its one-hundredth birthday in 2021. Its durability poses a twofold question: How has the party survived thus far? And is its survival formula sustainable in the future? My forthcoming book, The Adaptability of the Chinese Communist Party (Cambridge University Press, 2022) argues that the CCP has displayed a continuous capacity for adaptation, most recently in response to the 1989 Tiananmen protests and the collapse of communism in Europe. As the CCP evaluated the lessons of 1989, it identified four threats to single-party rule: economic stagnation; socioeconomic discontent; ideological subversion; and political pluralism. These threats have led to adaptive responses: allowing more private activity; expansion of the social safety net; promotion of indigenous cultural production; and rival incorporation into the party. Although these responses have enabled the CCP to survive thus far, each is reaching its limit. As adaptation stagnates, the strategy has been to increase repression, which creates doubt about the ongoing viability of single-party rule.

Comments: Catherine Owen, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of Exeter

Moderator: Anna Korhonen, Head of International Affairs, University of Helsinki

Speaker: Martin K. Dimitrov is Professor of Political Science and Director of Graduate Studies at Tulane University. His books include Piracy and the State: The Politics of Intellectual Property Rights in China (Cambridge University Press, 2009); Why Communism Did Not Collapse: Understanding Authoritarian Regime Resilience in Asia and Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2013); The Political Logic of Socialist Consumption (Ciela Publishers, 2018); Dictatorship and Information: Autocratic Regime Resilience in Communist Europe and China (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2022) and The Adaptability of the Chinese Communist Party (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2022).