China and the World Program's Podcast

Taiwan is where the uneasy peace between the United States and China will be tested--and possibly broken. Beijing believes that "reunification" is inevitable. American military strength has preserved peace and stability for decades, but its advantages are eroding. Beijing has found critical gaps in U.S. strategy and is working to squeeze, isolate, and coerce Taiwan into submission without firing a shot. If deterrence fails, the consequences of a Taiwan crisis would be catastrophic--plunging the global economy into chaos, shattering U.S. alliances, and allowing China to dominate the region and reshape the world order.

In June 2019, as massive street protests shook Hong Kong, Chinese state media framed the opposition not as legitimate domestic dissidents, but as a “traitorous gang” and “scum of the nation” colluding with “Western anti-China forces.” This rhetoric reflects a century-long pattern in modern China: political elites’ strategic linkage of internal adversaries with external foes to consolidate power during critical phases of state- and nation-building.

In this talk, based on the forthcoming book Foreign Agents, I introduce the concept of “national Othering,” a distinctive form of identity politics. While traditional scholarship focuses on differentiation between the self and a foreign “Other,” this research examines the construction of a dualistic Other: a domestic figure whose patriotic credentials are undermined by real or contrived ties to an external adversary.

Drawing on a systematic investigation of China’s national identity discourse, from the late Qing through the Mao era to the current Xi Jinping administration, the talk investigates why and when elites choose to amplify or mute these internal–external linkages, and how such discursive shifts reorient China’s attitudes toward the world. I argue that elites use national Othering to navigate domestic power challenges and redirect dissatisfaction, and in doing so, they actively exploit external shocks and historical memory to deepen its public resonance. This, in turn, makes individual elites’ nationalist visions, threat perceptions, and strategic calculations central to how the discourse is articulated and mobilized.

More broadly, national Othering serves as a meta-mechanism of autocratic entrenchment, providing a narrative rationale for the marginalization of dissent. By uncovering the domestic identity dynamics that drive the rise and fall of ethnocentrism, this research suggests that as performance legitimacy wanes, the CCP’s deepening reliance on national Othering further entrenches authoritarian rule and locks China into an adversarial self-image, making a collision course with the West increasingly difficult to avoid.

Yinan He is an associate professor in international relations at Lehigh University. Her research focuses on politics of memory and reconciliation, national identity and nationalism, and East Asian international security. She is the author of The Search for Reconciliation: Sino-Japanese and German-Polish Relations since WWII (Cambridge University Press). She was previously a fellow in the Columbia-Harvard China and the World Program.

The transformative socioeconomic changes China has experienced since Deng Xiaoping launched "reform and opening" in 1979 have turned an impoverished society into a global superpower.  But instead of a freer and more open society fully integrated into the existing liberal international order, economic modernization under one-party rule has only revived totalitarian rule and triggered an escalating geopolitical conflict with the U.S.   Although this tragic and potentially catastrophic outcome is not inevitable, Deng's strategy to save the Chinese Communist Party with capitalist tools made the return of strongman rule under Xi Jinping and reversal of reform an accident waiting to happen.

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Minxin Pei is the Tom and Margot Pritzker ‘72 Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College.   In 2019 he was the inaugural Library of Congress Chair on U.S.-China Relations.  Prior to joining Claremont McKenna College in 2009, he was a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and served as its director of the China Program from 2003 to 2008. He was an opinion columnist for Bloomberg (2023-2024) and the author of From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union (1994); China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy (2006); China’s Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay (2016); The Sentinel State: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China (2024); and The Broken China Dream: How Reform Revived Totalitarianism (2025).

Minxin received his Ph.D. in government at Harvard and taught at Princeton University (1992-1997).  He is the recipient of the National Fellowship at the Hoover Institution at Stanford and the Robert McNamara Fellowship of the World Bank.  His op-eds and columns have appeared in the New York Times, the WSJ, the Washington Post, FT, Nikkei Asian Review, Project Syndicate, the Economist, Bloomberg, and other publications.

Abstract: Why do states decide to criticize come countries, but not others, over domestic human rights abuses? States often criticize rights violations abroad to improve human rights or bolster their own legitimacy, while refraining from criticizing allies. States can also be deterred from criticism by countercriticism coercion, or economic sanctions in response to criticism. I theorize that states are more likely to be deterred from criticizing countries with a reputation for countercriticism coercion, notably China. States learn from other countries’ past responses to criticism, rather than their economic power, stated positions on human rights, or domestic policies. UN member states are less likely to criticize rights violations in countries with reputations for countercriticism coercion. Elite interviews demonstrate how China’s reputation for countercriticism coercion deterred Indonesia and Malaysia from criticizing China over human rights in Xinjiang. This study has implications for the effectiveness of sanctions and resilience of international human rights norms.

"Chinese Encounters With America," published by Columbia University Press, tells the stories of twelve women and men whose experiences with the United States not only transformed their own lives but also influenced China’s quest to become a modern global nation. Their professions range from diplomacy, business, and science to music, sports, and civil society. Their lives show how Chinese citizens have interpreted and engaged with America, especially since the opening of relations in the 1970s. At a time when Chinese and American relations are dominated by competition and conflict, this book speaks to the value of shared interests and values.