Which Chinese Politicians Are on Your Radar?
PCI-Personnel Welcomes Your Input!
Dear Human Readers,
Our team is encouraged by your interest in the new PCI-Personnel project. It’s still a work in progress, and we welcome your input!
PCI-Personnel
Whom in Chinese politics do you want to track? The PCI-Personnel algorithm tracks the political fortune of top Chinese officials by measuring their ties to their boss Xi Jinping. We included the current and some past CCP Central Committee members in last week’s rollout, but we have the capability to track many more. So, send us some names you would like us to track. We will include them in future updates.
A right-hand man v. another right-hand man. The index is useful in tracking factions inside the CCP. Earlier this year, China watchers were speculating about the rivalry between Premier Li Qiang (ranked No.2 in the Standing Committee) and Xi’s chief of staff Cai Qi (ranged No. 5).
The figure below shows the indices for these two right-hand men of Xi’s. While they rose in lockstep after the induction into the Standing Committee, their statuses started to diverge in early 2024, with Cai stalling but Li becoming more prominent. Perhaps the jury is in on the race.
China’s Eye on the World
A new Mercatus working paper. China under Xi has tried to position itself as a champion of globalization. Yet the People’s Daily’s foreign news coverage declined compared to the pre-Xi era. Weifeng Zhong has a new paper, joint with Jianbing Li (Univ. of Hong Kong), Jack Zhang (Univ. of Kansas) and Duoji Jiang (Univ. of Chicago), that provides an explanation: The strategic reduction in foreign news coverage is a consequence of Xi’s attempts to consolidate power. But as Xi promotes his vision and ideology, the Chinese people see less of what’s happening in the world.
PCI Resources
The open-source PCI projects are meant to crack a window to otherwise opaque political systems like China’s, so everyone can look inside—for free. You can find out more about our projects on the PCI website. And if you are a Macrobond user, you can now get the PCI data streams there, too. Don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions or ideas!
Edited by Weifeng Zhong and Julian TszKin Chan.
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