Xi Jinping’s Faltering Foreign Policy

Hopkins Podcast on Foreign Affairs

In Xi Jinping’s 10 years of power, he has turned away from former chairman Hu Jintao’s China’s peaceful rise policy towards a more aggressive foreign policy approach as demonstrated by China’s previous responses towards the EU and more recent actions towards Taiwan. With the ongoing Ukraine Crisis and China’s seeming alignment towards Russia, it calls into question not only what China, and specifically Xi Jinping himself, stands to gain from this but also what his long term foreign policy goals may be. To answer this timely question, joining us today on the podcast is Jude Blanchette.

Jude Blanchette holds the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Previously, he was engagement director at The Conference Board’s China Center for Economics and Business in Beijing, where he researched China’s political environment with a focus on the workings of the Communist Party of China and its impact on foreign companies and investors. Prior to working at The Conference Board, Blanchette was the assistant director of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego. Blanchette has written for a range of publications, including Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy, and his Chinese translations have appeared in the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. His book, China’s New Red Guards: The Return of Radicalism and the Rebirth of Mao Zedong, was published by Oxford University Press in 2019. Blanchette is a public intellectual fellow at the National Committee on United States-China Relations and serves on the board of the American Mandarin Society. He is also a senior advisor at Martin+Crumpton Group, a geopolitical risk advisory based in Arlington, Virginia. He holds an M.A. in modern Chinese studies from the University of Oxford and a B.A. in economics from Loyola University in Maryland.

Xi Jinping’s Faltering Foreign Policy

Episode Credits:

Hosts: Jina Lim and Leo Kramer

Episode Thumbnail: Reese Terry

Podcast Editor: Zach Wheeler

Follow us on social media: @hopkinspofa