Speaker:

Dr Lai Hongyi
Associate Professor, School of Politics and International Relations
University of Nottingham, United Kingdom

Date & Time:

Thursday, 24 April 2025
3:00 pm – 4:30 pm (Singapore Time)

Venue:

Zoom

Registration is required:

Please click on: https://nus-sg.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_cK9G17FDT7i66zuNF4dsWg

Synopsis:

In early March 2025, Beijing hosted the highly anticipated annual sessions of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), collectively known as the two sessions. The NPC and CPPCC are arguably China’s closest equivalents to the United Kingdom’s House of the Commons and the House of the Lords, respectively, serving as branches of the national legislature. These two sessions mark the largest congregations of national and local leaders in China each year. A key policy focus during these two recent sessions was the private economy. In this seminar, the speaker will briefly outline the political role of the two sessions, recent developments leading up to the sessions and focus on the major policies, particularly economic ones highlighted during the NPC’s annual session, while exploring their implications for Chinese politics and the economy. Additionally, the speaker will reflect on his indirect debate back in 2018 at the end of a symposium on US-China decoupling with Peter Navarro, an adviser-designer of Trump’s tariffs strategy. He will also briefly discuss China’s recent responses to Trump’s tariffs and its possible rationale and political causes.

About the Speaker:

Dr Lai Hongyi is an Associate Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom. Previously, he served as a Senior Research Fellow at the East Asian Institute of the National University of Singapore. He obtained his BA from Beijing University and both his MA and PhD in political science from UCLA. Dr Lai’s research focuses on China’s governance, as well as domestic and international political economy. His scholarly work includes eight books, 30 academic journal articles and 24 book chapters. Among his notable monographs are China’s Governance Model: The Flexibility and Durability of Pragmatic Authoritarianism (a Routledge book regarded by a leading China expert as defining the debate ’for years to come’) and The Domestic Sources of China’s Foreign Policy (Routledge, the first monograph on the topic).