"The Life of the Party: Past and Present Constraints on the Future of the Chinese Communist Party" - by CWP alum Isaac Kardon (editor)
The Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace studies disruptive security, governance, and technological risks that threaten peace, growth, and opportunity in the Asia-Pacific region, with an enduring focus on China. This compendium of essays on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by some of the world’s leading China scholars advances Carnegie’s long-standing commitment to rigorous, insightful, and policy-relevant research at a moment when a sober and strategic approach to China has never been more essential—or more difficult to define and achieve.
In Xi Jinping’s “new era,” students of Chinese politics face diminishing access to reliable sources. They must contend with biased or absent data, dwindling access to Chinese scholars and officials (and lack of candor when access is possible), and closed doors to archives, conferences, and meetings that, at least for a brief period of relative liberalization, were previously open. The avenues for substantive interactions between Chinese and American scholars that were being institutionalized in universities and think tanks during that “old era” have narrowed dramatically, due to restrictions on both sides.
Studying and analyzing the CCP from the outside is becoming more challenging, even as the importance of China has grown for decisionmakers, industry leaders, foreign policy analysts, and average citizens alike. However, the CCP has always been a challenging target, an organization that embodies the Daoist dictum “those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know” (知者不言，言者不知). That much has not changed. Yet the public demand to understand (and “counter”) China is surging, and many prominent voices on the subject are plainly untroubled by their lack of knowledge. As a result, much of the received wisdom about the CCP circulating in Washington is wrong, obsolete, or just unwise.
by Yvonne Chiu, Isaac B. Kardon, and Jason M. Kelly - Published on June 9, 2025
Isaac B. Kardon, Ph.D. (孔适海博士) is senior fellow for China studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is an international security scholar, specializing in Chinese foreign policy and maritime strategy.
Dr. Kardon’s work has been published in the New York Times, International Security, Security Studies, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and the Naval War College Review, delivered as congressional testimony, and briefed across the joint force and interagency.
His first book, China’s Law of the Sea: The New Rules of Maritime Order was published by Yale University Press in 2023 and has been reviewed in Foreign Affairs, The Economist, and Foreign Policy.
Photo Credit: By Forezt - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=803568
