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The Lawfare Podcast: Catching Up on the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th National Congress

Jen Patja, Scott R. Anderson, Sophia Yan, Julian Ku
Wednesday, October 26, 2022, 12:00 PM

Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Brookings

This past weekend, the Chinese Communist Party held its 20th National Congress, an event held every five years at which it appoints its senior leadership who in turn holds the reins of China's government. This year, the event focused on one man, Xi Jinping, the current president of China, who secured an unprecedented, third consecutive five-year term as the party’s senior-most official and was able to staff the party apparatus with hand-chosen loyalists, even at the expense of his predecessors and other factions in the party.

To discuss these events, Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Sophia Yan, China correspondent for The Telegraph, and Julian Ku, Professor of Law at Hofstra University. They discussed what went down at the National Congress, where it says China is headed in the next five years, and what it might mean for its relationship with the United States.


Jen Patja is the editor and producer of the Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security. She currently serves as the Co-Executive Director of Virginia Civics, a nonprofit organization that empowers the next generation of leaders in Virginia by promoting constitutional literacy, critical thinking, and civic engagement. She is the former Deputy Director of the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier and has been a freelance editor for over 20 years.
Scott R. Anderson is a fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and a Senior Fellow in the National Security Law Program at Columbia Law School. He previously served as an Attorney-Adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State and as the legal advisor for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq.
Sophia Yan is a foreign correspondent for the Telegraph, and has covered East Asia for more than a decade. She reports extensively on human rights, investigating China’s crackdown against ethnic minority groups, and unveiling human trafficking networks between China and the US.
Julian Ku is the Maurice A. Deane Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law at Hofstra University School of Law. He is a co-founder of Opinio Juris, the leading blog on international law.