Xi Jinping came to power with an ambitious reform agenda, but a series of reverses in 2015-16 have thrown this agenda into disarray. Which of these factors are most important in explaining this outcome: Xi’s commitment to reform objectives; China’s political system; or the nature of China’s economic challenges?

Barry Naughton is Professor at the University of California, San Diego specializing in the Chinese economy and economic policy. He spent fall 2012 and 2013 as a visiting scholar at Tsinghua University in Beijing, following closely the economic initiatives of the then-new Xi Jinping Administration. He has consulted extensively for the World Bank, as well as for corporate clients. Dr. Naughton’s comprehensive study, The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth in 2007 (MIT Press) has been translated into Chinese and Korean. His first book, Growing Out of the Plan: Chinese Economic Reform, 1978-1993 (Cambridge University Press, 1995) won the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize. Naughton publishes extensively in top economics and social science journals. He also publishes regular quarterly analyses of China’s economic policy-making online at China Leadership Monitor. Naughton’s most recent book, co-edited with Kellee Tsai, is State Capitalism, Institutional Adaptation and the Chinese Miracle, published by Cambridge University Press, 2015. Naughton received his Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University in 1986, and was named the So Kuanlok Professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) of the University of California at San Diego in 1998.