EVENTS

China’s National People’s Congress (the national legislature) and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (the political advisory body) held their annual sessions in March 2023. The 'two sessions' or lianghui, as they are widely known, assessed the work reports, deliberated on policy documents, and endorsed the new development policy agenda formulated in the newly constituted 14th NPC and 14th CPPCC. But the most important landmark was the ushering in of Xi Jinping’s third tenure as the state president after the nod for his third term as the Party general secretary was given at the 20th Party Congress in October 2022. This discussion will attempt to parse the two sessions, and also analyze some of the developments vis-a-vis institutional reforms, governance, foreign policy, and leadership reshuffle at the government level.

About the Panellists

G. Venkat Raman is a Professor in the Area of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Management, Indore. Fluent in Mandarin, he completed his doctoral studies from the School of Government, Peking University, Beijing. He has been a visiting Fellow at the BRICS Centre, Fudan University, Shanghai, a visiting Faculty in ICN Nancy, France, and is a mentor and advisor to the India China Fellowship Committee, Asia Century Foundation, New Delhi. His areas of research interest are China’s interface with Global Governance and Business Ethics pedagogy. Venkat has also co-authored case studies on Indian businesses in China and contributes regularly to popular media outlets like Founding Fuel, Financial Express, and Quint.

Rajiv Ranjan is an Assistant Professor in Chinese Studies at the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Delhi, and is an Adjunct Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi. He is trained in Chinese language and previously taught international politics at Shanghai University, China. He has co-authored Jindai Dongfang Guojia de Biange《近代东方国家的变革》, Jinan University Press, China, 2020, and also co-edited China and South Asia: Changing Regional Dynamics, Development and Power Play published by Routledge in 2021.

Bhim B. Subba is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad, and a visiting associate fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, New Delhi. He is an Institute of Chinese Studies-Harvard-Yenching Institute China-India Doctoral Fellow, a Ford Student Fellow, and a recipient of the Confucius Institute Scholarship. His research interests are Chinese domestic politics and Communist Party leadership, comparative politics, and international affairs. His articles have appeared in journals, edited books, review blogs, and other online commentaries. Recently, Dr. Subba also co-guest edited two special issues of China Report on “CPC’s Hundredth Anniversary.”

About the Moderator

Ritu Agarwal is an Associate Professor at Centre for East Asian Studies, School of International Studies, JNU. She holds a Ph.D. in Chinese Studies from the University of Delhi, and an M.A. in Political Science, from JNU. Her doctoral work explored the micro-level agrarian transformation in Yunnan province, and she is currently engaged in questions of provincial transformation, especially in Yunnan. Her research interests are rural political economy, urbanization, gender studies and provincial politics. Dr. Ritu Agarwal studied Mandarin Chinese at Beijing Language and Culture University, Beijing. She was a visiting scholar at Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, Kunming, and visiting fellow at Yunnan Minzu University and Yunnan University recently. She was affiliated with the Chinese University of Hong Kong and East Asia Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore.

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