Axel Dreher

Oct 24, 2023 | foreignaffairs.com | Yasheng Huang |Andrew J. Nathan |Zongyuan Liu |Axel Dreher

In This Review In This Review The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to Its DeclineThe EAST in Huang’s title stands not only for China but for the four keys to its history listed in the subtitle. The imperial examination system dating back to the sixth century forced aspiring elites to unite around the single goal of service to the state.

Oct 24, 2023 | foreignaffairs.com | Zongyuan Liu |Andrew J. Nathan |Axel Dreher |Andreas Fuchs

In This Review In This Review Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances Its Global Ambitions “Follow the money,” Liu advises, and in doing so, she shows that Chinese sovereign funds are so different from better-known sovereign wealth funds, such as those of the governments of Abu Dhabi and Norway, that she prefers to call them “sovereign leveraged funds.” That is because most of their vast foreign exchange holdings (over $2 trillion as of 2019) are in effect borrowed in...

Oct 24, 2023 | foreignaffairs.com | Florentine Koppenborg |Andrew J. Nathan |Zongyuan Liu |Axel Dreher

In This Review In This Review Japan’s Nuclear Disaster and the Politics of Safety GovernanceJapan’s traditionally weak system for regulating nuclear safety, created by the long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party and its allies, allowed what came to be known as the 3.11 disaster (after the March 11 earthquake in 2011), when a tsunami spurred the meltdown of one of the nuclear power plants at Fukushima.