Politburo Standing Committee Research Articles

Limited Power-Sharing in a Personalized Regime: Xi Jinping’s Strategic Retreat from Local Politics

ABSTRACT In an authoritarian regime, the ruler faces a fundamental dilemma whereby the concentration of power increases the likelihood of subordinates distrusting the ruler. This study examines how Xi Jinping in China addresses this dilemma by sharing access-to-power positions with his central subordinates. By analyzing the promotion patterns of provincial officials from 1992 to 2021, this paper identifies Xi’s attempts to personalize provincial leadership by prioritizing his personal connections over conventional promotion criteria when selecting provincial party secretaries and governors. To mitigate the elite’s distrust resulting from this consolidation, Xi granted the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) members influence over appointments for mid-ranking officials in provinces, such as provincial standing committee members. However, this power-sharing mechanism is limited as Xi Jinping grants these privileges exclusively to PSC members who have close ties with him, leaving those without such connections unable to cultivate patronage networks within provinces.

Machine-learning analysis of leadership formation in China to parse the roles of loyalty and institutional norms.

A thriving cottage industry has long tried to predict the selection outcomes of the Chinese leadership using qualitative judgments based on historical trends and elite interviews. This study contributes to the discourse by adopting machine-learning techniques to quantitatively and systematically evaluate the promotion prospects of Chinese high-ranking officials. By incorporating over 250 individual features of approximately 20,000 high-ranking positions from 1982 to 2020, this paper calculated predicted probabilities of promotion for the 19th Politburo members of the Communist Party of China. The rankings of the promotion probabilities can be used not only to identify candidates who would have traditionally advanced within the party's promotion norms but also to gauge Xi Jinping's personal favoritism toward specific individuals. Based on different specifications for positions and periods, we developed measurements to quantify candidates' levels of perceived loyalty and promotion eligibility. The empirical results demonstrated that the newly formed 20th Politburo Standing Committee was predominantly composed of loyalists who would not have risen to such positions under conventional promotion standards. We further found that, even within his circle of known allies, Xi Jinping did not opt for candidates with strong credentials. The findings of this study underscore the increasing emphasis on loyalty and the diminishing role of institutional norms in China's high-ranking selections.

The Irrepressible Strength of Peng Shuai

The Irrepressible Strength of Peng Shuai Lü Pin (bio), Leta Hong Fincher (bio), and Anne Henochowicz (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 42] Last November, Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai, the former Wimbledon and French Open doubles champion, posted a lengthy statement on the social media site Weibo accusing China’s former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli of sexually assaulting her, referring to a years-long, on-again, off-again relationship. The post was deleted by censors within a half-hour and Peng disappeared for several weeks, unleashing a flood of international news reports and prompting tennis celebrities such as Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka to post their concern on Twitter, using the viral hashtag #WhereIsPengShuai. Chinese state media sought to stanch the flow of bad publicity by releasing bizarre propaganda images of Peng through government-affiliated Twitter accounts, attempting to persuade foreign audiences that she was free and well. The Chinese government has a long history of forcing political prisoners or detainees to give false, televised testimony to suit its propaganda goals, and Peng’s obviously staged appearances failed to convince the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), which took the unprecedented step of withdrawing all tournaments from China. In late December, Peng was filmed giving a short interview to Lianhe Zaobao, a Singaporean Chinese-language news outlet, saying that “there were many misunderstandings” about her social media post and claiming that she “never said or wrote about anyone sexually assaulting” her. This, too, failed to allay doubts about her safety, and the WTA issued a statement to Reuters on December 19 saying, “these appearances do not alleviate or address the WTA’s significant concerns about her well-being and ability to communicate without censorship or coercion. We remain steadfast in our call for a full, fair and transparent investigation, without censorship, into her allegation of sexual assault, which is the issue that gave rise to our initial concern.” Peng’s case is by far the most explosive of China’s #MeToo movement, which has managed to gain momentum in spite of an intensifying government crackdown on feminist activism and social media accounts. There is no better person to comment on Peng’s courageous Weibo post and what [End Page 43] it could mean for the future of the beleaguered women’s rights movement than Lü Pin, founding editor-in-chief of China’s now-banned media platform, Feminist Voices (Nüquan zhi sheng). She is one of China’s most influential intellectuals, and she is currently pursuing a PhD at Rutgers University’s program in women and politics. Her essay on Peng Shuai, originally published in Chinese, is translated here for the first time into English by Anne Henochowicz. —Leta Hong Fincher ________ On November 2, one of China’s tennis superstars shocked social media. In a long post to her verified Weibo account, evidently published without much thought as to the consequences, Peng Shuai revealed that former Politburo Standing Committee member and vice premier Zhang Gaoli had forced her into a sexual relationship, setting in motion a three-year love-hate affair. When she realized that Zhang was only “playing, and would leave me as soon as he didn’t want me anymore,” Peng wrote, she decided to speak out. Social media suffered a collapse similar to her own. Peng’s post soon disappeared, as did keywords related to her story. Netizens quickly invented code words to fill in the gaps. Peng’s Weibo account lingered for a day or two, before every last trace was wiped from social media. While the record of her athletic achievements remains, only the most veiled discussion of her trauma can continue. People are terrified that what they say could have consequences for Peng. Like a cipher, the simple words “I hope she’s safe” quietly circulate online. The Violence of the Powerful “I’m throwing eggs at the wall,” Peng Shuai wrote in her Weibo post. “I’m a moth to the flame. I am courting disaster.” She must have known the risk she was taking when she typed out Zhang Gaoli’s name. The upper echelons of China’s leadership keep up a false front. The public...

The Chinese Communist Party's Nervous System: Affective Governance from Mao to Xi

AbstractIn its one hundred years of existence, the Communist Party of China has experimented with how to connect its narratives of legitimacy to people's affects. In this essay, I trace the conceptualization of gratitude, from its repudiation in the Mao era as a vestige of feudalism and imperialism to its return in the reform era as a re-verticalization of Party sovereignty. The paper addresses four examples of gratitude work: Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Yang's short-lived critique of gratitude in the name of a different conception of popular sovereignty; the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Sichuan earthquake as a day of gratitude; the detention of Uyghurs in Xinjiang who are taught to be grateful to the Communist Party in a campaign of religious de-radicalization; and the refusal of gratitude in quarantined Wuhan during the COVID-19 pandemic. In these cases, the Communist Party's sovereignty stands at the threshold between bio- and necro-politics, promising life and salvation in the midst of death and destruction.

The 19th Party Congress: Personnel Changes and Policy Guidelines

The 19th Congress of the Communist Party of China was held in BeijingOctober 18-24 2017. Leading up to the congress there was intense speculation concerning the new line-up of the most important leadership bodies of the CPC: the Politburo and the Politburo Standing Committee. Would the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) continue to consist of seven members, or would it be expanded to nine members, as was the case during Jiang Zemin's era, or would it instead be reduced to five members, as was the case during the late 1980s? Would unwritten rules such as '68 down, 67 up' be observed? Or would veteran leaders such as Wang Qishan (69) continue to serve on the committee? Would Xi Jinping pack the Politburo and the PSC with his own close allies, or would he try to achieve a factional balance observing the interests of former leaders such as Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao? There was also much speculation concerning Xi Jinping's status. Would the 'Chairman of Everything' have hisname and thought written into the CPC Constitution alongside that of MaoZedong and Deng Xiaoping and ahead of his two immediate predecessors?Xi Jinping's report to the Party congress was also awaited with muchinterest. Such a report is usually a long document setting out the Party'spriorities and policy objectives for the next five-year period. Would XiJinping's report signal new policy initiatives, and would it outline strategicguidelines reaching beyond 2022? This article examines these questionsand assesses the future impact of the Party congress on Chinese politics.

State Leaders’ Onsite Visit

Political visit is an under-researched way in which governments influence firms and markets. Chinese state leaders (i.e. Politburo Standing Committee Members) often visit firms during their domestic inspection tours. This study shows that representativeness, political connections and alignment with government goals are the three important criteria for choosing firms to visit. We document positive market reactions contingent on the political power of different administrations and government officials. Moreover, the results show that visits are associated with higher operating performance. These positive impacts are also contingent on certain firm characteristics and the levels of institutional development. Finally, we find that political visit can be substituted as a source of legitimacy for CSR activities and increases the social attention for the firms, which reduces firms’ incentives to donate while motivates firms’ unethical behaviors in order to meet social expectations.

Informal Networks as Safety Nets: The Role of Personal Ties in China’s Anti-corruption Campaign

The current Chinese leadership that assumed power in late 2012 has launched an anti-corruption campaign that is unprecedented in magnitude. The sheer number of high-level officials cracked down by the Communist Party’s disciplinary body prompts a much speculated question in China studies: how do the dynamics of informal networks affect the Party’s disciplinary punishment of senior cadres? This article initiates the answering of this question with systematic evidence. The authors highlight the threat of rectification campaigns hanging over the bureaucratic system and thus inducing officials to attach themselves to powerful patrons whose protection offers pivotal career security for lower-level clients. Based on the authors’ findings from a sample of over 500 provincial officials in office when the current campaign started, those tied to incumbent members of the Politburo Standing Committee were less likely to be investigated for corruption than those without such ties. Factional ties with retired members of the same body, however, did not provide similar protection. The authors’ analysis helps explain the pervasiveness of personal dependence and factional activities in China’s political system and also sheds light on the complex interaction of informal rules and formal institutions in authoritarian regimes.

Li Zhanshu: A Key Player in Xi Jinping’s Second Term

Xi Jinping and Li Zhanshu share many similarities and formed a bond as rooky party secretaries in counties in Hebei province in the 1980s. Xi brought Li to Beijing in 2012 and Li played a key role in drumming up support for Xi to become the “core” of the Chinese Communist Party leadership. Li is expected to join the next Politburo Standing Committee and play a more prominent role in Xi’s second term.

Comment on “The Current Wave of State Enterprise Reform in China: A Preliminary Appraisal”

Comment on “The Current Wave of State Enterprise Reform in China: A Preliminary Appraisal”

China’s Politics 2016: Xi Jinping As “Core Leader” and Massive Personnel Reshuffles

Chinese President Xi Jinping has been consolidating his power over local affairs and preparing for the next round of power transfer at the 19th Party Congress in 2017. The Congress is likely to effect a far-reaching change in the composition of the central leadership. Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang are expected to retain their seats in the Politburo Standing Committee, while Wang Qishan may stay on due to his role in the anti-corruption campaign.

시진핑 시기 중국의 늙은 호랑이 사냥 ― 저우융캉 처벌 사례를 중심으로

The purpose of this study is to accurately verify how Xijin Ping effectively persecuted Zhou Yongkang with tremendous influence in judiciary and police departments by terminating unspoken political belief of “Never punish members of Politburo Standing Committee” that has deeply been rooted in Chinese politics. Although there have been several observations in which the members of Political Bureau have severely been chastised, Politburo Standing Committee members—who serve as the core actors in Chinese politics—are exempted. It is mainly because of fearing strong opposition, high political cost, and potential weakening of Communistic party if the members of Politburo Standing Committee were subjected to political investigation. However, the Xijin Ping authority—more heavily dependent on Rule by Law than Judiciary department—has greatly focused on persecuting Zhou Yongkang by mobilizing Central Commission for Disciplinary Inspection. The Commission for Disciplinary Inspection has cleverly exploited the already established Zhou’s corruption network to arrest his political henchmen, and has succeeded in thoroughly collecting lawful evidence against Zhou Yongkang. Conclusively, the Xijin Ping authority has ultimately received the consensus from the senior political members to persecute Zhou Yongkang.

CONTENTIOUS ELITES IN CHINA: NEW EVIDENCE AND APPROACHES

The purges of former Politburo Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang, former Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Xu Caihou, and the former head of the Central Committee Office Ling Jihua in 2014 re-excited a long-standing debate in the field of elite Chinese politics: how contentious is politics at the elite level? On the face of it, these purges, as well as the arrests of ninety nine senior officials associated with these three individuals and with other cases, seem to prove that elite politics remains highly contentious at the top (People's Daily 2015). This outcome was surprising considering that decades of institution building had taken place after the Cultural Revolution. However, proponents of institutionalized politics in the CCP argue that the leadership had a genuine desire to clean house, and that these arrests, even if politically motivated, instilled a renewed discipline in the party. Once the “bad apples” were eliminated, the leadership under Xi Jinping would have continued on the road of institutionalization (Li 2014). Cadre promotion institutions, regular meetings of the Politburo and its standing committee, party congresses, and retirement rules remain largely unaffected by the purges and will continue to ensure relatively harmonious decision making and predictable successions in the foreseeable future.

CIRCULATION OF THE ELITE IN THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY

AbstractThe history of leadership change in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) exemplifies Pareto's notion ofcirculationof the elite. To analyze it we have compiled a partially ranked dataset of members and alternates of the Politburo Standing Committee, Politburo, and Central Committee for the 1st through 18th National Party Congresses. Quantitative studies of leadership change in the CCP have typically focused on the fraction of new members in each political body from one Party Congress to the next, but the existence of partially ranked data calls for a more subtle quantification of leadership change. Thus, we define a new family of metrics which consider change within each political body, the magnitude of such change, and the importance of each change to CCP structure and policy. We use two of these metrics to compute the distances between each pair of successive, partially-ranked leadership lists in our dataset. Our results capture important political developments from the irregular leadership change of the early years to the subsequent transformation of the CCP into a more institutionalized polity. This metric-based analysis also supplements our understanding of anomalous leadership transitions, intra-Party dynamics, and systemic change in the CCP.

The Rule of Law with Xi-Era Characteristics: Law for Economic Reform, Anticorruption, and Illiberal Politics

The Rule of Law with Xi-Era Characteristics:Law for Economic Reform, Anticorruption, and Illiberal Politics Jacques Delisle (bio) Xi Jinping and China’s fifth-generation leadership have given law even greater pride of place in official rhetoric than their predecessors did. The October 2014 Fourth Plenum of the 18th Central Committee—widely dubbed the “rule of law plenum”—declared the rule of law to be a guiding force in pursuing the Chinese Communist Party’s major tasks, including economic development, political modernization, and realization of Xi’s “China dream.” After the Fourth Plenum, Xi included “comprehensively governing the country according to law” among his “Four Comprehensives,” which also included other goals that law is expected to advance (deepening reform, building prosperity, and limiting party misbehavior). These statements amplified earlier commitments to law, including Xi’s declaration in 2012 on the 30th anniversary of the 1982 constitution that China “must firmly establish throughout society, the authority of the constitution and the law,” and the seminal Third Plenum’s pledges in 2013 to “move forward with building a rule of law country,” “strengthen rule of law guarantees,” and “safeguard the authority of the constitution and the laws.”1 This emphasis on law contrasts with decline in official support for law during much of the Hu Jintao period, which was marked by an emphasis on informal dispute resolution, skepticism toward the idea that the courts should be guided primarily by law, and an apparent sense that law had failed to fulfill its promise in advancing the regime’s aims. At the same time, one of the most dramatic initiatives of Xi’s early tenure—a remarkably energetic drive against corruption—has been conducted primarily through the party’s extralegal discipline inspection commission under the leadership of Politburo Standing Committee member and venerable regime trouble-shooter Wang Qishan. Advocates of [End Page 23] more robust constitutionalism, rights protection lawyers, and law-focused NGOs have all faced heightened repression since Xi came to power. These seemingly contradictory trends are consistent with a relatively coherent conception of law’s roles that has deep roots in the reform era and has been evolving under Xi. Throughout the Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao periods, law came to be expected to perform—and to some extent did perform—supporting functions for the regime’s core agenda: providing frameworks for market-oriented, internationally open development strategies; checking potentially development-subverting misbehavior, much of it by party-state or state-linked actors; and preempting pressures for democratic reform. Incipient and likely non-transformative changes in law’s mandate under Xi point toward a legal order that is still reformist and developmentalist (in its notion of law’s role in the economy), more legalist (that is, giving law a larger role in some, but not all, areas), and more Leninist (in the sense of being less liberal, more top-down, and more narrowly instrumentalist). As the sections of this essay examine in turn, the fifth-generation leadership’s strategy appears to imply a large role for law in economic reform, a limited but perhaps growing role for law in addressing corruption and other party-state-based threats to economic development and effective governance, and a mostly, but not entirely, repressive role for law in handling pressures for political change. As this essay also discusses, factors beyond Chinese leaders’ control constrain their options in “ruling the country according to law.” Although the elite’s plans for legal change may fall far short of full implementation and are subject to revision, these measures—and the context in which they must be pursued—do show that there is room in China’s legal universe in the Xi era to increase reliance on law, even if anticorruption campaigns leave little room for law and the political environment is hostile to liberal notions of legality and their advocates. Law and Economic Reform Much of the reinvigorated endorsement of ruling through law focuses on economic reforms to sustain development in the more challenging circumstances of a “new normal” that has entailed a much flatter growth curve. Tellingly, the agenda for law proffered at the Fourth Plenum was foreshadowed in the preceding year’s Third Plenum...

Assessing the Fourth Plenum of the Chinese Communist Party: Personnel Management and Corruption

The annual plenary sessions of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) usually follow a fixed pattern. The first plenary session of a newly elected Central Committee appoints the new party leadership, including the new general secretary of the CCP. The second plenary session, held in the spring before the annual meeting of the National People's Congress (NPC), reviews and approves the composition of the new government. The third plenary session addresses basic issues and the party's policy directions on economic development and reform. The fourth plenary session usually includes party building at the top of the agenda, while the fifth plenary session deliberates on a draft of the upcoming five-year plan that is formally adopted at the annual meeting of the NPC. The sixth plenary session often focuses on cultural themes and broad societal goals such as creating a harmonious society or adhering to the concept of scientific development. The seventh plenary session, held a few weeks before the opening of the next National Party Congress, approves the agenda of the event as well as the various reports to be presented to the party congress.Although the fourth plenary session usually discusses party building, law and legal work were the main topics at this meeting in 2014. The result was a major document entitled of the CCP Central Committee Concerning Some Major Questions in Comprehensively Moving Governing the Country Forward According to the Law (henceforth referred to as the Decision).1 This document should be regarded as an extension into the legal area of the ambitious reform proposals adopted at the third plenary session in November 2013.2 According to some scholars and observers, these proposals are perhaps indicative of the most far-reaching reform initiative since the landmark Third Plenum in December 1978 that inaugurated the post-Mao reform process.3This essay will first discuss the nature and importance of party documents in China. Second, it analyzes the impact of the Fourth Plenum Decision on personnel management in the legal system, arguing that a recentralization of power and authority is taking place. Third, the essay briefly examines the ongoing anticorruption campaign. Finally, it concludes by arguing that recent legal reforms do not intend to reduce the party's power and instruments of control. On the contrary, the leading role of the CCP is regarded by the Chinese leadership as a necessary precondition for legal reform.Drafting the DecisionDrafting major Chinese policy documents is a protracted and complicated process that involves numerous individuals and institutions. According to Xi Jinping's own lengthy explanation of the process, work on the Decision began in January 2014.4 At a Politburo meeting it was decided that the upcoming fourth plenary session of the Central Committee should focus on legal affairs. Following the Politburo meeting, a drafting group was formed with Xi as head and NPC chairman Zhang Dejiang and Central Discipline Inspection Commission (CDIC) chairman Wang Qishan as deputy heads. In addition, approximately 70 leading officials from relevant central and provincial departments participated. The drafting group held its first meeting in February 2014, and over the next eight months the full Politburo held two meetings and the Politburo Standing Committee met three times to discuss the work of the drafting group. In his explanation of the process, Xi underlined that the drafting group had consulted retired party leaders as well.5 Xi was also the head of the group that developed the reform document for the Third Plenum in November 2013. This indicates his crucial role not only in setting out overall policy guidelines but also in actual policymaking and drafting key documents.There is a hierarchy among Chinese documents. The most important are signed and circulated by party organizations. Recent regulations for selecting and appointing leading cadres, for example, are circulated by the Central Organization Department of the CCP. …

Lifting the Veil of the CCP’sMishuSystem: Unrestricted Informal Politics within an Authoritarian Regime

This article analyzes the Chinese Communist Party’s opaque mishu (secretary) system. It consists of two branches: institutional mishu and personal mishu. The former are mainly employed in Party Committee general offices, to assist the Committee leadership and liaise between departments to push Committee policies and to administer and compile relevant documents to support the policy-making process. Personal mishu work instead in the individual leaders’ executive offices. Those working for members of the Politburo Standing Committee can be divided into four main categories: political, confidential, security and life mishu. Both institutional and personal mishu work essentially on behalf of CCP leaders at various levels. In addition to clarifying the formal arrangements of the mishu system, this article will also consider the system through the lens of unrestricted informal politics, discussing particularly how mishu are able to accumulate power through leverage of the client–patron relationship between themselves and their leading cadre.

China's Political Outlook: Xi Jinping as a Game Changer

President Xi Jinping gave the directives to investigate Zhou Yongkang and Xu Caihou, breaking the immunity of Politburo Standing Committee members and Central Military Commission leaders from anti-graft probes. Xi has consolidated the once-fragmented power to himself by heading several newly established leading small groups. He has also rolled out many socioeconomic and political reform tasks long obstructed by vested interests. Xi's full power consolidation heavily relies on his control of the People's Liberation Army.

China’s Constitutionalism Debate: Content, Context And Implications

In 2013, a debate on constitutionalism erupted between liberals advocating better implementation of China’s Constitution and anti-constitutionalist voices claiming that this would harm the political order and the reform project. The debate emerged against the background of a choppy political transition and proliferating social concerns, as well as hopeful expectations regarding the new leadership. However, the anti-constitutionalist position was closely aligned with the new Politburo Standing Committee’s agenda, which continues to reject the notion of a law-based political order and institutionalization of fundamental relationships between the Party, the state and citizens. This has significant implications for the direction of Chinese legal reforms and related scholarly understandings.

Vietnam’s Second Revolution

Vietnam’s Second Revolution

Resources for China-ASEAN Relations: China-Asean Relations, May 2013 to August 2013: Chronology of Events

CHINA-ASEAN RELATIONS, MAY 2013 TO AUGUST 2013: CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS MAY 2013 30th April-5th May China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi pays official visits to Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and Brunei. Wang's choice of Southeast Asia as his first overseas destination since his appointment signals Beijing's renewed desire for closer ties with its neighbours. 2nd China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi meets with ASEAN Secretary- General Le Luong Minh in Jarkata, Indonesia. Wang says China's new government will continue to encourage ASEAN to develop and grow stronger, firmly support ASEAN in its construction of the ASEAN Community and integration process, and firmly support ASEAN in continuing to play a leading role in regional cooperation. 6th-8th Senior officials from China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) meet in Yangon, Myanmar to discuss drug control. A ministerial meeting is also held in Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar. Deputy Police Chief Zaw Win is elected as chairman of the Mekong Region's Transborder Drug Elimination Team. 6th-9th Chinese Defence Minister Chang Wanquan pays a four-day official visit to Brunei and attends the 7th ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meeting (ADMM). The purpose of this visit is to further promote China-Brunei defence exchanges and coopera- tion and to further expand consensus in the security field with ASEAN countries in a bid to jointly maintain regional peace and stability. 9th-14th China and 15 Asia-Pacific nations start the first round of talks to create one of the world's largest trading blocs, namely, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The RCEP has been regarded as a rival pact to the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free trade initiative involving a dozen countries but excluding China. 28th May-3rd June Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam visits Beijing and Shanghai. He meets China's Politburo Standing Committee member and Executive Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli and Minister of Finance Lou Jiwei. Tharman also jointly officiates the opening of the Monetary Authority of Singapore Repre-sentative Office in Beijing with the People's Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan. JUNE 2013 3rd-4th The China-Southeast Asia High-Level People-to-People Dialogue Conference convenes in Nanning, the capital of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The conference, themed Boosting Development through a Peace Deal and Achieving Positive Out- comes through Cooperation, aims to address issues of common concern in China and Southeast Asia, and push for strengthened cooperation among the countries. 19th-21st Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang visits China. This is his first-ever visit made as head of state and the first state-level visit by a high-ranking Vietnamese leader to China since its change of leadership. …