Grand Strategy in China from Mao to Xi: 'Haunted by Chaos'

In this edition of Wilson Center NOW, we discuss Sulmaan Wasif Khan’s new book Haunted by Chaos: China’s Grand Strategy from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping. Khan chronicles the grand strategies pursued by China’s paramount leaders Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping and highlights the impact their successes and failures have had on China’s rise as a global power. He also considers the big question, “What does China want?”

Guest

Sulmaan Wasif Khan teaches international history and Chinese foreign relations at the Fletcher School, Tufts University, where he also directs the Water and Oceans Program at the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy. He is the author of Haunted by Chaos: China’s Grand Strategy from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping (Harvard University Press, 2018) and Muslim, Trader, Nomad, Spy: China’s Cold War and the People of the Tibetan Borderlands (University of North Carolina Press, 2015).

Moderator

John Milewski is the executive producer and managing editor of Wilson Center NOW and also serves as director of Wilson Center ON DEMAND digital programming.