This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy chat with Jude Blanchette, the Senior Advisor and China Practice Lead at Crumpton Group's China Practice. We pick his brain on the rumors swirling around Beijing this summer, about public criticisms of Xi’s leadership, about the lack of any real succession plan in the eventuality that Xi is somehow incapacitated or steps down, and an emerging political science literature on authoritarianism. Jude has also discussed Chinese politics on Sinica on three other occasions in the past two years: Neo-Maoists: Everything old is new again; Nationalism in Russia and China; Takeaways from China’s 19th Party Congress. Recommendations: Jeremy: War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence, by Ronan Farrow. Jude: The Youtube channel “Epic rap battles of history,” particularly their 2013 video on “Rasputin vs Stalin” — Jude calls it “a great way to learn about how closed political systems work through OK rap.” Kaiser: Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota.This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.