Professor Zhao will draw on his new book, The Dragon Roars Back: Transformational Leaders and Dynamics of Chinese Foreign Policy, to trace the dramatic shifts in China’s foreign policy since its founding in 1949 and the key roles played by Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping. Each of these transformational leaders reshaped foreign policy to better fit their aims for China. His presentation will focus on Xi Jinping’s power concentration and its implications for Chinese foreign policy.

VITTORIO EMANUELE PARSI is professor of "International Relations" in the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. He is the director of ASERI (Graduate School of Economics and International Relations) and is a lecturer at the Faculty of Economics of the Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI) in Lugano.

This talk will focus on the policy, ideology and politics of Xi Jinping, State President and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and China’s 'ruler for life'. Through comparisons with former CCP leaders, including Deng Xiaoping, Dr Lam will assess whether, having abandoned many of the key precepts of the Era of Reform and the Open Door, the conservative supreme leader’s restitution of Maoist standards might enable China to sustain economic growth and project hard and soft power worldwide.

*Dr Emma MacKinnon* is a researcher of contemporary political theory and the history of political thought, with broader research interests in histories of human rights and humanitarianism, anticolonialism, international political thought, and the relationship between history and politics. Her current book project concerns the history of human rights in the twentieth century through a focus on political contests over the meaning of human rights as a foundational promise of political community.

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