The AIIA NSW and the University of Sydney’s China Studies Centre presentation by John Garnaut on the evolution of Chinese leadership in recent decades. As China’s growing prominence continues to engage the world, the discussion will focus on the leaders of this superpower and the factors that have shaped it.

Garnaut explores the effect the murder trial of prominent Communist Party leader Bo Xilai’s wife on the secretive upper echelons of Chinese politics. Now, as the Party’s 18th National Congress oversees the biggest leadership transition in decades, and installs Xi Jinping as president, a window has opened on China’s internal divisions.

John discusses Xi Jinping’s remarkable rise as strongman leader, how his experience of hardship and privilege shapes his decision-making today and how Xi’s edifice has risen from the political ashes of his great princeling rival, Bo.

John Garnaut was China correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in the Fairfax Media stable from July 2007 to June 2013. He is a regular contributor to Foreign Policy Magazine and writes occasionally for Prospect, The International Tribune and Caijing magazine. In Australia he won the 2009 Walkley Award for Scoop of the Year for first reporting the detention of Australian Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu. In 2014 he won the inaugural Lowy Institute Media Prize, which is awarded to reporters who “have deepened the knowledge or shaped discussion of international policy issues in Australia”.