Kerry Brown is Professor of Chinese Politics and Director of the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and a member of the YCW Board of Advisors. On Oct. 21, Professor Brown discussed ‘Politics with Chinese characteristics: is the Xi style of leadership the arrival of modernity to Chinese power, or the same old control dressed up in populist clothes’.
Educated at Cambridge (MA), London (Post Graduate Diploma in Chinese with Distinction) and Leeds Universities (Ph D), Kerry Brown worked in Japan and the Inner Mongolian region ofChina,before joining the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in London in 1998. He worked in the China Section and then served as First Secretary, Beijing, from 2000 to 2003, and Head of the Indonesia East Timor Section at the FCO from 2003 to 2005.
He leads the Europe China Research and Advice Network (ECRAN) funded by the European Union, is an Associate Fellow on the Asia Programme at Chatham House, London, is a Senior Fellow of the China Policy Institute at Nottingham University and of the LSE Ideas Centre, as well as being an affiliated scholar with the Mongolia and Inner Asian Studies Unit at Cambridge University.
He completed a Ph D at Leeds University in Modern Chinese Language and Politics in 2004, which has since been published as `The Cultural Revolution in the Inner Mongolian Region of the People’s Republic of China 1966-1969: A Function of Language, Violence and Politics,’ part of the Global Oriental Cambridge University Inner Asian Studies Series. His `Struggling Giant:China in the 21st Century’ was published in June 2007, and `The Rise of the Dragon – ChineseInvestment Flows in the Reform Period’ in February 2008. `Friends and Enemies: The Past, Present and Future of the Communist Party of China’ was published in 2009. An edited collection of essays on Chinas short to medium term challenges in the areas of politics, society and the economy was published in `China 2020′, in 2011. `Ballot Box China’ (Zed Books), an analysis of village democracy and its long term meaning in the People’s Republic, was issued in late 2011.. A political biography of Hu Jintao , `Hu Jintao: China’s Silent Ruler’, was issued in April 2012. The Palgrave Macmillan introduction to Contemporary China, was issued in 2013. His latest two books are `Carnival China: China in the Era of Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping’, (Imperial College Press, London) and `The New Emperors: Power and the Party in China‘ . (I B Tauris, London and New York, April).
