Friday, April 13, 2012 | 7:30 PM EDT - 8:30 PM EDT

On April 10, 2012, Chinese authorities announced that Politburo member Bo Xilai had been removed from both the Politburo and the Central Committee and that his wife Gu Kailai was implicated in the murder of a British national in Chongqing last fall.

Three days later Dr. Cheng Li, America’s leading scholar of elite politics in China and director of research and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center, discussed Bo Xilai’s fall and its implications for China’s political transitions taking place this autumn in a conference call moderated by National Committee President Stephen Orlins. Audio of the conference call is available in the drawer to the right.

Before joining Brookings in 2006, Dr. Li was the William R. Kenan professor of government at Hamilton College, where he had taught since 1991. Dr. Li has advised a wide range of government, business and non-profit organizations on working in China. He is a member of the Academic Advisory Group of the Congressional U.S.-China Working Group, a co-chair of the NBR China’s Rising Leaders project, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a director of the Committee of 100. He is a member and former director of the National Committee.

Dr. Li grew up in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution. After receiving his B.A. from East China Normal University in 1985, he came to the United States, where he received an M.A. in Asian studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in political science from Princeton University.

Dr. Li is the author and editor of numerous books on China; his two latest are China’s Emerging Middle Class: Beyond Economic Transformation (2010), and The Road to Zhongnanhai: High-Level Leadership Groups on the Eve of the 18th Party Congress (2012 in Chinese). Dr. Li is frequently interviewed by Chinese, American, and other international media outlets.

Politics & Foreign Relations