季風人文講壇第75期：Chenggang Xu 许成钢

Understanding China’s Political Economy from Its Persistent Institutions

with Chenggang Xu 許成鋼

October 10, 2025｜In English 

This talk introduces Institutional Genes: The Origins of China’s Institutions and Totalitarianism and analyzes China’s political economy through its framework. By presenting the concept of Institutional Genes (IGs), it shows how a durable totalitarian regime with Chinese characteristics emerged from the fusion of Soviet and Chinese imperial IGs. The book explains how this hybrid produced a Regionally Administered Totalitarian (RADT) system, which enabled rapid economic development during reform and opening, preserved CCP rule, and transformed China into a totalitarian superpower. It also examines how the system has led to reversals in politics and economic development.

About the Speakers 

Chenggang Xu is a Senior Research Scholar at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, a Board Member of the Ronald Coase Institute, and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research. His research focuses on political economy, institutional economics, law and economics, and the Chinese political economy. He has served as President of the Asian Law and Economics Association and as a consultant to the World Bank and the IMF. He received his PhD in Economics from Harvard University in 1991. He is the recipient of the 2013 Sun Yefang Prize and was the inaugural laureate of the Chinese Economics Prize in 2016.