The Hoover Institution has unveiled a new cyberjournal focused on tracking the latest developments in China’s political leadership. Edited by Hoover fellow H. Lyman Miller, the China Leadership Monitor offers authoritative assessments of trends in Chinese leadership politics and policy to American policymakers and the general public.

The online journal format of the China Leadership Monitor (www.chinaleadershipmonitor.org) provides analysis that is timely and instantly accessible. It joins Education Next, the Hoover Digest, and Policy Review as part of the Hoover Institution’s growing collection of journals and periodicals. The Monitor differs from the others in that it is released first online and continually updated throughout the quarter before the print version is released. Education Next, the Hoover Digest, and Policy Review are released simultaneously online and in print.

The inaugural issue of the cyberjournal is aimed at what is anticipated to be “a major transition in leadership in China later this year” at the Sixteenth Party Congress, explained Miller. “All of the contributors to the issue are focused in some way on how the arena that they specialize in will be affected by this coming leadership transition.”

Experts contributing to the Monitor’s inaugural issue constitute a team that will continue to offer analysis on China’s leadership from quarter to quarter. They include

• Thomas Christensen, associate professor of political science at MIT and author of Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947–1958. In the first issue of the Monitor he writes on “Tracking China's Security Relations: Causes for Optimism and Pessimism.”

• Joseph Fewsmith, professor of international relations at Boston University. For the first issue he poses the question: “Is Political Reform Ahead? Beijing Confronts Problems Facing Society--and the CCP.”

• Cheng Li, professor and acting chair of the department of government at Hamilton College and author of China's Leaders: The New Generation (2001). In the first issue he asks: “After Hu, Who? China's Provincial Leaders Await Promotion.”

• James Mulvenon, deputy director of the RAND Corporation's Center for Asia-Pacific Policy and author of Soldiers of Fortune (M.E. Sharpe, 2001). Mulvenon contributes “Civil-Military Relations and the EP-3 Crisis: A Content Analysis” and “Zhang Wannian: A Political Biography” to the Monitor’s inaugural issue.

• Barry Naughton, an economist at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies of the University of California, San Diego, who specializes in China's transitional economy. He writes on “Zhu Rongji: The Twilight of a Brilliant Career” for the first issue.

• In addition to being the Monitor’s general editor, Miller himself is also contributor, penning “The Road to the Sixteenth Party Congress” for the first issue. A visiting associate professor of history at Stanford University and associate professor of Chinese affairs at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, Miller has written extensively on contemporary Chinese politics, foreign affairs, and history.

The Hoover Institution, founded at Stanford University in 1919 by Herbert Hoover, who went on to become the 31st president of the United States, is an interdisciplinary research center for advanced study on domestic and international affairs.