In this lecture, Tsang examines the strategic goals and direction of travel China’s supreme leader, Xi Jinping, has set for the country and its people. He highlights what China’s new de facto state ideology Xi Jinping Thought is in order to explain systematically Xi’s domestic and global ambitions. In short, what Xi seeks to do is to forge one country, one people, one ideology, one party and one leader’ to make China great again or to accomplish the China Dream of national rejuvenation.

This lecture was recorded by Professor Steve Tsang on the 27th of November 2025 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, London.

Steve Tsang is Professor of China Studies and Director of the China Institute, SOAS, London. He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and an Emeritus Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford.

He previously served as the Head of the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies and as Director of the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham. Before that he spent 29 years at Oxford University, where he earned his D.Phil. and worked as a Professorial Fellow, Dean, and Director of the Asian Studies Centre at St Antony’s College.

He has a broad area of research interest and has published extensively, including five single authored and fourteen collaborative books. His latest (with Olivia Cheung) is The Political Thought of Xi Jinping (Oxford University Press, 2024). He is currently completing a new book, ‘China’s Global Strategy under Xi Jinping’, which will be published by OUP in 2026.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/china-future

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Where Is China Heading under Xi Jinping? - Steve Tsang

Gresham College Lectures

Where Is China Heading under Xi Jinping? - Steve Tsang