Letter From the Editors

Particularly in the age of social media, narratives can take on a life of their own. But as the saying goes, the devil is in the details; upon closer examination, the facts don’t always line up with the soundbites. This month, we take advantage of the longform format to dive deep into some topics frequenting headlines this summer: China’s upcoming Party Congress, Sri Lanka’s economic crisis, Uzbekistan’s multiethnic makeup, and North Korea’s nuclear program.

Sometime this fall, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will hold its 20th Party Congress, which will cement the country’s leadership line-up for the next five years. In our cover story, Ling Li, an expert in China’s political-legal system at the University of Vienna, lays bare the nuts and bolts of China’s most important political event. While most international media focus on factional infighting, Li emphasizes the institutional nature of the Congress: what it does, and who the actual people making the decisions are. As Li writes, wielding institutional processes as a political weapon is a storied part of Communist Party history, and no understanding of the 20th Party Congress is complete without this background.

In April, Sri Lanka defaulted on its foreign debt; in July, after months of protests, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa finally resigned and fled the country. In answering a critical question – how did Sri Lanka’s economic crisis get so bad? – University of Colombo lecturer Umesh Moramudali explains the short-term triggers and the long-term vulnerabilities, both wrapped up in domestic political dynamics and geopolitical power plays. Sri Lanka’s road to economic (and political) recovery will not be an easy climb nor a smooth one.

This summer, protests and violence erupted in Uzbekistan’s Karakalpakstan after the government suggested revoking its autonomy in a pending constitutional revamp. Tashkent walked back the proposed changes, but the world’s eyes had turned to Uzbekistan, many contemplating for the first time Uzbekistan’s multiethnic nature. Steve Swerdlow,  a human rights lawyer and an associate professor of the practice of human rights at the University of Southern California, takes us deeper, introducing us to three ethnic minority groups in Uzbekistan and some of the challenges they face. With Uzbekistan planning to hold its first census in 30 years soon, Swerdlow writes, it’s important for Tashkent to listen to what the country’s minorities have to say.

Finally, Ankit Panda, the Stanton senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and editor-at-large at The Diplomat, explains a worrying new trend in North Korea’s nuclear program: Pyongyang’s open turn toward tactical nuclear weapons. Recent weapons test and official state media pronouncements both clearly signal that North Korea is pursuing deployment of low-yield nuclear weapons along the de facto border with South Korea, the frontline of any potential Korean Peninsula conflict. The move, Panda writes, brings with it “a heightened risk of nuclear escalation, greater potential for nuclear accidents and mishaps, and greater strain on the South Korea-U.S. alliance.”

We hope you enjoy these stories and the many more in the following pages.