Author Archive

Yu Keping

Yu Keping is the University Chair Professor, Dean of the School of Government, and Founding Director of the Research Center for Chinese Politics at Peking University in China. Former Deputy President of the Central Compilation & Translation Bureau, and founding Director of China Center for Comparative Politics and Economics in Beijing. His major fields include political philosophy, comparative politics, globalization, civil society, governance and politics in China. Among his many books are Essays on Modernizing State Governance (Beijing, 2015), Globalization and Changes in China’s Governance (2013), Governance and Rule of Law in China(ed., 2012) and Democracy is a Good Thing (2010).

As a leading intellectual and advocate of democratic governance in China, Professor Yu has a number of honorary titles at many universities and was selected as one of the “30 most influential figures in the past 30 years since the reform in China” in 2008 and ranked in the “2011 Global Top 100 Thinkers” by Foreign Policy in the US. Recently, Professor Yu was selected as the “Most Influential Scholar of 2015” by the Chinese News Weekly.

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These comments on the topical subject of populism have been gathered by the University of Sydney’s Sydney Democracy Network and its Democracy Futures team. SDN is a global network of researchers, journalists, activists, policy makers and citizens concerned with the future of democracy. The comments form part of a longer series on populism on The Conversation. Populism is everywhere on the rise. Why is this happening? Why are the peddlers of populism proving so popular? Are there deep forces driving the spread of their style of politics, and what, if anything, has populism to do with democracy? Is populism democracy’s essence, as some maintain? Is the new populism therefore to be welcomed, harnessed and “mainstreamed” in support of more democracy? …