CMC Government Professor Minxin Pei P’12, an expert in China and the Pacific Rim, as well as U.S.-Asia relations, has published his latest book, The Broken China Dream: How Reform Revived Totalitarianism. In it, Pei details the post-1979 history of China’s modernization journey, offering a crucial and comprehensive narrative.
Pei was inspired to write the book, in part, he said, to fill a void on his own classroom syllabi. “I’ve taught the course, ‘Chinese Politics,’ maybe 20 times at CMC, because in some semesters I would offer two sessions, and I felt that the story about China since 1979 could not be found in one single book,” Pei recently recalled.
He explores the pivotal moment when many hoped China’s turn toward capitalism would lead to abandonment of its totalitarian past. Instead of becoming an open society, Pei writes of an “authoritarian leap backward” under Chinese leader Xi Jinping, aiming to provide real-world insights for not only his students, but for policymakers, journalists, and businesspeople.
While writing The Broken China Dream, Pei said he synthesized his own research over “the past three decades.” Published by Princeton University Press, the book joins several others Pei has authored on contemporary China, including: The Sentinel State: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China; China’s Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay; and China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy.
In spring 2025, CMC recognized Pei with the prestigious Faculty Scholarship Award, and he credits his productivity to the support he has received from the College. “I’ve been here for 16 years, and published three books, and I churned out articles, too,” he said, noting, “CMC is a friendly institution for scholars who are interested in doing research.”
And, as a bonus, he said he loves teaching at CMC. “It’s the small setting … You actually know every student. You develop personal relationships. You know their strengths, their weaknesses, and you can conduct class discussions in a much livelier manner.”
The Tom and Margot Pritzker ’72 Professor of Government and a George R. Roberts Fellow, Pei joined CMC in 2009. Previously, he was a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, serving as director of its China Program from 2003 to 2008.
At CMC, he teaches undergraduates, conducts impactful research, and is frequently called upon to share his insights at high-level conferences, as well as in academic journals and op-eds for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, among other publications.
In addition, Pei is the editor-in-chief of China Leadership Monitor, a quarterly that “seeks to inform the international foreign policy community about current trends in China’s leadership politics and in its foreign and domestic policies.”
Pei was born in Shanghai and earned his B.A. in English from the Shanghai International Studies University. In the U.S., Pei attended the University of Pittsburgh, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, focusing on long-form nonfiction. He then earned his Master’s and Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University, and initially taught at Princeton University.
He is the recipient of numerous honors, including a MacArthur Foundation Grant in 2014, the National Fellowship at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, and the World Bank’s Robert McNamara Fellowship. In 2019, he was named the inaugural Library of Congress Chair on U.S.-China Relations.