Victor C. Shih is Ho Miu Lam Chair Associate Professor in China and Pacific Relations at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Factions and Finance in China: Elite Conflict and Inflation (2007) and the editor of Economic Shocks and Authoritarian Stability: Duration, Institutions and Financial Conditions (2020).

• 1. Introduction; 2. Coalition of the Strong: Mao's Predicament After the Great Leap Forward; 3. 'Counterrevolutionary Splittists' in Mao's Ruling Coalition; 4. The Scribblers Mafia: Radical Ideologues in Mao's Coalition; 5. Realizing the Coalition of the Weak: Politics in the Late Mao Period; 6. The Collapse of the Coalition of the Weak and Power Sharing in the 1980s; 7. Weak Successors: the Final Calculus of the Founding Generation and the Rise of Xi Jinping; 8. Conclusion.

'At a time when scholarship and public opinion alike stress the seamless strength of the Chinese Communist state, Victor Shih paints a more complex picture in which insecure leaders from Mao to Xi assemble Coalitions of the Weak to perpetuate their personal rule. Based on a wealth of primary sources, Shih's fascinating analysis reveals an inherent tradeoff between autocratic power and policy success that points to a fundamental vulnerability at the heart of China's political system.' Elizabeth J. Perry, Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government, Harvard University