Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.

The highlights this week: China’s leadership wraps up its summer retreat, U.S.-China tensions simmer ahead of September summit, and a low-budget Chinese film becomes a surprise blockbuster.

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.

The highlights this week: China’s leadership wraps up its summer retreat, U.S.-China tensions simmer ahead of September summit, and a low-budget Chinese film becomes a surprise blockbuster.

CCP Leadership Goes on Summer Retreat

China’s leadership appears to have wrapped up its annual two-week retreat in Beidaihe, a seaside resort town about 180 miles east of Beijing. Each year, the top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) gather for informal meetings to discuss policy and personnel issues behind closed doors.

As far back as the Qing dynasty, leaders governed from Beidaihe in the summer for practical reasons, as the coastal location was considerably cooler than Beijing. Mao Zedong instituted the retreat as a semi-formal practice in the early 1950s, when it had become relatively easy to return to Beijing in an emergency.

The retreat is no vacation. Historically it has been the place where much of the real work of high-level CCP politics gets done ahead of the choreographed plenums and congresses in the fall. That process allows leaders to resolve contentious decisions in private and appear unified in public.

Beidaihe has also given party elders—retired leaders who nevertheless retained considerable influence over policy and personnel—a place at the table, where they can promote the careers of their protégés and sideline their rivals.

From the scattered available accounts, Beidaihe meetings strike a balance between the extreme formality and bureaucracy of official meetings and the backstabbing, gossipy palace politics of Zhongnanhai, the CCP leadership compound in Beijing. The discussions are relatively free-wheeling, and they take place in a lighter atmosphere (Mao chaired at least one in a bathrobe after swimming), but they are focused........

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