Katsuji Nakazawa is a Tokyo-based senior staff and editorial writer at Nikkei. He spent seven years in China as a correspondent and later as China bureau chief. He was the 2014 recipient of the Vaughn-Ueda International Journalist prize.

After a long lull, Chinese politics is entering a turbulent phase, with political, economic and social policy discord deepening between mainstream and nonmainstream party factions.