Teaching Notes for Toxic Politics, authored by CFR Senior Fellow Yanzhong Huang, discuss how China’s environmental crisis is undermining public health and becoming an Achilles heel in its reemergence as a global power.

Americans assume that free, fair, and credible elections are essential to democracy. Elsewhere, however, elections are rigged and serve mainly to consolidate the position of a "big man" and his cronies or to legitimate self-perpetuating elites.

South Africa is a notoriously divided nation. There are eleven legal languages and four races with degrees of legal recognition (Indian/Asian, Black, Coloured, and White). Though Black Africans are a…