I share your sadness about how in a short few years, the West has gone to having nothing but scorn for anything China. The US leads the way but Europe (and Canada!) have similarly been both worried and negative, and introduced tariffs to slow down trade. I see China's industrial power as a public good for the world. The dynamic you describe, the West invents and China adopts and builds, favors China because of its enormous economies of scale. So yes China can outcompete most countries due to scale alone, no need to resort to low wages. But that's a good thing for everyone. The economies of scale of China are a positive externality on the planet. If Africans can (and do) massively benefit from the existence of cheap cell phones made in China, why should the US or EU not benefit from cheap EVs? Of course the EU was meant to allow greater scale in Europe too but that's a different story. Key point is, Cheap China benefits everyone. Europe and the US can do the inventing, designing, and yes, the cultural parts. Europe has been selling cultures for a long time but lately I see an unlikely contender doing the same: Japan. In the 90s Japan was known for cars and electronics. Now, in Asia at least, Japan's main export is culture: Restaurants abroad, holidays in Japan, fashion, what have you.
Westerners tend to focus on the punitive aspects of the social credit system. It has that, but much of it is about finding/encouraging good people (as the CCP defines that).
I am happy to praise Chinese cultural output. Like an increasing number of Westerners, I have switched to East Asian (in my case, overwhelmingly Chinese) dramas because they take story and aesthetics seriously and (irony of ironies) don't preach at you.
The last two films I saw at the cinema were "Condor Heroes: the Gallants" and "Ne Zha 2". Nor was I surprised that “Black Myth Wukong” was such a successful game.
Someone once observed that China was as if all the Americas had a single government, so that LA and the back blocks of Colombia were in the same country.
I don't know. Love Between Fairy and Devil was kind of heavy handed with the "do what is lawful and you are good" ethos. But yes, the aesthetics and storylines are wonderful, though I do wonder if they'd be quite so delightful if I had been raised with them (US culture exported a bunch of Westerns back in the day, for instance, which would have been captivatingly original to the non-US audiences).
There is a joke that Xi is an American double agent, he has been so useful at rebuilding the Western alliance structure in Asia. It is not only the US that is having tensions with Xi’s China.
It is also clear that Xi prioritises CCP control over economic development. His control policies have been far more successful than his economic management. The fall of the USSR remains the central obsession of Xi’s policies.
The US remains prone to what Sarah Paine calls “half court tennis”—not looking at the other side, and especially not in its own terms. Hence some tendency to wild swings in policy. From the unwarranted optimism of engagement to the apocalyptic fears of the new Cold War.
The US and Canada have problems re this. Australia rather less so, as our local Chinese communities and security forces cooperate against fairly effectively. (One MP was drummed out of Parliament over it.)
It seems pretty clear that a lot of Trump’s antipathy to Canada is one of the many ways Justin Hairspray was a dreadful PM was the degree to which Canada allowed itself to be penetrated by CCP influence.
Actually, it's very unlikely that Trump even knows about this, as he never reads. And if he does know, it's very unlikely that he cares. Trump likes authoritarian governments that abuse human rights, and hates free countries like Canada.
I've been to Hangzhou twice, attending conferences at the excellent Chinese National Silk Museum. On the more recent trip, in 2018, I arranged to visit a couple of small textile factories. One was a bit of a mess but the other was very impressive, as was its owner. Through the interpreter he told the story of how he and his wife had been factory workers and started to see everyone getting rich. So they decided to take their savings and go into business. They bought one machine that did embroidery and set it up in their apartment. As the sales grew, they bought more and set them up in their neighbors' apartments. Their lucky break came when a Japanese textile company entering the Chinese market (for contractors or sales or both I don't remember) signed them up and the two companies grew together. He was a delight, very down-to-earth and personable even through a translator. I think of him often when I read about developments in and toward China.
Although it is a huge tourist city internally, in Hangzhou you see almost no non-Chinese people. I was in a museum and people wanted to take my picture.
Thanks for the comment. I should have mentioned that Hangzhou was the capital of the Song Dynasty, and was the largest city on Earth at the time it was visited by Marco Polo (in the 1200s). Ibn Battuta visited in the 1300s. Both explorers were greatly impressed.
The book Country Driving by Peter Hessler is a good account of how ordinary people became entrepreneurs in Zhejiang province.
Frankly i think your last comparison makes no sense.
El salvador went from a rate around 100 in 100k to 2 in a 100k, a 98% reduction in 10 years.
China went from 2ish in a 100k in the 90s to .5 in a 100k, a 75% reduction. Good for sure, but not clear how that is different than a typical aging East Asian country.
For a Latin America country to have such a low murder rate is crazy and unprecented. China's strategy would not work at all here.
I know you dont like to talk about culture and stuff like that, but the fact you would even compare the two is a sign that you really arent understanding the current era at all.
I think libertarians like you are hand waving how hard it is to solve social problems, probably because you don't like the implications for things like immigration or mass incarceration.
Btw, the UK low murder rate is a lack of guns, as the disparity between ethnic groups is the same as in the US, but guns supercharge everything.
I was referring to the drop in ordinary crime in China, not murder. There is far less ordinary crime than back when I first visited the country.
As far as immigration, both legal and illegal immigrants have a lower crime rate than native born Americans, but right wingers cannot accept that fact.
Well yea, immigrants are driven by labor market incentives. It would be weird if they were criminals. What incentive would they have to come to Americaand commit crime? They can do it at home. It's their children, in some cases, that can cause an increase in crime.
After all, according to the CDC, Hispanics have 3x the murder rate of whites, while Hispanic immigrants commit virtually no crime. Not hard to solve what is causing that one.
That is why mass deportations are unlikely to solve America's crime problem but mass incarceration is the policy mix that has been implemented the most. Support for mass deportations is reflective of frustration that crime caused by demographic change can cause. I think Trump voters will realize that soon.
I agree with you on immigration btw, what I am trying to say is that long term changes in developed countries mean to respond to crime will result in very tough imprisonment schemes. It's not as simple as a CCTV camera to catch people, el salvador was far too violent to deal with a scheme like that. That doesn't mean mass detention without due process, but my feeling is very long sentences for things like assault( like 30 years) or so will be the norm soon.
Frankly i think your last comparison makes no sense.
El salvador went from a rate around 100 in 100k to 2 in a 100k, a 98% reduction in 10 years.
China went from 2ish in a 100k in the 90s to .5 in a 100k, a 75% reduction. Good for sure, but not clear how that is different than a typical aging East Asian country.
For a Latin America country to have such a low murder rate is crazy and unprecented.
I know you dont like to talk about culture and stuff like that, but the fact you would even compare the two is a sign that you really arent understanding the current era at all.
Btw, the UK low murder rate is a lack of guns, as the disparity between ethnic groups is the same as in the US, but guns supercharge everything.
Pondering Fukuyama's much-cited "The End of History" (1992)--sadly, how wrong he was!
Even as the book left the presses, China, Russia and the vast Islam empire (that stretches from Tunisia to Indonesia) was becoming illiberal, and process that has only increased to this day.
China has 800,000 Uyghurs in concentration camps, and Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai is still in prison. Jack Ma can disappear, and pop up again, somehow rehabilitated--these are just tips of the iceberg. Since Tiananmen Square, China has gotten worse and worse and worse. Too big to understand in some regards, and a dirigiste economy in many regards.
The rise of Islamo-fascism is been inexorable. Whole nations where women looked to be leaving the Middle Ages instead have sharply regressed (Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran et al) and again this is just the top of the iceberg of often vicious governmtn-mosque repression.
Russia...(shudders) Putin is a lunatic stone-cold killer kleptocrat and evidently the population supports him.
Westerners, and our media (and Fukuyama) evidently believed everyone was going to be like us.
The globalists wanted peace and trade---both goods---but turned a blind eye to other realities.
History did not end.
There is a question now whether Western liberal democracies will prevail.
I did read the book, albeit 30-odd years ago and my (paper) copy is now across the Pacific Ocean somewhere.
There is a synopsis in Wikipedia:
"The End of History and the Last Man is a 1992 book of political philosophy by American political scientist Francis Fukuyama which argues that with the ascendancy of Western liberal democracy—which occurred after the Cold War (1945–1991) and the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991)—humanity has reached "not just ... the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: That is, the end-point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."[1]"
---30---
This is roughly my recollection of his book also.
Do you have a different point of view? Either on the book, or the rising tide of illiberalism globally?
If I recall correctly, you are concerned about rising tides of illiberalism, but from the right-wing in Western democracies.
As I asked, will Western liberal democracies prevail? Well, I likely won't live long enough to find out, but Fukuyama sure seems to have been premature.
A lot of what was written reminds me of California.
This article (Zhejiang vs. Jiangsu) is your argument in favor of progressive taxation and against lower taxes for the already wealthy that you brought up as something you couldn't really argue against a couple of posts ago (forgive the bad paraphrasing).
Yeah, though even into the 70s 80s (think Apple). At this point VC is too big, but there's still a bunch of smaller startups happening, just less so from bootstraps.
Do you think China is likely to invade or blockade Taiwan in the next few years? It seems to me the main practical reason the USA would have for defending Taiwan is the existence of Taiwan Semiconductor. But it seems like they could resolve that one issue given that there is no big hurry for China to take over Taiwan. I doubt Xi wants to test Trump although maybe Trump could make a "deal" which gives China the greenlight on Taiwan. But I really don't know.
I have no ability to predict if China would invade, although I suspect that they'd first try something else like a blockade. Taiwan Semiconductor is a very important company, but certainly not something worth starting WWIII over.
War and "green lights" are not the only two options. Biden didn't go to war with Russia, and he didn't give Russia a green light to invade. There is a third option.
The only two political systems are “rule by Senate” (oligarchy) and rule by King (autocracy). A normal thing for América was being friendly to other Senatorial regimes and hostile to autocracies. So in my view the American change in attitude was reasonable after China involution.
Small polities allow for direct democracy (e.g. Glarus, Appenzell Innerrhoden, "Open Town Meetings" in some US states). Under these regimes elected people would be mostly functionaries keeping everything running while the demos isn't in session.
Scott,
I share your sadness about how in a short few years, the West has gone to having nothing but scorn for anything China. The US leads the way but Europe (and Canada!) have similarly been both worried and negative, and introduced tariffs to slow down trade. I see China's industrial power as a public good for the world. The dynamic you describe, the West invents and China adopts and builds, favors China because of its enormous economies of scale. So yes China can outcompete most countries due to scale alone, no need to resort to low wages. But that's a good thing for everyone. The economies of scale of China are a positive externality on the planet. If Africans can (and do) massively benefit from the existence of cheap cell phones made in China, why should the US or EU not benefit from cheap EVs? Of course the EU was meant to allow greater scale in Europe too but that's a different story. Key point is, Cheap China benefits everyone. Europe and the US can do the inventing, designing, and yes, the cultural parts. Europe has been selling cultures for a long time but lately I see an unlikely contender doing the same: Japan. In the 90s Japan was known for cars and electronics. Now, in Asia at least, Japan's main export is culture: Restaurants abroad, holidays in Japan, fashion, what have you.
I wonder how long it will take before we realize our mistake. I hope it doesn't take a war.
Westerners tend to focus on the punitive aspects of the social credit system. It has that, but much of it is about finding/encouraging good people (as the CCP defines that).
I am happy to praise Chinese cultural output. Like an increasing number of Westerners, I have switched to East Asian (in my case, overwhelmingly Chinese) dramas because they take story and aesthetics seriously and (irony of ironies) don't preach at you.
The last two films I saw at the cinema were "Condor Heroes: the Gallants" and "Ne Zha 2". Nor was I surprised that “Black Myth Wukong” was such a successful game.
Someone once observed that China was as if all the Americas had a single government, so that LA and the back blocks of Colombia were in the same country.
I don't know. Love Between Fairy and Devil was kind of heavy handed with the "do what is lawful and you are good" ethos. But yes, the aesthetics and storylines are wonderful, though I do wonder if they'd be quite so delightful if I had been raised with them (US culture exported a bunch of Westerns back in the day, for instance, which would have been captivatingly original to the non-US audiences).
There is a joke that Xi is an American double agent, he has been so useful at rebuilding the Western alliance structure in Asia. It is not only the US that is having tensions with Xi’s China.
It is also clear that Xi prioritises CCP control over economic development. His control policies have been far more successful than his economic management. The fall of the USSR remains the central obsession of Xi’s policies.
The US remains prone to what Sarah Paine calls “half court tennis”—not looking at the other side, and especially not in its own terms. Hence some tendency to wild swings in policy. From the unwarranted optimism of engagement to the apocalyptic fears of the new Cold War.
Both good comments, I have nothing to add.
After I posted this comment, this blew up. (Kevin Yam is a friend of a friend).
https://x.com/kevinkfyam/status/1901734652567749023?s=61
The CCP regards all ethnic Chinese as “theirs”. Hence
https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/110-overseas-230000-chinese-persuaded-return
The US and Canada have problems re this. Australia rather less so, as our local Chinese communities and security forces cooperate against fairly effectively. (One MP was drummed out of Parliament over it.)
It seems pretty clear that a lot of Trump’s antipathy to Canada is one of the many ways Justin Hairspray was a dreadful PM was the degree to which Canada allowed itself to be penetrated by CCP influence.
https://www.google.com/search?q=chinese+influence+in+canada&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari
"It seems pretty clear"
Actually, it's very unlikely that Trump even knows about this, as he never reads. And if he does know, it's very unlikely that he cares. Trump likes authoritarian governments that abuse human rights, and hates free countries like Canada.
I've been to Hangzhou twice, attending conferences at the excellent Chinese National Silk Museum. On the more recent trip, in 2018, I arranged to visit a couple of small textile factories. One was a bit of a mess but the other was very impressive, as was its owner. Through the interpreter he told the story of how he and his wife had been factory workers and started to see everyone getting rich. So they decided to take their savings and go into business. They bought one machine that did embroidery and set it up in their apartment. As the sales grew, they bought more and set them up in their neighbors' apartments. Their lucky break came when a Japanese textile company entering the Chinese market (for contractors or sales or both I don't remember) signed them up and the two companies grew together. He was a delight, very down-to-earth and personable even through a translator. I think of him often when I read about developments in and toward China.
Although it is a huge tourist city internally, in Hangzhou you see almost no non-Chinese people. I was in a museum and people wanted to take my picture.
Thanks for the comment. I should have mentioned that Hangzhou was the capital of the Song Dynasty, and was the largest city on Earth at the time it was visited by Marco Polo (in the 1200s). Ibn Battuta visited in the 1300s. Both explorers were greatly impressed.
The book Country Driving by Peter Hessler is a good account of how ordinary people became entrepreneurs in Zhejiang province.
资本主义
Capitalism with Chinese characters.😀
Cute.
Scott,
Frankly i think your last comparison makes no sense.
El salvador went from a rate around 100 in 100k to 2 in a 100k, a 98% reduction in 10 years.
China went from 2ish in a 100k in the 90s to .5 in a 100k, a 75% reduction. Good for sure, but not clear how that is different than a typical aging East Asian country.
For a Latin America country to have such a low murder rate is crazy and unprecented. China's strategy would not work at all here.
I know you dont like to talk about culture and stuff like that, but the fact you would even compare the two is a sign that you really arent understanding the current era at all.
I think libertarians like you are hand waving how hard it is to solve social problems, probably because you don't like the implications for things like immigration or mass incarceration.
Btw, the UK low murder rate is a lack of guns, as the disparity between ethnic groups is the same as in the US, but guns supercharge everything.
I was referring to the drop in ordinary crime in China, not murder. There is far less ordinary crime than back when I first visited the country.
As far as immigration, both legal and illegal immigrants have a lower crime rate than native born Americans, but right wingers cannot accept that fact.
Well yea, immigrants are driven by labor market incentives. It would be weird if they were criminals. What incentive would they have to come to Americaand commit crime? They can do it at home. It's their children, in some cases, that can cause an increase in crime.
After all, according to the CDC, Hispanics have 3x the murder rate of whites, while Hispanic immigrants commit virtually no crime. Not hard to solve what is causing that one.
That is why mass deportations are unlikely to solve America's crime problem but mass incarceration is the policy mix that has been implemented the most. Support for mass deportations is reflective of frustration that crime caused by demographic change can cause. I think Trump voters will realize that soon.
I agree with you on immigration btw, what I am trying to say is that long term changes in developed countries mean to respond to crime will result in very tough imprisonment schemes. It's not as simple as a CCTV camera to catch people, el salvador was far too violent to deal with a scheme like that. That doesn't mean mass detention without due process, but my feeling is very long sentences for things like assault( like 30 years) or so will be the norm soon.
Scott,
Frankly i think your last comparison makes no sense.
El salvador went from a rate around 100 in 100k to 2 in a 100k, a 98% reduction in 10 years.
China went from 2ish in a 100k in the 90s to .5 in a 100k, a 75% reduction. Good for sure, but not clear how that is different than a typical aging East Asian country.
For a Latin America country to have such a low murder rate is crazy and unprecented.
I know you dont like to talk about culture and stuff like that, but the fact you would even compare the two is a sign that you really arent understanding the current era at all.
Btw, the UK low murder rate is a lack of guns, as the disparity between ethnic groups is the same as in the US, but guns supercharge everything.
Pondering Fukuyama's much-cited "The End of History" (1992)--sadly, how wrong he was!
Even as the book left the presses, China, Russia and the vast Islam empire (that stretches from Tunisia to Indonesia) was becoming illiberal, and process that has only increased to this day.
China has 800,000 Uyghurs in concentration camps, and Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai is still in prison. Jack Ma can disappear, and pop up again, somehow rehabilitated--these are just tips of the iceberg. Since Tiananmen Square, China has gotten worse and worse and worse. Too big to understand in some regards, and a dirigiste economy in many regards.
The rise of Islamo-fascism is been inexorable. Whole nations where women looked to be leaving the Middle Ages instead have sharply regressed (Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran et al) and again this is just the top of the iceberg of often vicious governmtn-mosque repression.
Russia...(shudders) Putin is a lunatic stone-cold killer kleptocrat and evidently the population supports him.
Westerners, and our media (and Fukuyama) evidently believed everyone was going to be like us.
The globalists wanted peace and trade---both goods---but turned a blind eye to other realities.
History did not end.
There is a question now whether Western liberal democracies will prevail.
In other words, you never read the book.
I did read the book, albeit 30-odd years ago and my (paper) copy is now across the Pacific Ocean somewhere.
There is a synopsis in Wikipedia:
"The End of History and the Last Man is a 1992 book of political philosophy by American political scientist Francis Fukuyama which argues that with the ascendancy of Western liberal democracy—which occurred after the Cold War (1945–1991) and the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991)—humanity has reached "not just ... the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: That is, the end-point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."[1]"
---30---
This is roughly my recollection of his book also.
Do you have a different point of view? Either on the book, or the rising tide of illiberalism globally?
If I recall correctly, you are concerned about rising tides of illiberalism, but from the right-wing in Western democracies.
As I asked, will Western liberal democracies prevail? Well, I likely won't live long enough to find out, but Fukuyama sure seems to have been premature.
OK, so you didn't understand what you read.
A lot of what was written reminds me of California.
This article (Zhejiang vs. Jiangsu) is your argument in favor of progressive taxation and against lower taxes for the already wealthy that you brought up as something you couldn't really argue against a couple of posts ago (forgive the bad paraphrasing).
California of the 1950's, or what?
Yeah, though even into the 70s 80s (think Apple). At this point VC is too big, but there's still a bunch of smaller startups happening, just less so from bootstraps.
Do you think China is likely to invade or blockade Taiwan in the next few years? It seems to me the main practical reason the USA would have for defending Taiwan is the existence of Taiwan Semiconductor. But it seems like they could resolve that one issue given that there is no big hurry for China to take over Taiwan. I doubt Xi wants to test Trump although maybe Trump could make a "deal" which gives China the greenlight on Taiwan. But I really don't know.
I have no ability to predict if China would invade, although I suspect that they'd first try something else like a blockade. Taiwan Semiconductor is a very important company, but certainly not something worth starting WWIII over.
War and "green lights" are not the only two options. Biden didn't go to war with Russia, and he didn't give Russia a green light to invade. There is a third option.
Sumner most of the Chinese made goods I buy have addresses in Jiangsu province.
China may be very diverse, but it's clear the central government runs the whole country (which is more than one can say for the US).
Actually, China is one of the most decentralized countries on Earth. Local governments have a lot of power and are very diverse.
"Heaven is high and the emperor is far away"
China used to be an increasingly inclusive oligarchy until Xi drove their system back to full autocracy (Soros opinión was as usual correct).
https://www.thinkchina.sg/economy/why-george-soros-obsessed-defeating-xi-jinpings-china
The only two political systems are “rule by Senate” (oligarchy) and rule by King (autocracy). A normal thing for América was being friendly to other Senatorial regimes and hostile to autocracies. So in my view the American change in attitude was reasonable after China involution.
I agree that China has become more autocratic and that this is an unfortunate change. But I believe we wildly overreacted.
The problem with autocracy is that everything depende on one brain, and that implies radical uncertainty.
"The problem with autocracy is that everything depends on one brain"
That's also the problem with personality cults within a democracy.
Small polities allow for direct democracy (e.g. Glarus, Appenzell Innerrhoden, "Open Town Meetings" in some US states). Under these regimes elected people would be mostly functionaries keeping everything running while the demos isn't in session.
I like small polities.
They can really highlight legislative trade-offs in a way no other size of government can.