Yasheng Huang’s ‘The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to Its Decline’ is a great book. There is a lot of amazing contemporary scholarship on China, which is often based on fieldwork.
Such scholarship raises parallel questions to what books are available in China. Does the CCP not care what Western academics write? Is this traditional Chinese respect for scholarship re-surfacing along with the neo-Confucianism? Is this the central CCP using Western scholarship to be more aware of/check on its own internal dynamics? Some combination of these? Something else entirely?
The PRC is very much not the USSR despite the CCP being very much a Leninist Party in organisation and official ideology. The post 1978 economic opening has gone way beyond the Soviet 1921-8 NEP—both in scale and duration. There are some parallels between Stalin’s post-1928 reversals and Xi’s post-2012 shifts, but Xi has not gone even close to as far.
Parallels are tricky. The Soviet General Secretary who presided over the highest rate of turnover in officials and generals compared to Stalin was Gorbachev.
Chinese dramas, particularly the costumed variety, often have elements that could be construed as criticisms of Mao, or even of Xi. There are rumours that Xi is very unhappy about them, but apart from two already produced series (Immortality and Eternal Faith)—both based on popular danmei’s (Chinese boy-love/BL web novels)—ending up in censorship limbo, it is hard to see any pressure against them.
One reason I watch C-dramas— apart from the sheer quality and sense of beauty—is that they are much less likely to preach at you than contemporary Western versions, which nowadays often sacrifice story and respect for sources for a tedious didacticism. This has so many ironies.
Xi seems to wrestling with the problems of fragmented authoritarianism, trying to impose more consistency in policy, and policy delivery, via a technocratic centralism. This has clear information and incentive problems.
Claims during the Cold War about convergence between the West and the Soviet bloc were clearly way overblown. Though historian Sir Niall Ferguson has pointed out that the US’s gerontocratic politics has a bit of a late-Soviet feel to it.
In the contemporary world there is perhaps more convergence. The Biden Administration using “private-public partnerships” to do end-runs around the First Amendment in pressuring social media companies to censor or to, via de-banking (pushing people, NGOs, firms out of the banking system), punish dissent, and as an instrument of industrial policy in tech, was very much an authoritarian turn. There was a reason Trump suddenly had more friends in tech. Just as there is a reason there were major swings to the Republicans in very “blue” cities.
The West has serious problems of over-weening or metastasising bureaucracy. This is very obvious in the UK, where Starmer Govt folk are complaining bitterly they cannot get the civil service to do anything, but you can see it elsewhere. Even in Australia, where we have a bit of a talent for making bureaucracy work.
A close friend (a university professor) is in despair as her (prestigious) university is in a downward spiral mainly due to its overweening, yet increasingly incompetent, central administration. Basic stuff like exams are not being done competently. But there is also noxious affirmative action, undermining what had been a consistently merit-based system, and “decolonising the curriculum” ideological zealotry.
Bureaucracy regularises administration, especially at scale, but also has a whole lot of potential pathologies. Xi is clearly wrestling with that. The evidence suggests, not all that successfully. His foreign policies, for instance, have been so good for US alliance-building, there are jokes about him being a US double agent, while recent Chinese economic performance has been not impressive compared to 1978-2012.
Recent anti-corruption removals have included folk Xi himself appointed. Corruption investigators have apparently taken to wearing bulletproof vests, as there have been recent incidents of officers shooting and killing investigators who came to arrest or question them.
There are lots of signs of stresses in the system, such as high youth unemployment and local protests. But the very prevalence of local protests is back to the PRC being very much not the USSR.
"The PRC is very much not the USSR despite the CCP being very much a Leninist Party in organisation and official ideology. The post 1978 economic opening has gone way beyond the Soviet 1921-8 NEP—both in scale and duration."
Yes, I'd say even this is an understatement. China has hundreds of billionaires. The Soviet Union had . . . zero?
My impression from when I lived in China is that the government is perfectly fine with allowing people to think whatever they want, so long as it doesn’t challenge the power of the CPC. I even sometimes wonder if they want people to express their dissatisfaction (in non-threatening ways) so that the Party can take steps to address the things people are frustrated with.
Could it be that the censors are so blind that they don't see 1984 or Animal Farm as saying anything about the Chinese system? Still, that doesn't explain the display of books by Hayek and Friedman.
1984 is a gangsta's paradise (it was revealed to me in a dream its original title was "If Jiang had won the war"), and the main character is clearly delusional. Notice the inner party members can touch their toes.
I agree that political terms have fuzzy meanings. "Liberal" doesn't have the same meaning in China as in the US. The Chinese meaning is closer to the European meaning.
Hmm, who should I believe? Pettis or the rest of the economics profession? Did those Trump tariffs reduce our trade deficit and bring back manufacturing jobs?
Due to increases in productivity, the absolute number of US manufacturing jobs may not increase, while the relative number of such jobs does, due to Trump tariffs.
The graph below shows factory employment did rise after Trump tariffs, although one can expect lags, and also other factors to play a role.
The runaway international trade deficit will take years of thoughtful policy to correct.
BTW, Singapore has for decades, by government policy, run trade surpluses. It now obtains about 20% of its national budget from returns on investments.
"Key points about Singapore's foreign reserves usage:
Monetary policy management:
The primary function of the reserves is to enable MAS to intervene in the foreign exchange market to defend the Singapore Dollar against major fluctuations, which is crucial for their exchange rate-based monetary policy.
Stability fund:
The reserves act as a safety net during economic downturns, providing a source of funds to manage potential crises.
Investment income generation:
A significant portion of the reserves are invested through GIC (Government of Singapore Investment Corporation), aiming to generate returns that contribute to government spending and improve citizens' quality of life.---MAS
Singapore has foreign reserves of $371 billion, and population of---
4.18 million residents, made up of 3.64 million citizens and 544,900 permanent residents
Non-residents
1.86 million non-residents, which includes foreign workers, dependents, and international students "
----
That is, Singaporeans have an investment pool at about $89,000 per resident (excluding non-residents).
Singapore's per capita income is higher than that of the US, although international comparisons are always iffy. Not bad for a dirigiste economy city-state.
I would bet on Singapore as a place to live in 20 years time, vs. most of the US.
Irvine might best Singapore, even in 20 years...but largely on the perfect weather.
I think you are confused. Singapore has a policy of free trade and budget surpluses, exactly the opposite of what Trump favors, and exactly what I favor. You are in way over your head.
And that graph doesn't show any increase in manufacturing jobs from Trump's tariffs.
A bit turgid...a little dated, but basically correct.
In addition to promoting exports, Singapore is practicing "import substitution" presently, including the construction of multi-story fish-and-vegetable farms, to sub for imports, and gigantic multi-story chicken farms (better called factories).
I live in SE Asia, and deal with Singapore several times of a year, sometimes heavily.
It is a dirigiste economy, but clever enough to exploit market incentives and price signals, not ham-handed regulations.
It is also small. I don't think what works in Singapore would work in everywhere.
At any rate, DeLong wrote the following, which is I think is 1,000% the Market Monetarist view of macro reality:
"My view is that Congress and the President make fiscal policy, and the Federal Reserve makes monetary policy, but the Federal Reserve works inside the fiscal-policy decision loop and thus can—if it wishes—alter monetary policy to neutralize the expected effects of fiscal policy on aggregate demand. Thus it makes sense to say that the President and Congress choose the budget deficit and then the Federal Reserve chooses from the menu of aggregate demand level-interest rate level pairs that choice of budget deficit offers it. Thus the Federal Reserve is rightly given responsibility for choosing among feasible combinations of unemployment and inflation. And it never made sense to blame the ARP for inflation—it was the Federal Reserve’s decision to risk inflation in order to decrease the risks of a return to secular stagnation."
One thing that I would disagree with is on the importance of services versus manufacturing. Manufacturing can be a path to national greatness if it gives a nation the world’s most powerful navy. Xi is correct about that.
You need some manufacturing, but warfare is increasingly shifting away from older weapons and toward high tech weapons. A cheap drone can take out an expensive tank. A guided missile can take out a ship.
You also need to know HOW to boost manufacturing. The first Trump administration tried to boost manufacturing and failed miserably. That's because Trump hired people like Peter Navarro, who have no knowledge of economics. Tariffs don't help manufacturing at all. To boost the trade balance you need to boost domestic saving, and Trump's policies were strongly anti-saving. Early indications are that he'll continue his anti-saving policies in his second term. If so, we'll continue to run big trade deficits.
In addition, Trump's "drill baby drill" polices may be a good idea, but they hurt manufacturing for "Dutch disease" reasons. His aides are in way over their heads; they have no idea what they are doing.
Maybe I am misunderstanding your argument, but if cheap weapons can take out ships, doesn’t that make the ability to manufacture lots of ships even more important? Or is the point that the era of one nation being able to defend and dominate all of the world’s important shipping lanes is over? I took that part of the post as criticism of Xi, not of Trump.
Yes, it was a criticism of Xi, not Trump. But many of my readers are more interested in what the US should be doing, so I thought that comment was appropriate. It was not intended as an argument against anything you said.
I honestly don't know what a future war would be like. In my view, a major war would be a catastrophe, and should be avoided if at all possible. If it happens, would it be nuclear? I don't know. Would it be fought over shipping lanes? I don't know. There are all sorts of possibilities, so it's hard to know what sort of weapons would be needed.
Who knows how accurate such surveys are, but the Chinese are among the most optimistic regarding 2025. The Japanese are the least optimistic. Interesting.
In terms of politics, my outsider's view is things have been in decline since Tiananmen Square in 1989, and probably earlier.
It is interesting to ponder the large lucrative relations Corporate America had with Beijing, and the "China is liberalizing" chanters. This meme want on for decades after it was obvious China was not liberalizing.
Jimmy Lai is still in prison, btw. The Hong Kong-based pro-democracy publisher.
The nutty thing is China's rising authoritarianism and repression appears unnecessary.
A case can be made that some cultures (think Middle East) can only be ruled by a strong man, or you get anarchy. Think Iraq before and after Saddam. I hope those nations can become free and democratic, and I suspect my grandchildren will have the same hope into their dotage.
I don't get that sense with China. I see a Japan-option for China. But it never happens.
Also, China would be better off forgetting about Taiwan, but they may never let that issue go.
Regardless, Washington must devise trade policies that are in the interests of the US and its citizens, not the world.
Russia and China are prime examples that higher living standards and more trade does not axiomatically result in more peace. That was a canard.
Indeed, Beijing and Moscow may use greater wealth to finance war on neighbors (Moscow already has, in Ukraine).
Speaking of Chinese bookstores I did a podcast recently with the excellent Jonathan Clements about Taiwan.
Here is an extract from the podcast:
“But one of the problems with writing history today about China is that the People's Republic keeps changing the rules. Their own pursuit of a diverse nation, a nation with over 50 ethnic minorities in it, is that Han people are not the only Chinese people. There are Mongols, there are Taiwanese, there are Zhuang, and the Manchus are one of these peoples.
Right.
And this creates all kinds of trouble for historians. To the extent that last month, I was in Shanghai and I went down to Fuzhou Street, which used to be the street of bookshops, and there's only a couple of bookshops left there now. There's a massive place called the City of Books.
And I went in there, and they had a huge history section. And I was very interested in the Chinese history section. And they had some very high-quality books in the Chinese history section, all of which I had already read in English, because it looked like the new Chinese history publishing, they've just given up.
And so, one of the most interesting new books about Chinese history was by Timothy Brooke, which two years earlier had already been published in English, but now it's in Chinese, because it's just too dangerous to say anything about. The closer you get to the present day in Chinese history, the more trouble you're likely to get into by saying, for example, the Manchus invaded China. Even though they came from north of the Great Wall, clues in the name, across that wall and attacked China and took it over and announced that they were the new rulers, they were very keen to establish themselves as legitimate inheritors of the Mandate of Heaven”
From Subject to Change: Rebel Island - Jonathan Clements on the history of Taiwan - part 1, 10 Sep 2024
"They tend to be better educated and live in the wealthier cities."
Sumner, are you sure about this? My impression was that the liberals (particularly in Hong Kong) tended to be less well-educated.
"But in the 21st century, national greatness increasingly comes from utilizing highly educated men and women in softer fields like services and tech, living in big cities."
Sumner, this is tangential to your point, but Trump this year did very well among immigrants (far better than Mitt Romney or John McCain). He outright won Flushing, NY, and came within a point of winning Miami City. And even SF recalled Chesa Boudin and LA recalled Gascon.
There's such a thing as Chinese liberals? I think this would be news, welcome news at that, to most.
To that extent why isn't there a greater partnership to elevate the scholarship of such academics? That would seem to be a more productive route than tariffs
Interesting theory, but almost certainly not true in this case. I'd encourage people to read Peter Hessler's book. China is not as different as many people seem to assume.
I had thought that migrants came mostly from Europe when it was in the EU (Polish plumbers, etc.), but come from developing countries since it left the EU.
Yasheng Huang’s ‘The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to Its Decline’ is a great book. There is a lot of amazing contemporary scholarship on China, which is often based on fieldwork.
Such scholarship raises parallel questions to what books are available in China. Does the CCP not care what Western academics write? Is this traditional Chinese respect for scholarship re-surfacing along with the neo-Confucianism? Is this the central CCP using Western scholarship to be more aware of/check on its own internal dynamics? Some combination of these? Something else entirely?
The PRC is very much not the USSR despite the CCP being very much a Leninist Party in organisation and official ideology. The post 1978 economic opening has gone way beyond the Soviet 1921-8 NEP—both in scale and duration. There are some parallels between Stalin’s post-1928 reversals and Xi’s post-2012 shifts, but Xi has not gone even close to as far.
Parallels are tricky. The Soviet General Secretary who presided over the highest rate of turnover in officials and generals compared to Stalin was Gorbachev.
Chinese dramas, particularly the costumed variety, often have elements that could be construed as criticisms of Mao, or even of Xi. There are rumours that Xi is very unhappy about them, but apart from two already produced series (Immortality and Eternal Faith)—both based on popular danmei’s (Chinese boy-love/BL web novels)—ending up in censorship limbo, it is hard to see any pressure against them.
One reason I watch C-dramas— apart from the sheer quality and sense of beauty—is that they are much less likely to preach at you than contemporary Western versions, which nowadays often sacrifice story and respect for sources for a tedious didacticism. This has so many ironies.
Xi seems to wrestling with the problems of fragmented authoritarianism, trying to impose more consistency in policy, and policy delivery, via a technocratic centralism. This has clear information and incentive problems.
Claims during the Cold War about convergence between the West and the Soviet bloc were clearly way overblown. Though historian Sir Niall Ferguson has pointed out that the US’s gerontocratic politics has a bit of a late-Soviet feel to it.
In the contemporary world there is perhaps more convergence. The Biden Administration using “private-public partnerships” to do end-runs around the First Amendment in pressuring social media companies to censor or to, via de-banking (pushing people, NGOs, firms out of the banking system), punish dissent, and as an instrument of industrial policy in tech, was very much an authoritarian turn. There was a reason Trump suddenly had more friends in tech. Just as there is a reason there were major swings to the Republicans in very “blue” cities.
The West has serious problems of over-weening or metastasising bureaucracy. This is very obvious in the UK, where Starmer Govt folk are complaining bitterly they cannot get the civil service to do anything, but you can see it elsewhere. Even in Australia, where we have a bit of a talent for making bureaucracy work.
A close friend (a university professor) is in despair as her (prestigious) university is in a downward spiral mainly due to its overweening, yet increasingly incompetent, central administration. Basic stuff like exams are not being done competently. But there is also noxious affirmative action, undermining what had been a consistently merit-based system, and “decolonising the curriculum” ideological zealotry.
Bureaucracy regularises administration, especially at scale, but also has a whole lot of potential pathologies. Xi is clearly wrestling with that. The evidence suggests, not all that successfully. His foreign policies, for instance, have been so good for US alliance-building, there are jokes about him being a US double agent, while recent Chinese economic performance has been not impressive compared to 1978-2012.
Recent anti-corruption removals have included folk Xi himself appointed. Corruption investigators have apparently taken to wearing bulletproof vests, as there have been recent incidents of officers shooting and killing investigators who came to arrest or question them.
There are lots of signs of stresses in the system, such as high youth unemployment and local protests. But the very prevalence of local protests is back to the PRC being very much not the USSR.
"The PRC is very much not the USSR despite the CCP being very much a Leninist Party in organisation and official ideology. The post 1978 economic opening has gone way beyond the Soviet 1921-8 NEP—both in scale and duration."
Yes, I'd say even this is an understatement. China has hundreds of billionaires. The Soviet Union had . . . zero?
My impression from when I lived in China is that the government is perfectly fine with allowing people to think whatever they want, so long as it doesn’t challenge the power of the CPC. I even sometimes wonder if they want people to express their dissatisfaction (in non-threatening ways) so that the Party can take steps to address the things people are frustrated with.
Could it be that the censors are so blind that they don't see 1984 or Animal Farm as saying anything about the Chinese system? Still, that doesn't explain the display of books by Hayek and Friedman.
No, they aren't that blind.
1984 is a gangsta's paradise (it was revealed to me in a dream its original title was "If Jiang had won the war"), and the main character is clearly delusional. Notice the inner party members can touch their toes.
Terms like liberal, conservative, fascist, & communist are more obfuscating than clarifying.
For example, is FDR a fascist, a socialists,or liberal?
What about Teddy Roosevelt?
What about George H.W. Bush?
I agree that political terms have fuzzy meanings. "Liberal" doesn't have the same meaning in China as in the US. The Chinese meaning is closer to the European meaning.
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2024/03/Symposium-Rethinking-Economics-Angus-Deaton#:~:text=I%20am%20much%20more%20skeptical,I%20no%20longer%20think%20so.
Angus Deaton has some interesting comments herein.
OT, although Pettis lives in China.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/different-now-tariffs-boost-u-205119631.html
Hmm, who should I believe? Pettis or the rest of the economics profession? Did those Trump tariffs reduce our trade deficit and bring back manufacturing jobs?
I like Pettis.
Due to increases in productivity, the absolute number of US manufacturing jobs may not increase, while the relative number of such jobs does, due to Trump tariffs.
The graph below shows factory employment did rise after Trump tariffs, although one can expect lags, and also other factors to play a role.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP
The runaway international trade deficit will take years of thoughtful policy to correct.
BTW, Singapore has for decades, by government policy, run trade surpluses. It now obtains about 20% of its national budget from returns on investments.
"Key points about Singapore's foreign reserves usage:
Monetary policy management:
The primary function of the reserves is to enable MAS to intervene in the foreign exchange market to defend the Singapore Dollar against major fluctuations, which is crucial for their exchange rate-based monetary policy.
Stability fund:
The reserves act as a safety net during economic downturns, providing a source of funds to manage potential crises.
Investment income generation:
A significant portion of the reserves are invested through GIC (Government of Singapore Investment Corporation), aiming to generate returns that contribute to government spending and improve citizens' quality of life.---MAS
Singapore has foreign reserves of $371 billion, and population of---
4.18 million residents, made up of 3.64 million citizens and 544,900 permanent residents
Non-residents
1.86 million non-residents, which includes foreign workers, dependents, and international students "
----
That is, Singaporeans have an investment pool at about $89,000 per resident (excluding non-residents).
Singapore's per capita income is higher than that of the US, although international comparisons are always iffy. Not bad for a dirigiste economy city-state.
I would bet on Singapore as a place to live in 20 years time, vs. most of the US.
Irvine might best Singapore, even in 20 years...but largely on the perfect weather.
I think you are confused. Singapore has a policy of free trade and budget surpluses, exactly the opposite of what Trump favors, and exactly what I favor. You are in way over your head.
And that graph doesn't show any increase in manufacturing jobs from Trump's tariffs.
Singapore does not have a free trade policy, and it does target trade surpluses. It also targets national budget surpluses.
I thought were discussing Pettis, not Trump.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/development/sites/bartlett/files/migrated-files/wp116_0.pdf
A bit turgid...a little dated, but basically correct.
In addition to promoting exports, Singapore is practicing "import substitution" presently, including the construction of multi-story fish-and-vegetable farms, to sub for imports, and gigantic multi-story chicken farms (better called factories).
I live in SE Asia, and deal with Singapore several times of a year, sometimes heavily.
It is a dirigiste economy, but clever enough to exploit market incentives and price signals, not ham-handed regulations.
It is also small. I don't think what works in Singapore would work in everywhere.
You consistently ignore my responses and have no knowledge of international macroeconomics. So why should I even read your comments?
Looks like Brad DeLong is on Team Market Monetarism!
https://braddelong.substack.com/p/weekly-briefly-noted-for-2025-01
I don't see that. Isn't he advocating higher than normal NGDP growth?
Marcus Nunes himself seemed to advocated higher than normal NGDP growth in the post DeLong cited:
https://marcusnunes.substack.com/p/inflation-and-the-macroeconomy
At any rate, DeLong wrote the following, which is I think is 1,000% the Market Monetarist view of macro reality:
"My view is that Congress and the President make fiscal policy, and the Federal Reserve makes monetary policy, but the Federal Reserve works inside the fiscal-policy decision loop and thus can—if it wishes—alter monetary policy to neutralize the expected effects of fiscal policy on aggregate demand. Thus it makes sense to say that the President and Congress choose the budget deficit and then the Federal Reserve chooses from the menu of aggregate demand level-interest rate level pairs that choice of budget deficit offers it. Thus the Federal Reserve is rightly given responsibility for choosing among feasible combinations of unemployment and inflation. And it never made sense to blame the ARP for inflation—it was the Federal Reserve’s decision to risk inflation in order to decrease the risks of a return to secular stagnation."
Sorry, I missed that part. You are correct that the passage you quoted is very good.
Which global economic freedom index is better: Cato or Heritage? A different index? Why?
I don't know.
One thing that I would disagree with is on the importance of services versus manufacturing. Manufacturing can be a path to national greatness if it gives a nation the world’s most powerful navy. Xi is correct about that.
You need some manufacturing, but warfare is increasingly shifting away from older weapons and toward high tech weapons. A cheap drone can take out an expensive tank. A guided missile can take out a ship.
You also need to know HOW to boost manufacturing. The first Trump administration tried to boost manufacturing and failed miserably. That's because Trump hired people like Peter Navarro, who have no knowledge of economics. Tariffs don't help manufacturing at all. To boost the trade balance you need to boost domestic saving, and Trump's policies were strongly anti-saving. Early indications are that he'll continue his anti-saving policies in his second term. If so, we'll continue to run big trade deficits.
In addition, Trump's "drill baby drill" polices may be a good idea, but they hurt manufacturing for "Dutch disease" reasons. His aides are in way over their heads; they have no idea what they are doing.
Maybe I am misunderstanding your argument, but if cheap weapons can take out ships, doesn’t that make the ability to manufacture lots of ships even more important? Or is the point that the era of one nation being able to defend and dominate all of the world’s important shipping lanes is over? I took that part of the post as criticism of Xi, not of Trump.
Yes, it was a criticism of Xi, not Trump. But many of my readers are more interested in what the US should be doing, so I thought that comment was appropriate. It was not intended as an argument against anything you said.
I honestly don't know what a future war would be like. In my view, a major war would be a catastrophe, and should be avoided if at all possible. If it happens, would it be nuclear? I don't know. Would it be fought over shipping lanes? I don't know. There are all sorts of possibilities, so it's hard to know what sort of weapons would be needed.
LOL: https://www.economist.com/special-report/2024-10-19
visualcapitalist.com/infographic-the-countries-most-optimistic-about-2025
Who knows how accurate such surveys are, but the Chinese are among the most optimistic regarding 2025. The Japanese are the least optimistic. Interesting.
I hope for the best for all China's people.
In terms of politics, my outsider's view is things have been in decline since Tiananmen Square in 1989, and probably earlier.
It is interesting to ponder the large lucrative relations Corporate America had with Beijing, and the "China is liberalizing" chanters. This meme want on for decades after it was obvious China was not liberalizing.
Jimmy Lai is still in prison, btw. The Hong Kong-based pro-democracy publisher.
The nutty thing is China's rising authoritarianism and repression appears unnecessary.
A case can be made that some cultures (think Middle East) can only be ruled by a strong man, or you get anarchy. Think Iraq before and after Saddam. I hope those nations can become free and democratic, and I suspect my grandchildren will have the same hope into their dotage.
I don't get that sense with China. I see a Japan-option for China. But it never happens.
Also, China would be better off forgetting about Taiwan, but they may never let that issue go.
Regardless, Washington must devise trade policies that are in the interests of the US and its citizens, not the world.
Russia and China are prime examples that higher living standards and more trade does not axiomatically result in more peace. That was a canard.
Indeed, Beijing and Moscow may use greater wealth to finance war on neighbors (Moscow already has, in Ukraine).
Speaking of Chinese bookstores I did a podcast recently with the excellent Jonathan Clements about Taiwan.
Here is an extract from the podcast:
“But one of the problems with writing history today about China is that the People's Republic keeps changing the rules. Their own pursuit of a diverse nation, a nation with over 50 ethnic minorities in it, is that Han people are not the only Chinese people. There are Mongols, there are Taiwanese, there are Zhuang, and the Manchus are one of these peoples.
Right.
And this creates all kinds of trouble for historians. To the extent that last month, I was in Shanghai and I went down to Fuzhou Street, which used to be the street of bookshops, and there's only a couple of bookshops left there now. There's a massive place called the City of Books.
And I went in there, and they had a huge history section. And I was very interested in the Chinese history section. And they had some very high-quality books in the Chinese history section, all of which I had already read in English, because it looked like the new Chinese history publishing, they've just given up.
And so, one of the most interesting new books about Chinese history was by Timothy Brooke, which two years earlier had already been published in English, but now it's in Chinese, because it's just too dangerous to say anything about. The closer you get to the present day in Chinese history, the more trouble you're likely to get into by saying, for example, the Manchus invaded China. Even though they came from north of the Great Wall, clues in the name, across that wall and attacked China and took it over and announced that they were the new rulers, they were very keen to establish themselves as legitimate inheritors of the Mandate of Heaven”
From Subject to Change: Rebel Island - Jonathan Clements on the history of Taiwan - part 1, 10 Sep 2024
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/subject-to-change/id1436447503?i=1000669031581
This material may be protected by copyright.
I've also noticed bookstores closing down, although everything in China changes so fast I'm not sure what to make of that fact.
"They tend to be better educated and live in the wealthier cities."
Sumner, are you sure about this? My impression was that the liberals (particularly in Hong Kong) tended to be less well-educated.
"But in the 21st century, national greatness increasingly comes from utilizing highly educated men and women in softer fields like services and tech, living in big cities."
Sumner, this is tangential to your point, but Trump this year did very well among immigrants (far better than Mitt Romney or John McCain). He outright won Flushing, NY, and came within a point of winning Miami City. And even SF recalled Chesa Boudin and LA recalled Gascon.
I'm pretty sure I am right about Chinese liberals, but perhaps someone with more knowledge of the subject can confirm.
There's such a thing as Chinese liberals? I think this would be news, welcome news at that, to most.
To that extent why isn't there a greater partnership to elevate the scholarship of such academics? That would seem to be a more productive route than tariffs
"There's such a thing as Chinese liberals? I think this would be news, welcome news at that, to most."
Yes, it's sad how little that even educated Westerners know about China. I agree about the folly of our tariff policy.
He's more authoritarian than his immediate predecessors.
Interesting theory, but almost certainly not true in this case. I'd encourage people to read Peter Hessler's book. China is not as different as many people seem to assume.
I had thought that migrants came mostly from Europe when it was in the EU (Polish plumbers, etc.), but come from developing countries since it left the EU.