Piers Tang Why the West Cannot Decide What China Is The West’s long-standing effort to reshape China reflects a basic misreading of China’s developmental trajectory and reform logic. For decades, Western policymakers, academics, and elites have viewed China not as a civilizational peer pursuing its own path, but as an incomplete or delayed version of the West—one … Read more
Throughout history, human societies have relied on myths, narratives, and symbolic stories to build shared beliefs, inspire ambitions, and explain historical events. These stories often simplify complex realities, overstate the contributions of individuals or nations, and overlook structural, social, or economic factors. What matters in these myths is not always their factual accuracy, but the … Read more
Britain’s industrialization occurred well before the advent of full democracy, a historical pattern with significant implications for today’s developing countries—especially China—and one that closely echoes Lee Kuan Yew’s economic-first approach to nation-building. Drawing on insights from Yi Wen (The Making of an Economic Superpower, 2016) and Ha-Joon Chang (Bad Samaritans, 2007; Kicking Away the Ladder, … Read more
Drawing on Yi Wen’s The Making of an Economic Superpower and Ha-Joon Chang’s Kicking Away the Ladder and Bad Samaritans, this essay argues that large-scale U.S. reshoring of low-end and much mid-end manufacturing is neither historically plausible nor structurally efficient. Both authors, through independent but convergent historical analyses, show that industrialization follows a largely one-way … Read more
China’s rapid economic growth was driven not by the triumph of “free markets” but by the deliberate creation of public goods—markets, infrastructure, institutions, coordination mechanisms, and carefully sequenced reforms—by a capable state. As Yi Wen demonstrates in The Making of an Economic Superpower: Unlocking China’s Secret of Rapid Industrialization (2016), China’s government actively engineered these … Read more
Developing countries often fail to industrialize not because they lack potential, institutions, or capacity, but because both the global economic system and domestic policy choices hinder their ability to follow the historical path that enabled nations like Britain, the U.S., Japan, and China to achieve industrialization. As Ha-Joon Chang argues, rich countries impose neo-liberal rules—premature … Read more
Yi Wen’s The Making of an Economic Superpower and Ha-Joon Chang’s Kicking Away the Ladder and Bad Samaritans converge on a single, historically grounded claim: modern industrialization follows a universal and sequential logic. Britain pioneered this process during the Industrial Revolution, while China, after 1978, rediscovered and dramatically compressed it. Despite profound differences in political … Read more
The lack of a Marshall-style reconstruction program for China after World War II was neither accidental nor simply the result of Kuomintang (KMT) corruption or administrative failure. Rather, it reflected deliberate strategic choices shaped by U.S. priorities, racialized perceptions, fears of Chinese nationalism, and the short-term logic that guided early Cold War policymaking. From Washington’s … Read more
Although most of the world operates primarily under market-based economic systems, China stands out for having leveraged globalization more effectively than any other country. With the world’s largest industrial output, rapid technological progress, and expanding global influence, China has followed a distinctive development path. This path reflects a combination of historical legacies, deliberate policy choices, … Read more
Rare earth elements are neither truly scarce in nature nor an inherent, singular point of existential weakness for the United States. Their strategic importance instead arises from their role as a high-leverage chokepoint within modern industrial supply chains. The most complex, capital-intensive, and environmentally demanding stages—midstream refining and downstream magnet production—are overwhelmingly concentrated in China. … Read more