China’s rise defies the monolithic authoritarian view; its actions reflect politics, economics, history, regional priorities, warning against flawed policy.
China’s industrial policy is often misunderstood as a toolkit of subsidies, plans, and coordination mechanisms. In practice, it operates as a political–institutional tolerance system, one that permits repeated, large-scale corporate failure without triggering regime, legal, or reputational collapse. The experiences of firms such as BOE, SMIC, CATL, and Huawei illustrate both the strengths and limits … Read more
BOE’s transformation from a struggling restructured state-owned enterprise into a global leader in semiconductor displays provides a rare, internally consistent lens on how China’s industrial policy operates in practice. Rather than functioning as rigid blueprint planning, this case reveals a dynamic system centered on selection, scaling, and the absorption of risk. Through iterative support, disciplined … Read more
This thought experiment uses the rise of China’s BOE as an analogy to explore how the United States might deliberately reconstruct a failed industrial bet—Solyndra—into a globally dominant clean-energy firm comparable to China’s Longi, tracing a hypothetical path from early-stage rescue through scale, cost leadership, and global market penetration. It examines how such a strategy … Read more
The implications of Sino–U.S. technological competition and global hegemony cannot be understood through the narrow lens of trade policy or export-control mechanisms alone. Rather, they emerge from a deeper interaction between historical trauma, systematic technology denial, and China’s capacity for industrial-scale adaptation. Together, these forces have reshaped China’s national strategy and are now transforming the … Read more
China’s electric vehicle (EV) industry is not the result of isolated subsidies or short-term stimulus; it is the outcome of a deliberate, system-level industrial strategy refined over two decades. Guided by long-horizon planning, scenario-driven experimentation, and pragmatic iteration, this strategy integrates fiscal and regulatory coordination, market shaping, ecosystem development, and global rule influence. Far from … Read more
The United States cannot replicate China’s Gaokao-centered talent model in its institutional form, but it can reproduce several of its functional effects within a liberal-democratic, market-based system. The binding constraint is not technical capacity but political structure: what China achieves through centralized authority and direct administrative control, the U.S. must pursue through federated incentives, funding … Read more
Zheng Yongnian characterizes the Communist Party of China (CPC) as an “organizational emperor,” a concept that can be vividly illustrated through the metaphor of a spider web. In this image, the CPC occupies the web’s center, while the Gaokao functions as its tensile threads—capturing, channeling, and disciplining the efforts of millions of students. Through this … Read more
Huawei and its founder, Ren Zhengfei, have faced criticism over alleged ties to China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), despite the absence of public evidence that the company is controlled by the military. This scrutiny stems less from proven wrongdoing and more from Ren’s past PLA service, China’s legal system, the strategic importance of telecom infrastructure, … Read more
ALICE—Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed—refers to households that are working yet lack sufficient savings and financial buffers, leaving them highly vulnerable to shocks such as illness, job loss, or family disruption. The concept centers not on income alone, but on exposure to financial risk and the capacity to absorb unexpected setbacks. Understanding ALICE therefore requires … Read more
China’s industrial success stems from treating manufacturing not as a byproduct of market forces, but as a core national security and development objective. The state protected and sequenced openness, conditioned foreign investment, and prioritized asset-heavy ownership, scale, and export discipline over short-term profitability. Capital was deliberately directed into factories, supply chains, and physical technologies—particularly autos, … Read more