China’s Unique Path: Learning Globally, Reforming Locally

China’s economic reforms, launched under Deng Xiaoping in 1978, followed a pragmatic, incremental approach often described as “crossing the river by feeling the stones.” Rather than adhering to a fixed blueprint, China pursued a sequential, learning-oriented process, carefully observing and adapting lessons from other countries while avoiding major mistakes. This approach unfolded in three broad … Read more

CUSPEA and the China–US Tech Rivalry: Lessons for Today

The China–United States Physics Examination and Application (CUSPEA) program, launched by Nobel laureate Tsung-Dao Lee in 1979 and concluded in 1989, offers a revealing lens through which to examine the relationship between human capital, international collaboration, and technological competition. Created to rebuild China’s scientific capacity after the Cultural Revolution, CUSPEA enabled nearly 1,000 of China’s … Read more

How Huawei and Xiaomi Differ in Innovation and Market Role

Xiaomi and Huawei differ fundamentally in their corporate positioning, value creation, and roles within the national and global technology ecosystem. Huawei is a technology-driven company, emphasizing strategic breakthroughs and the industrialization of cutting-edge technologies. In contrast, Xiaomi is a business-driven company, prioritizing supply chain integration, commercialization, and user-centric products. These distinctions extend across industrial cycles, … Read more

How China Mastered Integration While Britain Couldn’t

Historically, Britain struggled with long-term political integration in ways that China did not. While Britain repeatedly failed to fully assimilate Ireland, Scotland, and distant colonies, China successfully incorporated diverse peoples and frontier regions—including Inner Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinjiang—under dynasties such as the Yuan and Qing. This contrast reflects deeper differences in political philosophy and practice: … Read more

Inside Yu Chengdong’s Impact on Huawei’s EV Industry Chain

Yu Chengdong has played a decisive role in shaping Huawei’s intelligent vehicle industry chain, acting not only as a product leader but as a strategic architect of an emerging ecosystem. His influence extends well beyond the launch of individual vehicle models. Through clear strategic judgment, bold disruption of conventional automotive logic, and strong execution, he … Read more

The British Roots of America’s China Narrative Strategy

Britain’s historical shaping of revolutionary narratives offers a revealing lens for understanding contemporary geopolitical and ideological competition. By emphasizing stability, legitimizing elite authority, and downplaying domestic violence, British historiography cast radical social upheavals abroad as inherently dangerous while portraying its own political evolution as orderly and restrained. This narrative framework did not merely interpret history; … Read more

Why Europe Accepted American Culture and China Pushes Back

In How Europe Became American (2021), Hans Vogel advances the provocative thesis that Europe did not merely succumb to U.S. dominance but actively internalized American paradigms of power, political economy, and culture. According to Vogel, this process was largely voluntary: Europe abandoned the ambition to act as an autonomous civilizational pole and instead embraced American … Read more

Why Europe Chose American Economics While China Resisted

In How Europe Became American (2021), Hans Vogel advances the provocative thesis that Europe did not merely succumb to U.S. dominance but voluntarily relinquished its role as a leading civilization by adopting American paradigms of power, economics, and culture. Rather than sustaining autonomous models of political economy or strategic authority, Europe internalized U.S. assumptions—particularly those … Read more

Why China’s Industrial Path Is Closed to India Today

India’s manufacturing ambitions are unlikely to replicate China’s historic rise—not because of insufficient scale, talent, or intent, but because the structural conditions that enabled China’s success no longer exist. China’s emergence as the world’s manufacturing hub was the result of a long foundational phase between 1949 and 1979, during which the state systematically built industrial … Read more

Why U.S. Reshoring Falls Short of China’s Industrial Model

U.S. efforts to reshore manufacturing are unlikely to succeed because they confront structural, historical, and systemic constraints fundamentally different from those that enabled China’s industrial rise. China’s emergence as a global manufacturing powerhouse—the third fully industrialized nation after Britain and the United States—was not a market-led accident, but the result of a long foundational period … Read more