Western complacency frames China as merely catching up, causing persistent underestimation of its rise by assuming it must follow or fail by Western norms.
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
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
The “idealized China Model” emerged not as a neutral analytical framework, but as a projection shaped by historical analogy, ideological comfort, and systematic misreading. Western observers interpreted China’s rise through familiar templates drawn from earlier experiences with postwar Germany and Japan, the post-Reagan United States, and the Soviet Union—each supplying expectations about industrial upgrading, political … Read more
The contemporary U.S.–China competition is driven less by China’s concrete actions than by deep-seated American anxieties rooted in ideology, projection, and domestic instability. China is perceived as an unacceptable competitor because it revives long-standing U.S. fears of socialism and state-led development, disrupts the post–Cold War assumption that liberal democracy is the sole path to legitimacy, … Read more
In The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life (2016), Anu Partanen contrasts the Nordic social model with post-Reagan American anti-welfarism, critiquing the rise of market fundamentalism, the stigmatization of welfare, and a constricted understanding of freedom defined primarily as freedom from government. She argues that this ideological shift has weakened collective … Read more
In The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life (2016), Anu Partanen argues that Nordic countries have preserved a model of freedom once practiced in the United States. Comparing the U.S. before and after the Reagan era—roughly the New Deal through the late 1970s versus the 1980s to the present—reveals how American … Read more
In The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life (2016), Anu Partanen challenges the common perception of Nordic countries as “socialist nanny states,” arguing that this label misunderstands both how their systems function and the type of freedom they foster. Her work highlights that the Nordic model offers a distinctive approach to … Read more
China’s rise to near-peer status with the West reflects deliberate strategic choices rather than chance. While the United States and much of Europe gradually abandoned industrial density—treating manufacturing as expendable, subordinating engineers to finance, and assuming globalization and symbolic dominance would secure permanent advantage—China embraced production as a civilizational foundation. It built dense industrial ecosystems, … Read more
Across sectors such as robotics, consumer drones, and electric vehicles, China has followed a highly consistent and deliberate industrial trajectory. The pattern begins with reliance on foreign technology, followed by rapid diffusion through copying and localization, then the achievement of scale-driven cost leadership. This process is reinforced by sustained state support that enables capability accumulation, … Read more
Ren Zhengfei has long regarded the military—both Chinese and Western—as a critical source of organizational and managerial insight, and this influence has deeply shaped Huawei’s development. While Western media often fixates on Ren’s past service in the People’s Liberation Army, Huawei is criticized less for being “military” in nature than for learning exceptionally well from … Read more