To bridge the Pacific Ocean. The social, political, and economic contexts shaping U.S.–China relations; how China and other countries are carefully recalculating their national interests; and the misunderstandings between China and the United States—particularly how deep-rooted cultural, historical, social, economic, and governance differences shape each country’s worldview.
Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, argued that the United States must strategically manage the Eurasian continent—the “grand chessboard”—to preserve its global dominance. In it, Brzezinski outlined a detailed plan for U.S. hegemony, emphasizing the control of key regions, the prevention of rival coalitions, and the careful balancing … Read more
I. Eurasian Core Advantage: China’s Structural Centrality within the World Island The British geographer Halford Mackinder famously described Afro-Eurasia as the “World Island” in 1904—the largest continuous landmass on earth and the locus of most of the world’s population, resources, and economic activity. His geopolitical insight was structural rather than episodic: power gravitates toward those … Read more
Despite the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990, driven by the collapse of the Soviet Union, similar unification has not occurred on the Korean Peninsula or across the Taiwan Strait. While Germany’s reunification was facilitated by internal collapse, external consent, and strategic alignment, the divisions in Korea and Taiwan remain due to a … Read more
In Globalization and National Competition: A Comparative Study of the Seven Emerging Economies (2021), Wen Tiejun conducts a comparative analysis of China and India that centers on their historical trajectories, economic structures, and approaches to crisis management. The book’s core conclusion is that China built a substantially stronger structural foundation for industrialization than India. This … Read more
Across sharply different political systems and historical paths, Germany, Japan, and China share a foundational commitment the United States abandoned:manufacturing is a strategic national system that requires deliberate institutional support, not a residual sector left to market punishment. In each case, capital allocation, labor relations, education and training, and state policy are organized around sustaining … Read more
1. The Thought Experiment: Imagining CPC Anti-Corruption Rules in U.S. Politics The Thought Experiment asks us to imagine transplanting the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) strict anti-corruption and disciplinary regulations into the U.S. political system. These include the Eight-Point Regulation, the “Several Guidelines on Honest and Clean Governance for Leading Cadres,” the “Disciplinary Regulations of … Read more
I. Zhang Weiying’s Worldview: Elegance, Coherence, and Its Narrow Frame Zhang Weiying’s critique of industrial policy is not a superficial stance but the product of a highly coherent intellectual synthesis. Drawing on Austrian economics, he emphasizes the radical uncertainty and dispersed knowledge that make centralized planning inherently flawed. Schumpeter’s notion of entrepreneurs as engines of … Read more
I. Why the “Marginalized Party Secretary” Assumption Misreads CCP Power Dynamics A common misunderstanding of the Chinese Communist Party’s internal governance begins with a literal reading of its formal rules. On paper, the CCP emphasizes collective leadership, and the Party Secretary is officially defined as little more than the convener of meetings, without a clearly … Read more
Drawing on historical experience, patterns of human behavior, and modern governance practice, China’s discipline inspection system represents a conscious institutional design shaped by repeated lessons about the risks of unconstrained oversight. Across imperial dynasties and into the contemporary period, supervisory bodies that operated with excessive independence often developed into rival power centers, distorted normal administration, … Read more
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