Capitalism vs. Capitalism

Capitalism is not a single, uniform system. There are different models of capitalism, with different values, incentives, and long-term outcomes.

The British Roots of America’s China Narrative Strategy

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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

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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

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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

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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 China and Singapore Favor Stability Over Pluralism

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Although China and Singapore operate under markedly different political systems—China as a one-party socialist state led by the Communist Party of China, and Singapore as a multi-party parliamentary republic with a dominant ruling party—their approaches to governance reveal important similarities. Both emphasize political stability, rapid economic growth, and social harmony over expansive political pluralism, distinguishing … Read more

China CPC vs Singapore PAP: Comparing Leadership Succession

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China’s Communist Party (CPC) and Singapore’s People’s Action Party (PAP) stand among the most durable cases of one-party–dominant governance in the contemporary world. Operating in sharply different political, demographic, and geopolitical contexts, both reject Western-style cyclical party alternation as a necessary condition for effective governance. Instead, they prioritize meritocratic elite selection, institutional continuity, and long-term … Read more

Why Singapore Looks Democratic but Isn’t a Liberal Democracy

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Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man famously argued that the global spread of liberal democracy and free-market capitalism marked the endpoint of humanity’s ideological evolution. Yet the success of capitalist systems in countries such as China and Singapore challenges this claim by demonstrating that economic liberalization does not necessarily lead to … Read more

Why China Out-Executes the U.S. on Industrial Policy

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The United States possesses extraordinary technological, financial, and human capital, yet it faces persistent structural barriers to executing coherent and sustained industrial policy. These obstacles are institutional rather than ideological: industrial policy demands long time horizons, dense coordination, and leadership continuity, while the U.S. political system is optimized for short electoral cycles, adversarial competition, and … Read more

Thought Experiment: How CPC and PAP Clash with U.S. Ideals

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This thought experiment examines why the leadership succession and elite governance practices of China’s Communist Party (CPC) and Singapore’s People’s Action Party (PAP), if transplanted wholesale into the United States, would collide with core American political doctrines—even without changing the U.S. Constitution or political culture. The aim is not to rank systems or advocate reform, … Read more

Why China Grew While Others Stagnated: Key Growth Lessons

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China’s post–reform rise is neither accidental nor a mere byproduct of globalization; it reflects sustained comparative learning from the successes and failures of twentieth-century development paths. Across cases as varied as Japan, South Korea, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Latin America, a consistent pattern emerges: long-run growth is shaped less by market openness, … Read more