China’s Industrial Ascent

China moves up the value chain, to advanced manufacturing and increasingly frontier technology. Why the U.S. still claims to favor free markets.

US vs China: How Ideology Cost America Its Industrial Edge

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After the Cold War, the United States elevated a cluster of post-1991 doctrines—market fundamentalism, free-trade universalism, end-of-history liberalism, anti-industrial and asset-light biases, financialization as progress, limited-government absolutism, global capital mobility, consumer-welfare reductionism, and the assumption of peace through trade—into something approaching natural law. The meta-error was not any single ideology, but the belief that these … Read more

Why China’s Moon Mission Is Outpacing NASA’s Artemis

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In December 2025, former NASA Administrator Michael Griffin delivered unusually blunt testimony to Congress, warning that the current U.S. Artemis lunar landing architecture is technically unsustainable. His remarks were not a product of factional infighting or rhetorical pessimism, but a rare whistleblower-style intervention from a senior insider with deep engineering credentials. Griffin’s warning underscored a … Read more

Prins Shows Why U.S. Financialization Blocks True Abundance

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Within U.S. politics, a longstanding divide has existed between progressive leaders who emphasize distributional policy—welfare, equality, and redistribution—and those who argue that economic growth itself must remain a central objective. Critics and supporters of Abundance (Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, 2025) converge on a key claim: without robust growth and sustained supply expansion, redistribution alone … Read more

Why China’s Low-Cost Talent Beats U.S. High-Risk Engineers

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In the United States, the growing prevalence of ALICE households—asset-limited, income-constrained, and employed—represents not merely a social welfare challenge but a structural failure in talent mobilization. High living costs, pervasive legal and regulatory risk, and an expensive failure environment constrain individuals’ ability to pursue technical training, tolerate career risk, or sustain long time horizons. These … Read more

How U.S. Over-Finance Breeds Social Woes, China Avoids

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“Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed” (ALICE) describes U.S. households that earn above the Federal Poverty Level yet lack the resources necessary for economic security. ALICE is neither a conspiracy nor a moral failure; it is a rational outcome of interacting systems optimized for self-protection in a society that has lost its stabilizers. U.S. over-financialization and … Read more

Lessons Fueling China’s Engineering Advantage Over U.S.

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Engineering capability—the ability to transform theoretical and technological innovations into practical products—has long been a cornerstone of national competitiveness. The United States, once a global leader in this domain, has experienced a gradual decline due to a complex interplay of factors: overdevelopment of the service and financial sectors leading to industrial hollowing out, globalization and … Read more

Beyond Western Lenses: Understanding China on Its Own Terms

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Western analyses of China often remain trapped in Western-centric political assumptions and fail to appreciate the enduring indigenous logic of Chinese political development. It is tempting to interpret China’s actions and ambitions through American or broader Western paradigms, yet such projections distort reality rather than illuminate it. A more accurate understanding requires approaching China on … Read more

WeChat and Alipay as Utilities—America’s Missing Layer

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China’s internet ecosystem has evolved beyond a purely economic or commercial domain, increasingly expressing a distinct lifestyle and consumption philosophy grounded in deep user integration. Everyday scenarios—such as paying utility bills through Alipay or accessing ride-hailing services within WeChat—are not simply conveniences enabled by superior technology. Rather, they reflect a systemic logic in which digital … Read more

After Victory: How U.S. Post–Cold War Errors Lifted China

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The collapse of the Soviet Union and the First Gulf War in 1991 marked the zenith of American global dominance and gave rise to the belief that liberal capitalism and American-style democracy constituted the “end of history.” Emboldened by this perceived victory, the United States pursued a post–Cold War globalization strategy centered on exporting its … Read more

From Moral Triumph to Strategic Drift in U.S. China Policy

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The United States persistently confuses moral conviction and procedural authority with substantive material strategy, a pattern evident in its unplanned decoupling from global dependencies—a deliberate echo of habits ingrained since the Cold War’s end. To effectively vie with China in the technological arena and avert recurring pitfalls, the U.S. must confront its fundamental errors and … Read more