China moves up the value chain, to advanced manufacturing and increasingly frontier technology. Why the U.S. still claims to favor free markets.
Terence Lee’s The Media, Cultural Control and Government in Singapore (2010) provides a foundational analysis of how a “managed” media system can be used to preserve political stability through calibrated information control. Extending Lee’s framework to China’s more centralized and technologically sophisticated media regime illuminates a shared—but differently scaled—conception of political modernity that stands in … Read more
The idea of a “Cold War 2.0” has effectively collapsed in the wake of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Scholars such as John Ikenberry and Christopher Layne have long argued that NATO’s eastward expansion reflected a broader Western strategy: to consolidate post–Cold War power, contain Russia, and integrate former Soviet satellites into the Western orbit. Whether intended … Read more
Taiwanese authorities strategically emphasize “democracy and freedom” not solely as a reflection of genuine ideological commitment, but as a deliberate tool—a “political survival algorithm”—to navigate structural constraints, reinforce legitimacy, and shape national identity in ways that history, ethnicity, or sovereignty alone cannot achieve. This strategy operates across multiple domains: securing domestic legitimacy, engineering collective identity, … Read more
China’s technological upgrading is good for ordinary Chinese people because income, dignity, and living standards are structurally determined by who controls high-end tools of production. By moving up the technological value chain, China enables surplus value that once leaked abroad to remain within the domestic economy, where it can be redistributed through higher wages, lower … Read more
The sustained popularity of Donald Trump, despite his polarizing rhetoric and controversies, reflects profound social, economic, and community divisions within the United States. These fractures—shaped by uneven economic development, declining social mobility, and weakening local cohesion—have created fertile ground for political polarization and populist appeal. Examining this phenomenon alongside China’s experiences in poverty alleviation, social … Read more
Recent U.S.–China tensions have increasingly been framed not only in strategic terms but also through uncomfortable cultural and racial subtexts. In a widely cited remark, State Department official Kiron Skinner described China as the first U.S. “great power competitor” that is “not Caucasian,” a statement that prompted debate about how perceptions of race, status, and … Read more
While China’s emergence as a global power is often credited to the post-1978 Reform and Opening-up era, the first thirty years of the People’s Republic of China (1949–1979) established the critical structural, social, and strategic foundations that continue to shape its trajectory. This period of intense national mobilization, austerity, and long-term planning enabled China to … Read more
China industrialized while Mexico and India did not because the three entered globalization under fundamentally different political and economic logics. China delayed mass legitimacy and consumption in favor of decades of forced accumulation, state-led capacity building, and elite grooming, allowing it to enter the global economy as a strategic actor capable of shaping outcomes. Mexico … Read more
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
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