China’s state sets goals, takes risks, and builds scale, while firms compete and innovate—an integrated system the market-driven U.S. struggles to match.
If the United States attempted to implement the Genesis Mission by transplanting core mechanisms from China’s industrial policy, the effort would look markedly different in practice and expose deep structural tensions. Operationally, it would require strong top-down coordination: compulsory integration of federal laboratories, universities, and private firms into a unified national platform; mandated data sharing … 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
General Electric’s trajectory can be best understood in comparative perspective, alongside other major conglomerates that confronted the same late-twentieth- and early-twenty-first-century economic environment marked by financialization, technological disruption, regulatory change, and intensified global competition. While some conglomerates collapsed under excessive leverage, opaque financial arms, or strategic overreach, others fragmented deliberately, dismantling diversified structures that had … Read more
In Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric, GE’s decline, set against Huawei’s rise, highlights a fundamental divergence in how large organizations confront pride, complexity, and long-term strategy. As Gryta and Mann show, GE became captive to its own legacy and to Wall Street expectations, relying on financial engineering and optimistic narratives … Read more
The United States cannot replicate China’s Gaokao-centered talent model in its institutional form, but it can reproduce several of its functional effects within a liberal-democratic, market-based system. The binding constraint is not technical capacity but political structure: what China achieves through centralized authority and direct administrative control, the U.S. must pursue through federated incentives, funding … Read more
Zheng Yongnian characterizes the Communist Party of China (CPC) as an “organizational emperor,” a concept that can be vividly illustrated through the metaphor of a spider web. In this image, the CPC occupies the web’s center, while the Gaokao functions as its tensile threads—capturing, channeling, and disciplining the efforts of millions of students. Through this … Read more
Amid widespread attention to Huawei’s “backup plans” and “striver culture,” its most enduring competitive advantage lies elsewhere: a deeply institutionalized operating system for management. This system synthesizes Western management science, military organizational discipline, and Chinese practical rationality, rejecting both dependence on charismatic leaders and blind faith in market forces. Instead, Huawei relies on legalized end-to-end … Read more
Within Huawei’s organizational philosophy, advanced equipment and high-quality resources positioned in the rear are designed to provide rapid, effective support once front-line targets and opportunities are identified, rather than allowing those who control resources to dominate decision-making or hoard forces for their own interests. This approach is encapsulated in Ren Zhengfei’s principle of “letting those … Read more
In their August 19, 2025 Foreign Affairs article, “The Real China Model: Beijing’s Enduring Formula for Wealth and Power,” Dan Wang and Arthur Kroeber challenge a set of simplified and reassuring beliefs that long shaped Western interpretations of China’s rise. What they call “The Real China Model” is not a new doctrine but a corrective: … Read more
In her December 2025 New Year address, Huawei Rotating Chairwoman Meng Wanzhou (Sabrina Meng) framed the company’s recent trajectory as a deliberate strategic reorientation. Reviewing Huawei’s resilient performance in 2025 across 5G-Advanced, HarmonyOS, intelligent driving, AI computing, and digital energy, she outlined seven priority arenas for 2026 that mark a shift from broad-based technological expansion … Read more