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.
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
Historically, Britain struggled with long-term political integration in ways that China did not. While Britain repeatedly failed to fully assimilate Ireland, Scotland, and distant colonies, China successfully incorporated diverse peoples and frontier regions—including Inner Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinjiang—under dynasties such as the Yuan and Qing. This contrast reflects deeper differences in political philosophy and practice: … Read more
Yu Chengdong has played a decisive role in shaping Huawei’s intelligent vehicle industry chain, acting not only as a product leader but as a strategic architect of an emerging ecosystem. His influence extends well beyond the launch of individual vehicle models. Through clear strategic judgment, bold disruption of conventional automotive logic, and strong execution, he … Read more
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
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
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
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
U.S. efforts to reshore manufacturing are unlikely to succeed because they confront structural, historical, and systemic constraints fundamentally different from those that enabled China’s industrial rise. China’s emergence as a global manufacturing powerhouse—the third fully industrialized nation after Britain and the United States—was not a market-led accident, but the result of a long foundational period … Read more
China’s academic system has achieved impressive scale and efficiency, producing vast numbers of publications, training large cohorts of STEM talent, and building world-class research infrastructure. Yet it continues to struggle to generate paradigm-shifting, original breakthroughs—the kind that redefine scientific frontiers or give rise to entirely new fields. This limitation does not stem from a lack … Read more