The U.S. optimized for efficiency, innovation, and globalization. China optimized for control, scale, and industrial learning.
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
China’s leadership in automated container terminals is not the result of a single technological breakthrough or merely late entry; rather, it reflects a comprehensive, system-level industrial strategy that aligns infrastructure planning, domestic manufacturing, digital systems, institutional design, labor policy, and global logistics networks. While Singapore, Germany, Japan, and the United States pioneered port automation, China … Read more
The “idealized China Model” emerged not as a neutral analytical framework, but as a projection shaped by historical analogy, ideological comfort, and systematic misreading. Western observers interpreted China’s rise through familiar templates drawn from earlier experiences with postwar Germany and Japan, the post-Reagan United States, and the Soviet Union—each supplying expectations about industrial upgrading, political … Read more
Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World (MIT Press, 2013) offers a sophisticated analysis of Lee Kuan Yew’s geopolitical legacy and the think tanks that shaped his strategic vision. By 2026, the distance between his mid-1990s and early-2010s perspectives and contemporary global realities provides a compelling “stress … Read more
The contemporary U.S.–China competition is driven less by China’s concrete actions than by deep-seated American anxieties rooted in ideology, projection, and domestic instability. China is perceived as an unacceptable competitor because it revives long-standing U.S. fears of socialism and state-led development, disrupts the post–Cold War assumption that liberal democracy is the sole path to legitimacy, … Read more
Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway’s The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market (2023) challenges the assumption that U.S. commitment to free-market fundamentalism is natural or inevitable, arguing instead that it is the product of a sustained, century-long ideological campaign aimed at undermining public confidence in … Read more
Building on Garry Wills’ A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government (2013), East Asian societies often accept policies that Americans might consider heavy-handed, such as industrial planning, high-stakes exams like China’s Gaokao, or strict anti-drug measures. This difference reflects contrasting social contracts: in much of East Asia, the government is empowered to … Read more
Drawing on the arguments of The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market (Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, 2023), the contrast between China and the United States in implementing industrial policy reflects deeply divergent historical, political, and cultural foundations. In the United States, decades of ideological … Read more
The United States and China both operate mixed economic systems that combine market mechanisms with government intervention, yet they represent contrasting ends of the mixed-economy spectrum. The U.S. model is predominantly market-led, privileging private enterprise, price signals, and decentralized decision-making, with the state acting largely as a regulator and stabilizer. China, by contrast, follows a … Read more
The electric vehicle (EV) and EV battery industries offer a clear lens through which to compare the mixed-economy models of the United States and China. Although the United States pioneered many foundational EV technologies—ranging from early electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries to the commercialization breakthroughs of firms like Tesla—China has emerged as the dominant force … Read more