U.S. firms chased shareholder value, boosting profits and elite innovation while shedding factories—leaving supply chains efficient, fragile, and hollowed out.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) marks the most consequential shift in U.S. industrial policy in batteries and electric vehicles in half a century, while the CHIPS and Science Act performs an analogous role for semiconductors. Though publicly framed as climate, competitiveness, and national security legislation, the operational logic of both statutes closely mirrors core elements … Read more
Huawei’s trajectory is often misread as a contradiction: a company that adopted American management practices yet became the target of American sanctions. In reality, there is no paradox. By learning from IBM, Huawei internalized the logic of large-scale industrial organization—process discipline, global integration, and operational resilience. It then fused those methods with Chinese organizational norms, … Read more
In recent years, a notable cohort of U.S. tech leaders—including Marc Andreessen, Elon Musk, Eric Schmidt, Sam Altman, Jensen Huang, and Reid Hoffman—has voiced admiration for China’s approach to technology development. This “China envy” is not about endorsing authoritarianism, but rather reflects a recognition of China’s growing ability to coordinate, execute, and deploy technology at … Read more
Differences in work ethic across societies are not the product of innate cultural traits or stereotypes such as “laziness,” but rather emerge from historically specific institutions, belief systems, political arrangements, and social incentives. Viewed through this analytical lens, both the American Protestant ethic and the Chinese work ethic can be understood as institutionalized responses to … Read more
In The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life (2016), Anu Partanen contrasts the Nordic social model with post-Reagan American anti-welfarism, critiquing the rise of market fundamentalism, the stigmatization of welfare, and a constricted understanding of freedom defined primarily as freedom from government. She argues that this ideological shift has weakened collective … Read more
In The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life (2016), Anu Partanen argues that Nordic countries have preserved a model of freedom once practiced in the United States. Comparing the U.S. before and after the Reagan era—roughly the New Deal through the late 1970s versus the 1980s to the present—reveals how American … Read more
Industrial policy has been more successful in China than in Western Europe, the United States, and Japan because China uniquely combines strong state capacity, long-term political commitment, and market scale with the ability to coordinate firms, finance, and regulation toward strategic goals. In industries such as photovoltaic panels, EV batteries, display manufacturing, and telecommunications equipment, … Read more
China’s so-called “proof by exhaustion,” sometimes referred to as the “no-choice method” by Wang Tao of Fudan University, is best understood not as indecision or brute-force trial and error, but as a system-level strategy for development under extreme uncertainty. Designed for long time horizons and sustained geopolitical pressure, it reflects a distinct logic for managing … Read more
China’s industrial policy is often misunderstood as a toolkit of subsidies, plans, and coordination mechanisms. In practice, it operates as a political–institutional tolerance system, one that permits repeated, large-scale corporate failure without triggering regime, legal, or reputational collapse. The experiences of firms such as BOE, SMIC, CATL, and Huawei illustrate both the strengths and limits … Read more
BOE’s transformation from a struggling restructured state-owned enterprise into a global leader in semiconductor displays provides a rare, internally consistent lens on how China’s industrial policy operates in practice. Rather than functioning as rigid blueprint planning, this case reveals a dynamic system centered on selection, scaling, and the absorption of risk. Through iterative support, disciplined … Read more