It's a shame that neither the academic publishers (Oxford, Cambridge, Yale) nor the big commercial ones (Penguin Random House, HarperCollins) regularly commission translations of Chinese academics' work.
Today's most intellectually ambitious Chinese academics (I know of) are Lan Xiaohuan at Fudan and Shi Zhan at Foreign Affairs University.
In the past few years, both published highly original books on Chinese/global history and economics that sold millions of copies.
If you'd like to chart a global narrative that both countries find acceptable, or if you simply want to understand how the CN business and intellectual elite think of themselves, these books are your go-to.
I should add that they're more Tooze/Harari/Mazzucato than Wolf Warrior.
Under this "High Potential Individuals" scheme, visa holders don't need to come with a UK job offer, can work without employer sponsorship, can bring family, can switch to other visas leading to permanent residency.
Previously only UK grads or those w job offers have a path.
Rankings:
College ranking metrics are bad. But here they really matter. "Top unis" are defined as those landing in the top 50 in 2 of the 3 rankings below.
Qs about this PNAS paper on demographic projections for China:
The authors say that the future isn't grim bc once you adjust for 📈labor force participation and 📈productivity, the ratio of dependents to workers is largely unchanged from today's level.
Notation: ADR is the conventional dependency ratio (dependents / workers); LFDR and PWLFDR adjust for labor force participation and productivity (proxied by edu).
It seems like what's driving their difference is the assumption that female labor force participation📈as edu📈.
The authors make this assumption bc in Chinese population surveys, edu is positively correlated with labor force participation. (Makes sense.)
But the problem is that as education levels📈in the past three decades (and esp so for women), female labor force participation📉.
One of China's most prominent technocrats Huang Qifan gave a speech last month on the "five changes in China's development strategy between now and 2035."
The end goal is for China's GDP to exceed $30 trillion by 2035, adding 1.4b to the world's high-income population of 1.1b.
Some highlights (from my vantage point):
ECONOMY
1.1 Self-sufficiency in energy, agriculture, and manufacturing
1.2 Greater openness to foreign investment; greater involvement in international orgs
1.3 Import/export's share of GDP down to 25%; disposable income💹 to 50%
ENERGY
2.1 Cleaner development: CO2/GDP reaching EU/US levels by 2050
2.2 Global leadership in clean energy: #1 in manufacturing, consumption, and "transcontinental supergrids"
Huang makes this analogy:
China:clean energy = UK (Watt):steam engine = US (Ford):combustion engine
2) Individuals across different states have the same level of diversity in music taste, but state-level diversity is quite different -- the measure doesn't correlate with the entropy of states' racial composition but does correlate strongly with the share of Hispanic population.
The Chinese magazine Renwu just published a long feature on “algorithms and food delivery drivers”.
Apparently the delivery platforms ask drivers to follow ***walking*** rather than driving directions, so drivers have no choice but to go against the traffic, run red lights, etc.
Drivers say it’s impossible to deliver “on time” if they follow traffic rules.
And as the algorithm gets trained on past delivery times, there’s a race to the bottom — the platform makes ever more unrealistic estimates, and drivers take on greater risk in order to stay in.
Rainy days are the worst because people place more orders.
Once, 30+ drivers in an area fulfilled 1000+ orders in less than three hours.
Drivers and regional hubs that fail to deliver on time or quit on rainy days get punished by the system.