Always enjoy @danwwang's annual letter
"It’s too soon to say that regulatory actions have snuffed out entrepreneurial dynamism in China, it’s easier to see that a decade of tightening has strangled cultural production. I expect China will grow rich but remain culturally stunted"
"It’s too soon to say that regulatory actions have snuffed out entrepreneurial dynamism in China, it’s easier to see that a decade of tightening has strangled cultural production. I expect China will grow rich but remain culturally stunted"
"An important factor in China’s reform program includes not only a willingness to reshape the strategic landscape but also a discernment of which foreign trends to resist."
"leadership is targeting a high level of manufacturing output, rejecting the notion of comparative advantage. That model ... has leaked out of the lecture hall and morphed into a political justification for only watching as American communities of engineering practice dissolved."
"The Chinese state has long placed greater value on resilience over efficiency, which has dragged down its performance on metrics that economists care about, like return on assets. In my view, that is as often an indictment of the economic profession."
"US focus on efficiency has revealed the brittleness of its economy, which has neither capability to scale up domestic production nor logistics capacity to handle greater imports. Decades of deindustrialization & aversion against idle capacity has eroded domestic manufacturing."
"Since the US government is incapable of structural reform, companies now employ algorithm geniuses to help people navigate the healthcare system. This sort of seventh-best solution is typical of a vetocracy."
"I don’t see that the US government is trying hard to reform institutions; its response is usually to make things more complex (like its healthcare legislation) or throw money at the problem."
"The rule of thumb for US businesses is that China makes up half of global demand for most products ... and will account for a third to a half of growth. ...US businesses feel that it’s mathematically impossible to lead the future without being active in the Chinese market."
"Enjoyment of opera is today mostly a private madness, and those who cherish Italian works make up a special category of the deranged.
Italian operas concern nobles who are trying to murder and/or seduce each other, attended by accomplices who point out their wickedness"
Italian operas concern nobles who are trying to murder and/or seduce each other, attended by accomplices who point out their wickedness"
"In 2018, I started to say to people that China would close its doors in 40 years ... it looks like I was off by the wrong centenary: China has been mostly shut in 2021, a 100 years after the party’s founding. I think that the government has no real exit plan for this pandemic
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