"The refusal of one decent man
outweighs the acquiescence of the multitude."
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Jun 19 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
OECD does some of the best data work on China & industrial policy.
Here they look at 14 manufacturing industries and 482 top firms—⅔ global output, ½ in OECD and ⅓ in China.
In nearly all industries, Chinese firms invest more, are more productive, but earn less profit.
They've developed a very cool database—the OECD MAnufacturing Groups and Industrial Corporations (MAGIC) database—that they draw on to do this, and have written several other reports comparing industrial policies and subsidies across countries.
Jun 18 • 14 tweets • 6 min read
🚨 New essay: on Torigian’s biography of Xi Zhongxun.
This isn’t a book about Xi Jinping. It’s a study of the Chinese Communist Party, centered around the life of a man who rose, fell, and rose again inside its Leninist machinery.
And it's a book about suffering and meaning 🧵
Xi Zhongxun knew suffering. He buried siblings lost to famine. At 14, he tried to kill his teacher. Soon after, he lost both parents. His first wife was only available because her husband was beheaded by a warlord. cogitations.co/p/the-life-and…
Feb 20 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Today's Leviathan by Proxy is a uniquely American, superficially antistatist form of big government: of the people-placating incumbents, by the outsourcing bureaucrats, for the entrenched interest groups.
Congress, not the bureaucracy itself, is at the root of the problem:
Feb 4 • 23 tweets • 13 min read
The Soviet reform experience is a repository of ostensible lessons. But are we learning the right ones?
My new essay assesses one debate: the role of "entrenched interests" in the failure of Soviet economic reform and the USSR's ultimate demise.
At the center of the analysis are assessments of the General Secretary’s power as well as the nature of “entrenched bureaucratic interests” within a Leninist system. The essay suggests some potential lessons—and pitfalls—relevant to China analysis today. cogitations.co/p/from-reform-…
Jan 6 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
The Soviet partocracy led one of the most miserable and fearful existences of any ruling class in history, and this fact helps explain its rapid demise in 1991.
This is from Peter Rutland's (1994) critical review of Peter boettke's "Why Perestroika Failed"
Dec 7, 2024 • 5 tweets • 4 min read
The Soviet centrally planned economic system proved that it could work, that it could adequately (though not efficiently) mobilize and allocate resources, and that its rate of extensive growth could be quite high. But implementing and diffusing technology was among its most decisive achilles heels. Joseph Berliner's 1976 book exhaustively investigated the USSR's economic structure (price system, firm and gov organization, incentives and decision rules) to explain from the perspective of an enterprise-level manager the factors promoting and inhibiting innovation.
The last chapter is a particularly good summary of his findings and can be read for free archive.org/details/innova…
Oct 30, 2024 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Interesting but very pedantic chapter on the evolution of administrative divisions in China.
Faults scholars for static approaches to the study of administrative hierarchy because that is "in contradiction to the party-state power to define and change space and time in China."
Beginning in the early 1980s the Party-state transformed prefectures from a dispatched office of a province to a level in the administrative hierarchy in its own right.
The number of cities—prefecture and county—multiplied. From under 200 in the 1970s, to over 650 by the 1990s.
Oct 21, 2024 • 20 tweets • 11 min read
Does Xi really represent a massive departure from his predecessor? China's "Third Revolution"?
A brief thread showing the trajectory under Xi in many ways follows quite closely that under Hu Jintao.🧵
One interesting thing I've rarely seen commented on are the "four major tests" (四大考验) first identified under Hu at 17th CC's 4th Plenum in 2009.
LGFVs are core to the story of China's economic development, and now central to many of the countries biggest challenges.
To scratch my own curiosity about them, and in hopes of adding texture to today's headlines, I explore the history of their rise and (potential) fall.
It is a long and comprehensive post, and no offense will be taken should the reader choose to treat it as a source for reference material. Efforts were made, however, to make it an enjoyable read. cogitations.co/p/the-rise-and…
Mar 30, 2024 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Criminally under-utilized resource providing most systematic overview of China's fiscal system I've seen.
A lot of data, long time horizon (1970s-present), and very in the weeds. Currently open access, authored by Peking's Lin Shuanglin. No english cites yet?
General fiscal revenue (not including off-budget or other funds) has ebbed and flowed since 1978. In that year it was 30% of a small base GDP.
Then declined to just 10% prior to the 1994 fiscal reforms.
Steadily rising to nearly 25% in 2015. Now slowly dropping.
Dec 3, 2023 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
In his 2019 post "A Study Guide for Human Society," @Scholars_Stage argues that if your foray into the study of such a grand inquiry starts with big history books like Guns, Germs, and Steel, "you are doing it wrong."
I will beg to differ. A🧵on reading. scholars-stage.org/a-study-guide-…
But first I agree wholeheartedly with the piece's fundamental premise: "History is the most important thing you can read."
"Why? Only a strong background in history can you tell you when writers in other fields are full of crap."
Prioritize history, deprioritize social science:
Nov 23, 2023 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
This Thanksgiving, here's something to be thankful for: The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama. Despite being one of the most debated books of the last half century, few have actually read it! A shame, considering it’s one of the great books of our time.
Here, in Fukuyama’s own words, is the central inquiry of the book: “is liberal democracy prey to serious internal contradictions, contradictions so serious that they will eventually undermine it as a political system?”
End of History is a book of political philosophy, exploring human nature and the socio-political systems man creates.
It tries to ask and answer the question: is there a form of socio-political system which is capable of fundamentally satisfying man as man? If so, the discovery of such a system would herald the end of history in the sense of mankind’s ideological and socio-political evolution.
Nov 7, 2023 • 11 tweets • 6 min read
Understanding China's bureaucracy, its strengths, weaknesses, and peculiarities, is important. The ambitions of China's leadership runs in large part through bureaucratic facilitation, implementation & actualization.
Here's a thread of resources. Pls comment more suggestions!
Theory
- Weber, Economy and Society
- Jowitt, New World Disorder
- Fukuyama, What is Governance?
Weber's modern, rational, and impartial bureaucracy is modified, per Jowitt, into a Leninist "neotraditional" variant.
Sep 18, 2023 • 19 tweets • 6 min read
What's the best book you've read over the last five years? Reflecting on this question, here is my selection: Escape from Rome.
The most comprehensive, detailed, and convincing argument for why the industrial revolution occurred--and only could have occurred--in Western Europe.
The core thesis: The industrial revolution, or Europe’s Great Divergence, was predicated on Rome collapsing and never coming back.
The industrial revolution was thus, in fact, Europe’s 2nd Great Divergence—and it was enabled by its 1st Great Divergence: Escaping from empire.
May 26, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Why was China’s “post-communist” transition relatively successful, esp. compared to Russia? Interesting discussion in this book of “partial reform trap” + refusal of Party to fully privatize, but a big difference, not mentioned, was there was a LOT less to privatize.
When reform began in China it was arguably under industrialized. At the peak, China’s central plan only incorporated 791-1000 products.
Soviet central planners, meanwhile, had 48,000 plan positions for 12 million products. That’s a lot more fodder for oligarchs.
Apr 20, 2023 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
One of the most interesting things I've read on the Party's analysis of the CPSU's collapse.
It's very edgy, directly attacking the most popular narratives that have taken hold in the PRC.
This is an excellent find by CSIS' translation team. interpret.csis.org/translations/a…
The author argues there are two main camps in China that study the fall of the USSR/CPSU.
Soviet history scholars vs Marxist theory scholars.
Over the last decade, she writes, it is the latter whose interpretation has won the initiative.
Jan 16, 2023 • 32 tweets • 8 min read
“Averting a Great Divergence” by Peer Vries, the first stop on the voyage into Japan’s industrialization and the co-evolution of state and economy in the process! Key take aways 🧵
1) Japan's industrialization was both built on, and had to overcome, Tokugawa shogunate legacies
2) without several decisive disjunctions represented by the Meiji's forthrightly developmental state approach, no modernizing industrialization.
Jan 6, 2023 • 53 tweets • 14 min read
In “Against the Grain” James C Scott portrays himself as a maverick on a mission. The book is insightful and often captivating. Depending on your priors, it may be a radical reframe. But in truth, I’m not sure how novel the mission is..🧵
In brief, Scott wants to up-end received wisdom of early state development as one of clearly linear civilizational progress. Early state development, the book argues, was not only more complicated than neatly linear but, if anything, on balance a negative for human flourishing.
Jan 1, 2023 • 17 tweets • 7 min read
The year 2022, in books! My top ten:
#1 - The Old Regime and the Revolution by Alexis de Tocqueville
Maybe the best book I've ever read. Brimming with insight on the human condition, in effortlessly elegant prose. I see why Wang Qishan made it mandatory Politburo reading.
#2 - Seeing Like A State by James C. Scott
State's strive to create easily administrable, legible conditions ("statistics" derives from "state"), but when conjoined to an authoritarian state pursuing a "high modernist" ideology, as Scott vividly argues, tragedies unfurl.
Dec 31, 2022 • 16 tweets • 9 min read
Despite the odds (i.e. highly limited on the ground access) 2022 still produced some fascinating scholarship on China’s economy and governance.
Thread 🧵of articles published in 2022 that made an impression! I've missed a lot, so please comment/send me some of your favorites!
The grid management system in contemporary China by @jcmittelstaedtjournals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…
Dec 29, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Even small-town governance is infused with themes of Party's most recent documentary on "historical nihilism."
Top 16 of 43 "key tasks" for "defusing major risks" in this tiny town all focused on preventing "color revolutions" and ideological infiltration by hostile forces.
One clear difference in focus between the Party's 2006 and 2022 documentaries is not a change in Party leadership views on what caused the fall of the CPSU, but a change in what the Party deems important to emphasize to its cadres lower down the ranks.