The belief that “China can’t succeed without political reform” runs deep—and still hinders a realistic, objective conversation.
https://x.com/mitchpresnick/status/1983218247504732529
Great piece by that’s rightly getting a lot of attention. Even here in Cambridge, I’ve felt a slow, reluctant—but unmistakable—realization of his main points taking hold since I arrived in July 2023.
The belief that “China can’t succeed without political reform” runs deep—and still hinders a realistic, objective conversation. “Middle-income traps, authoritarian brittleness, inevitable convergence with liberal norms”, etc still animate the G7 conversation— but much less so.
That conversation requires a clear-eyed acceptance that the Western model may not apply to societies that are collectivist or that choose not to rely primarily on consumption to drive growth.
In other words, China may continue to succeed as a society many in the West view as imbalanced or reductive to the individual. Its version of modernity may differ fundamentally with previous examples. And that means countries seeking to compete or cooperate with China will have to adjust accordingly.
Some quotes; “Whatever one thinks of China’s political system, these (successes in poverty alleviation, clean tech, life expectancy, et al) are the hallmarks not of a failing state, but of a society whose people are, in many respects, flourishing as never before.”
“Seeing a rival building, educating, and innovating at the scale that China has done casts U.S. dysfunction into sharper relief. Every infrastructure breakdown, every squabble over basic funding, every government shutdown feels more noticeable in contrast to China’s rapid and extensive transformation.”
posted by Satish Sharma at
08:10
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