Master Plan and Table of Core Contents

Although the main format of this newsletter is a “weekly review”, I actually have an agenda in mind. So far, I have filled in some of that agenda, with more hanging in my mind. But I think it will be helpful for you to have a place where you can locate key contents of the past as well as to have a taste of what the remaining contents would look like.

If there is any unwritten topic below that particularly interests you, please comment below to nominate it. I shall prioritize writing the most upvoted topics.

I also encourage you to read the “About” page in order to understand who I am, and what unique value I can bring onto the table.

The Master Plan

In this Master Plan, Parts #1 and #2 will be my key observations to help you comprehend contemporary China.

Part #1 deals with China’s deep cultural genetics, especially those parts that are different from those of the Western world. Those cultural differences are responsible for a majority of misunderstandings between China and the West.

Part #2 concerns specific manifestations of those cultural differences in politics, economics, businesses, geopolitics, and general social affairs.

Part #3 is my subjective beliefs, value judgments, and recurring themes that my newsletter keeps revisiting.

Part #4 is lighter stuff, such as observations of contemporary youth culture.

Part #5 includes my key writings about non-China topics.

#1 Collective psyche, national character

China’s lack of appetite for “insecure expansion”

How culture, shaped by history and geography, has conditioned the Chinese nation into an inward-looking power, unable and unwilling to expand beyond its particular corner for more than 3 millennia. Therefore, it is not a warlike culture, which, along with many other checks, makes it extremely unlikely for China to expand beyond Taiwan.

One big reason for the West to doubt China’s peaceful intentions is that the West confuses China’s domestic politics with international relations and projects its own fear of an authoritarian system in understanding China’s foreign intentions.

The role of history in today’s China

You would not understand China if you can’t imagine a 3,000-year-long memory. No decisions are made without reference to our long history. Lightly touched upon here.

China is not able to imagine God or God-like constructs & China is not interested in preaching

Different religious traditions between China and the West would be powerful in explaining much of the misunderstanding in dealings between Chinese and Western people, businesses, and of course, nations. Lightly touched upon here and here.

China’s “low-trust” society

Chinese people do not trust each other. Explore how that affects our business dealings and choice of government. (TBP)

Imagining the perfect “scholar-official”

Explaining a Confucian imagination that has shaped the core of our expectations of the ruling class, while also shaping the ruling class’s expectations of themselves. (TBP)

#2 Politics, Geopolitics, Power, Money

China’s Schizophrenia problem

Part 1: There are “two Chinas”. One is a small minority of very vocal liberalists, another is a large minority of fairly silent traditionalists. Above them is a patriarch who struggles to balance between the two sides. Understanding this key fact is crucial to understanding contemporary Chinese society and policy-making.

Part 2: Shifting economic structures may ultimately tilt the balance between the “two Chinas”.

Fear of chaos is the most important driving force behind China’s politics

Also referred to here, when discussing the rising wave of violent crimes in 2023-2024

China and Democracy

Very briefly touched upon here.

A more fleshed-out version is TBP.

Power succession

This is my single biggest fear about the so-called “China model”. TBP.

Central-local government relationship

I’d argue this is the most important vector for understanding China’s political economy that the outside world regularly overlooks, because the outside world has no experience of what it is like to run a massive country with a unitary bureaucracy.

Very briefly mentioned here when discussing the 20-3 Plenum. A more fleshed-out version is TBP.

Government-business relationship & industry policy

This is touched upon in the essay How can China really boost business confidence?

A case study of DeepSeek

What gave rise to the rise of China’s EV sector and what the US really should do to compete with China’s rise.

Transitioning towards a consumer-centered, people-centered and capital-market-centered economy

The most fundamental shift for the Chinese economy in the next 2-3 decades in my eyes is this transition from a land-financed-based and real-estate-centered model to a consumer-centered, people-centered, and capital-market-centered economy.

This is the trend I observed as my key takeaway from the 20-3 Plenum. Another upshot from this trend is the growing importance of the capital market.

Despite many blunders, the Chinese authorities are gradually learning from the rules of the capital market, such as during the online gaming regulation fiasco, and the several successful and failed ministerial press conferences in the Autumn of 2024.

Can China Innovate?

I argued that China has two basic prerequisites for innovation: 1) there are enough problems to innovate on and 2) there is the willpower to solve problems.

In this post at Baiguan, I correctly predicted that China would catch up with US in terms of AI technology. But catching-up is what China is good at right now. Doing 0-1 innovation is still quite difficult, for simply social and psychological reasons. But nor does China have to do 0-1 innovation.

Hong Kong

Part 1: Why is the narrative that Hong Kong is over post-NSL far overblown?

Part 2: What should Hong Kong really do to reclaim her rightful destiny?

Taiwan

TBP

Sino-Japan relations

This essay contextualizes China’s “Japan hate”. I might write more in the future.

Border disputes

Very briefly touched upon here. A more fleshed-out version is TBP.

坤舆万国全图, China’s first world map, drawn by an Italian Jesuit Ricci Mateo in the late Ming Dynasty circa 1600 and was presented to the Ming emperor.

#3 Other recurring themes

• Much of the West’s misunderstandings of China occur because the West projects its own image, fears, and aspirations onto China. For instance:

  One of the biggest cognitive errors that outsiders make when looking at China is to project their own fear of a totalitarian system onto China. Because of this error, they tend to believe everything in China is because the Chinese government does this, or the communist party does that, and the discussions only stay at that level.

• Other areas of such “projection errors” include: assuming China likes to proselytize and preach to others about a particular way of life, and assuming that there is a natural tension between the Chinese state and the Chinese people.

• There are 3 fundamental pillars of modern Chinese society: market economy, socialism, and Confucian ethics. These pillars will remain standing for a long, long time. (TBP)

• China exists through cycles. Bad news and good news often happen in tandem. Without bad news, there may be no good news. The worse the bad news, the more likely you will see the good news. (here, here)

• Western commentators often fail to account for the “people factor”. The rise and fall of a nation ultimately depends on the sum of hard work, creativity, and hunger for success of all its people, not any specific political system or policy.

  Even the Party cannot fight but can only ride the tide of history. Market forces, voluntary choices by the people and historical serendipity form the foundation of economic development. A purely state-controlled model can never work. (link)

  One thing they fail to realize is that they deprive the agency of the people in China. Where do Chinese people come in for all of these discussions? No one bothers to ask. It seems some autocrats give out some subsidies here, appropriating some technology there, and a fantastic, globally competitive industry just miraculously comes into being. So, ironically, in all of these discussions made by commentators from supposedly democratic systems, it’s the people that they always fail to mention. (link)

• The so-called “the party is not people” or “the state is not the people” dichotomy only works to a certain extent, but ultimately fails to answer one crucial question: aren’t party members and state officials also coming from the people? (TBP)

• On Xi Jinping

  • Is Xi Jinping a dictator?

    At most, a top Chinese leader is someone with a strong power to set agenda - deciding what to decide and when to decide - based on reading of the collective will of various stakeholders, but not someone who can simply decide everything for everyone - like a dictator.

  • Can a Chinese person criticize Xi Jinping?

    So there are 2 factors to consider here. Whether this is a public vs. private criticism, and whether it’s a criticism of Xi as the representative of China’s political system vs. criticism of Xi’s specific policies.

• Hanlon’s China Razor: "Never attribute to malice (of Communist Party of China) that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Lack of skills is often to blame for many policy failures, such as in expectation management.

• The Communist Party of China is one gigantic corporation.

  This corporation has around 10 million essential employees and a few tens of millions of non-essential employees. It has a board of directors, which is the Politburo and/or its standing committee. The General Secretary is its Chairman and CEO. Who are the shareholders is less clear, but the Party will want to say it’s the Chinese people to whom the CPC Inc. declares dividends.

• The “multi-generations under the same roof” theory:

  This also points to one of the key difficulties in understanding China that I talked about many times: because China’s modernization has happened so fast, too many very different generations are crammed into the space of less than a century. For example, my grandparents’ generation was born in a countryside whose cultural contours were not much different from the Qing Dynasty’s peasantry. my parents’ generation was born into Maoist poverty. My generation was arguably the nexus between the generations older and younger, and we sort-of have a taste of everything. We played video games as children, but witnessed the attitudes and ways of life of all previous generations. Now is when the 00s, who grew up with smartphones and social media, came into adulthood. But the fact is, all of these very different generations co-exist under the same roof.

• Experimentalism and gradualism in China’s politics

  Usually, the government doesn’t initiate anything from scratch. It prefers to adopt a wait-and-see attitude. If something works, it just creates policies to double down and make it faster. (Link)

• The “pendulum effect”: China's swinging pendulum: is it a feature, or a bug?

#4 Youth, Culture, Life

• The end of Chinese modesty: What do China's Gen-Z Olympian athletes mean for our future

  In a way, Pan’s case can also be a good mirror image for America’s perenial concern of whether China wants to supplant the US to be the world’s No. 1 power. I believe if someone with Pan’s way of looking at the world is to answer this question, this will roughly be the answer: “Truth is, we don’t really care. Your type of thinking is so 20th century. We just want to be better versions of ourselves. We are winning our own game. Don’t limit yourself in your imagination of what great power dynamics can be. And if in the process we happen to supplant anyone, we will not feign modesty. If someone just can’t allow us to win and corner us to a fight, then so be it.”

• Wukong & the cool part of China

  The Chinese leadership has been dreaming of cultural soft power for a long, long time. It has been highlighted in many policy initiatives and high-level documents. But China has so far not cracked the code. Why? The reason is simple: soft power, just like what I argued before about entrepreneurship and sustained technological innovation, can’t really rely on top-down dictation. It’s better left for the private sector to accomplish in a way that’s market-oriented. All the authorities can do is set up some basic guidelines and some basic aspirations, and most importantly, leave out enough safe space for the private actors to grow.

• How a "boring" TV drama becomes so successful and what it shows about today's China

  I think now you can see what really is this fundamental shift in our collective psyche. It’s freedom, freedom not in the political sense but at a much deeper level. A cultural, psychological, and personal revolution deeper in our hearts and minds that have only recently taken place. It’s the freedom from outside expectations. It’s the freedom from what other people want for you. It’s the freedom to love and to choose for yourselves. It’s the freedom to live, to think and to exist in the way your heart dictates, in a truly modern way.

• Seismic changes in China's consumer psychology (shown by an epic CEO vs KOL battle)

  Those words from Dong, and his whole success story capture the real significance of this episode: Chinese consumers, or at least a substantial chunk of consumers, are drifting towards meaning-based choices. In a purely consumerist culture, you should just get more and more stuff, at forever cheaper prices. But now, we are shown a live example that “getting more” is not the only answer. Now, meanings matter. Culture matters. Spirituality matters. Looking inward matters. Inner peace matters.

#5 Non-China writings

• The end of West's ideological monotony: A journey of double political awakenings of a young Chinese

  One thing that really surprised me, on the one hand, United States has the freest media in the world, the best finance newspapers, the best finance television stations in the world. But I can tell you this, as someone who travels 30 or 40 countries a year, when I come to the United States, and when I go to my hotel room in Charles Hotel and turn on the television, I feel I have been cut off from the rest of the world. Literally. The insularity of the American discourse is actually frightening. This is also true for the New York Times. This is also true for the Washington Post. This is true for the Wall Street Journal. There is this incestuous, self-referential discourse among these newspaper journalists, and they reinforce each others’ perspectives and end up misunderstanding the world.

• 3 principles for a small country to survive great-power competition (Part 1 & 2)

  But like I said, the national question can’t be left there to be solved on their own. Like Lee Kuan Yew once said, “This is not a game of cards”. Without the willpower to solve the issue, there will be no peace, and the country can not even pass the basic threshold for success.

I write too much, have to take a nap now