China Translated Master Plan (2025 Edition)
Table of Core Contents
Welcome to the 2nd edition of China Translated’s Master Plan and Table of Core Contents. As I mentioned in the first edition, I have an agenda in mind for this newsletter/blog. So far, I have filled in some of that agenda, with more ideas still on my mind. However, I think it will be helpful for you to have a place where you can locate key content from the past, as well as to get a sense of what the remaining content would look like.
Each year, around the anniversary, I would update the Master Plan. (I will also do a reader Q&A with you. The latest Q&A was just published a few days ago.)
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.
The Master Plan
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 couldn’t imagine a 3,000-year-long memory. No decisions are made without reference to our long history. Lightly touched upon here. One related essay in 2025 was about the role of this so-called “Century of Humiliation”.
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, which affects everything from our business dealings to the choice of government (TBP).
In recent years, technology has helped society achieve a higher level of trust.
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”.
The Communist Party of China
"I am against the CCP, not against the Chinese people" - How meaningful is this idea?
Hanlon’s China Razor: “Never attribute to malice (of the 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 CPC is one gigantic corporation.
Fear of 乱Chaos
Fear of chaos is the single 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
This may be 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.
What really brought down Jack Ma’s “downfall”?
Censorship
Why China would censor prominent influencers seemingly unrelated to politics.
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 simple social and psychological reasons. But neither 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 its rightful destiny?
Taiwan
TBP
Sino-Japan relations
This essay contextualizes China’s “Japan hate”. I might write more in the future.
Border disputes
Briefly touched upon here. A more fleshed-out version is TBP.
#3 Other recurring themes
The mirroring effect
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.
When I discussed that many Western intellectuals seem to assume China would be an externally aggressive power because China has an authoritarian system, I wrote:
In the case of China, our system is authoritarian (or patriarchal), but decidedly not expansionist. Sometimes, I think the Western intellgentsia has often projected their own worst fear - the fear total loss of liberty under an authoritarian system - onto China to extrapolate that China will extend its not-so-inspiring governance model to other people. In fact, we worry too much about internal disorders to care about others, and we are not interested in converting others into our way of life at all. (There was projection of another kind of fear, a fear of other people repeating the same crimes Western predecessors did. They assumed that since the West rose through colonialism and plunder, then China probably will repeat the same path.)
When discussing why China would refrain from meddling in the Israel-Iran War, I wrote:
China is neither plotting to take over the world, nor does it care about claiming some kind of leadership role. For those of you who believe otherwise, I find that you are often projecting yourself onto understanding China. You are only looking at yourself in the mirror here.
When talking about “Century of Humiliation”, I find most of its advocates are looking into the mirror again. Behind the repeated chanting of this term, I can sense a genuine fear that China may use history as an excuse to demand reparations.
To further explore this “mirroring effect”, I now have a whole column dedicated to it.
Three fundamental pillars of modern China
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)
Cycles
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)
The people factor
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)
Also, people are the final frontier of US-China competition.
Xi
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.
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. (link)
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”
#4 Youth, Culture, Life
The end of Chinese modesty: What do China’s Gen-Z Olympian athletes mean for our future
Wukong & the cool part of China
How a “boring” TV drama becomes so successful and what it shows about today’s China
Seismic changes in China’s consumer psychology (shown by an epic CEO vs KOL battle)
My experience of working with a Substack run by a Chinese state media employee
#5 Non-China writings
The end of West’s ideological monotony: A journey of double political awakenings of a young Chinese
3 principles for a small country to survive great-power competition (Part 1 & 2)
Do weak powers have no diplomacy? Or is diplomacy their only play?
