Should I expose Noah Smith’s utter cluelessness about China?

[Jan 7, 2023 note: Yes I should. Here is the link to the actual article]

Hi everyone! For this week I am struggling to find the right content to talk about. It has been one of those “slower” weeks when not many consequential events have happened. As you know, my guiding principle for this newsletter is that I will only review events with lasting impact beyond news cycles, so I won’t write for writing’s sake. Otherwise, you will not know the difference between important ones and unimportant ones and I will just end up creating more noise. 

However, I am debating with myself whether to write about this one thing. It’s this tweet from Noah Smith, of Noahpinion fame:

What Noah commented on was the apparent mass removal of PLA generals. (As always, I think Bill Bishop had a pretty good analysis on this topic.)

When it comes to Noah however, well, let me put it this way: if you need to apply as many as 4 possible theories to explain an event, it can only mean you are clueless about the topic.

The reason I want to talk about this tweet is because this one captures very well what some of the intellectual elites in the US get wrong about China, mainly by mistakenly applying their own biases, frameworks and fantasies about this country.

Also, I understand Noah is a highly influential figure and one of the most profitable Substackers. I like his writings about economics in general. But each time he ventures into China-related topics, I can only laugh. Given his huge influence, I am worried that this may help shape what a vast number of people think about China, in the wrong way.

I have long wanted to expose Noah’s China-related cluelessness. I genuinely would like him to either learn more or just stay away from the issue.

But it could be pointless. Perhaps, serious China watchers like you (who are the core of my subscriber base) already know that Noah doesn’t understand China, so there may be nothing interesting for me to add here. At the end of day, I only want to write about things you care about.

So I will leave the decision to you. This is my question:

I will send a detailed post over this weekend, if and only if I get over 50% Yes, and at least 30 people join this poll.

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Sidenote: Last week I predicted that online game regulator will heavily modify the new regulation draft, and “heads will get rolling”. Heads indeed got rolling this week.

Have a good weekend!