I agree with @skybrian - this is a lot of words to say not much, and - to me - not much new. Perhaps that's a result of growing up outside of the US and having studied political science and...
I agree with @skybrian - this is a lot of words to say not much, and - to me - not much new. Perhaps that's a result of growing up outside of the US and having studied political science and history, but I've rolled my eyes for years at the American arrogance implicitly in many of the ridiculous policy positions of the 90s and early 2000s. The Washington "Consensus", the "End of History", etc.
IMO, the real important point isn't necessarily paying attention to China (or other pretending that they're inherently inferior - and really, who is even doing that anymore?), but this short bit buried in this long piece:
These achievements come at a moment when not just the United States but many democracies in the West are themselves in crisis. This simultaneity forces an uncomfortable question: Is political legitimacy purely about procedural democracy? Or must it also encompass performance, delivery, competence, and resilience? Can the virtues of technocratic governance—its efficiency, its ability to plan and build and manufacture at scale—be adopted without succumbing to authoritarian temptation?
The answer is no longer self-evident. And that uncertainty is itself part of the reckoning the West faces.
The answer was always self-evident outside of the realm of fools leading many Western democracies. Governing legitimacy has always been about the ability to deliver for your citizens. It's infuriating that it's taking our political leadership so long in the West to recognize this. I hope we can improve things. And, yes, increase the role of a competent state in guiding the economy and fighting back against the growing oligarchy (something China is struggling with just as much as us, by the way!).
To me this essay is frustratingly high-level. We are at some kind of crossroads I guess? There will be a “reckoning.” It’s vaguely ominous. “We” must “stop lying to ourselves” about something or...
To me this essay is frustratingly high-level. We are at some kind of crossroads I guess? There will be a “reckoning.” It’s vaguely ominous. “We” must “stop lying to ourselves” about something or other. Or else… what?
I don’t see it doing any work to correct any specific misconceptions. Who is blind to China? We’ve been reading about China’s rise for decades and it’s an established genre of writing. Yes, it’s really impressive! I like to read news articles about developments in China and expect that I’ll be reading more.
The author name-checks Dan Wang. Yes, he’s great. I’ve shared a few of his letters. I haven’t read it, but I assume his new book is good.
From the article: This terrific and tremendously important essay summarizes a sense that I've had for a long time that Anglophone analyses of history and technological development have been blind...
From the article:
The world feels unsettled, as if history itself were changing tempo. The familiar landmarks of the modern age are blurring, slipping away, and the stories we once told ourselves about progress and power no longer map cleanly onto the terrain before us. What we are living through seems, with each new day, less like a passing rearrangement of power, less like a momentary realignment of nations. We sense something deeper and more enduring: a transformation whose outlines we are only beginning to discern. History no longer feels like something unfolding behind us but something rushing toward us, urgent and impossible to ignore.
The economic historian Adam Tooze, reflecting on his recent, intense engagement with China, put it to me in July with characteristic directness: “China isn’t just an analytical problem,” he said. It is “the master key to understanding modernity.” Tooze called China “the biggest laboratory of organized modernizations there has ever been or ever will be at this level [of] organization.” It is a place where the industrial histories of the West now read like prefaces to something larger.
His observation cuts to the heart of what makes this moment so difficult to process. We have witnessed not merely the rise of another great power, but a fundamental challenge to assumptions long embedded in Western thought—about development, political systems, and civilizational achievement itself. We simply haven’t yet found the intellectual courage to face it.
This reckoning touches all of humanity, but it falls especially hard on the developed world and hardest on the United States, where assumptions about exceptionalism and hierarchy are most exposed and most fiercely denied. The familiar framing of China as “rising” or “catching up” no longer holds. China is now shaping the trajectory of development, setting the pace economically, technologically, and institutionally. For Americans especially, the deeper psychic shock lies in the recognition that modernity is no longer something they authored and others merely inherit. That story has outlived its usefulness.
This terrific and tremendously important essay summarizes a sense that I've had for a long time that Anglophone analyses of history and technological development have been blind to the successes of the Chinese model. Western democracies need to figure out how to deliver both prosperity and respect for planetary boundaries at scale, quickly, but without the authoritarianism. It's clear the U.S. is compounding its failures and obdurate ignorance in the face of this challenge despite the newly minted "abundance" agenda (corporate, rather than governance, authoritarianism in another skin) - anyone else got more hopeful stories?
I agree with @skybrian - this is a lot of words to say not much, and - to me - not much new. Perhaps that's a result of growing up outside of the US and having studied political science and history, but I've rolled my eyes for years at the American arrogance implicitly in many of the ridiculous policy positions of the 90s and early 2000s. The Washington "Consensus", the "End of History", etc.
IMO, the real important point isn't necessarily paying attention to China (or other pretending that they're inherently inferior - and really, who is even doing that anymore?), but this short bit buried in this long piece:
The answer was always self-evident outside of the realm of fools leading many Western democracies. Governing legitimacy has always been about the ability to deliver for your citizens. It's infuriating that it's taking our political leadership so long in the West to recognize this. I hope we can improve things. And, yes, increase the role of a competent state in guiding the economy and fighting back against the growing oligarchy (something China is struggling with just as much as us, by the way!).
Hopefully without losing protections for procedural fairness or transparency in government laws.
To me this essay is frustratingly high-level. We are at some kind of crossroads I guess? There will be a “reckoning.” It’s vaguely ominous. “We” must “stop lying to ourselves” about something or other. Or else… what?
I don’t see it doing any work to correct any specific misconceptions. Who is blind to China? We’ve been reading about China’s rise for decades and it’s an established genre of writing. Yes, it’s really impressive! I like to read news articles about developments in China and expect that I’ll be reading more.
The author name-checks Dan Wang. Yes, he’s great. I’ve shared a few of his letters. I haven’t read it, but I assume his new book is good.
From the article:
This terrific and tremendously important essay summarizes a sense that I've had for a long time that Anglophone analyses of history and technological development have been blind to the successes of the Chinese model. Western democracies need to figure out how to deliver both prosperity and respect for planetary boundaries at scale, quickly, but without the authoritarianism. It's clear the U.S. is compounding its failures and obdurate ignorance in the face of this challenge despite the newly minted "abundance" agenda (corporate, rather than governance, authoritarianism in another skin) - anyone else got more hopeful stories?