2023 letter

Their wordsThe trouble with Xi Jinping is that he is 60 percent correct on all the problems he sees, while his government’s brute force solutions reliably worsen things.

Their wordsWhile 50 percent of China’s economy might be dysfunctional, the 5 percent that’s going spectacularly well is pretty dangerous to American interests.

Their wordsThe foundations of China’s success in EVs were built a decade ago, when the state decided to bet on batteries, and then bought up a lot of the mines for these metals.

Their wordsThough companies are relocating production to India and Vietnam, China is going to remain the world’s largest manufacturer for many more years to come.

Their wordsChina built half of the world’s ships (by gross tonnage) in 2022, while the US had 0.2 percent of capacity: in practice, this meant that while China builds hundreds of new ships a year, the US builds three to five.

Their wordsI worry however that one of America’s superpowers is to spin up yarns to reduce the urgency for action.

Their wordsIt is that China will not fade away, meaning that America must reform itself for a protracted contest with a peer competitor.

Their wordsSo it feels to me that the US is treating its deficiencies — an inability to build stuff or create a functional system for admitting high-skilled migrants — as mysteries to be endured rather than problems to be solved.

Their wordsAnd Xi Jinping has formally de-prioritized economic growth as China’s top task.

Their wordsAs I’ve written in each of my previous letters, the party’s strangling of free expression has rendered China into a pitiful underperformer relative to Japan and South Korea in the creation of cultural products.