Glenn Luk has worked as an investment banker, private equity investor, and startup founder. He has closely analyzed aspects of the Chinese economy, including its GDP and high speed rail system.
Steve and Glenn discuss:
(00:00) - Introduction
(01:21) - Glenn Luk's Background: HK, Taiwan, China
(07:59) - Evolution of Chinese Companies and Economy
(14:58) - From Banking to Private Equity and Venture Capital
(23:08) - Founding a Healthcare Startup and Entrepreneurial Ventures
(26:35) - China's Development and Economic Policies
(41:17) - Comparing US and China's Economies and Cultures
(47:12) - Demographics and Consumer Behavior in China
(49:09) - China's Economy: Beyond GDP
(56:34) - High Speed Rail: huge success, or white elephant?
Russell Clark is a hedge fund investor who has lived and worked in both Japan and China. He writes the widely followed Substack Capital Flows and Asset Markets: https://www.russell-clark.com/
Steve and Russell discuss:
0:00 Introduction
0:52 Russell's background and experiences in Japan
13:25 Hong Kong and finance
31:53 China property bubble
48:54 Dollar status as global reserve currency
56:09 Japan and China economies from a long run perspective
1:05:07 Inflation, US economy, and macro observations
Louis-Vincent Gave of Gavekal discusses China's economic growth, its focus on education, and the global implications of its economic and political policies.
The EV tipping point has arrived in China. Even most techology experts do not appreciate the coming huge impacts on global economics, manufacturing, energy transition, etc.
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
2:21 How TP Huang became interested in electric vehicles
6:30 The perception and reality of Chinese products, future of Chinese auto market
9:24 The impact of Tesla on the Chinese electric vehicle market
14:41 Buying a car in China
27:05 China dominates with electric vehicle batteries
30:44 The challenges facing Tesla in China
40:11 The evolution of smart cars, autonomous vehicles, and self driving
50:48 LIDAR technology and autonomous driving
59:08 BYD, China’s energy independence, and power grid
1:14:04 The downstream impact of China leading in tech and electric vehicles
The study concludes that air launched BGV/MaRVs could attack ships from well over 1000km. Land or ship based launch would allow even greater range.
There is currently no defense against such weapons.
Russia and PRC both have systems of this type.
Defense requires interceptor missile speeds significantly greater than that of MaRV/BGV in terminal phase.
This is under ideal conditions where sensors function perfectly - it is just kinematics.
I really enjoyed this conversation. Taylor is a very unique investor who relocated his fund to Shenzhen in order to have direct access to information on Chinese tech companies.
Taylor Ogan is Chief Executive Officer of Snow Bull Capital, based in Shenzhen, China.
Yasheng Huang is the Epoch Foundation Professor of Global Economics and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. His new book is The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to Its Decline.
Steve and Yasheng discuss:
0:00 Introduction
1:11 From Beijing to Harvard in the 1980s
15:29 Civil service exams and Huang's new book, "The Rise and Fall of the EAST"
37:14 Two goals: Developing human capital and indoctrination
48:33 Impact of the exam system
57:04 China's innovation peak and decline
1:12:23 Collaboration and relationship with the West
1:21:31 How will the U.S.-China relationship evolve?
David Paul Goldman is an American economic strategist and author, best known for his series of online essays in the Asia Times under the pseudonym Spengler with the first column published January 1, 2000.
Steve and David discuss:
0:00 Introduction
2:22 David’s background in music, finance, and Asia
16:55 Looking back at the financial crisis
23:04 Rise of the Chinese economy
29:44 How Huawei’s strength is tied to China’s economic power
36:49 Competition in the global electric vehicles market
38:06 Why David thinks European countries like Germany will become closer with China
45:29 U.S. manufacturing is falling behind
52:08 Potential for war and ongoing U.S.-China competition
Steve discusses the AI competition between Microsoft and Google, the competition between the U.S. and China in STEM, China’s new IVF policy, and a Science Magazine survey on polygenic screening of embryos.
00:00 Introduction
02:37 Bing vs Bard: LLMs and hallucination
20:52 China demographics & STEM
34:29 China IVF now covered by national health insurance
40:28 Survey on embryo screening in Science: ~50% of those under 35 would use it to enhance congnitivie ability
Professor Goldstein recently retired after 20 years of service on the faculty of the U.S. Naval War College (NWC). During his career at NWC, he founded the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) and has been awarded the Superior Civilian Service Medal for this achievement. He has written or edited seven books on Chinese strategy and is at work on a book-length project that examines the nature of China-Russia relations in the 21st century. He has a longstanding interest in great power politics, military competition, and security in the pacific region.
Goldstein is Director of Asia Engagement at the Washington think-tank Defense Priorities, which advocates for realism and restraint in U.S.defense policy, and also a visiting professor at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.
He earned a PhD at Princeton, an MA from Johns Hopkins SAIS, and an AB from Harvard. He is fluent in both Chinese and Russian.
Steve and Lyle discuss:
00:00 Early life and background
18:03 Goldstein’s dissertation on China’s nuclear strategy
37:35 Pushback on “Meeting China Halfway”
41:24 Could the U.S. have prevented war in Ukraine?
46:05 How territorial conflicts are influencing China’s relationship with Russia
1:00:16 Analyzing war games with U.S., China, and Taiwan
I've been asked to write something about PRC military buildup and a potential Taiwan (TW) conflict.
1. My perspective and bona fides: My father was a KMT officer, my mother's father was a KMT general and that side of the family is related to Chiang Kai Shek by marriage. I have relatives both in PRC and TW. My wife is a graduate of National Taiwan University. I should be biased in favor of TW and against CPC but I am a realist and rationalist so I call things as I see them.
2. PRC military technology has reached parity with the US and, overall, surpassed Russia. PLARF (dedicated rocket forces) may be decisive in a conflict in the pacific. They may have achieved A2AD and can make it very costly for the US navy to operate anywhere near TW.
3. Specifically, long range missile attack on surface ships, using initial targeting via satellites and drones, and final targeting from sensors on the missile itself, is probably a mature technology now and difficult to defeat with countermeasures / missile defense.
4. US estimates of PRC nuclear weapons stockpile have barely changed in 30y and are likely highly unreliable. Based on production capabilities alone they may already have ~1000 warheads (if not now, in a few years), and the ability to target the entire US. PRC is building up its arsenal to ensure that the US understands that they have a reliable MAD capability.
5. PRC can easily blockade TW if desired, and (at cost of significant escalation) can probably also blockade Japan and S. Korea as well. All of these countries import ~90% of energy and ~50% of food calories, so a protracted blockade would have serious impact.
6. I don’t believe PRC has near term plans to invade TW, but they have to maintain the capability to deter any change in the status quo. Both sides prefer the status quo but accidents can happen.
7. Thanks to stupid US strategy re: Ukraine, PRC can rely on Russian energy in the future and will become much more resistant to naval blockade (e.g., of oil supplies transiting the Malacca Strait). In other words, dumb US neocons solved PRC’s energy security problem for them.
No one talks about this because US strategy has been brain dead for a long time. No one even talks, in the immediate aftermath, about the trillions of dollars and millions of lives wasted over 20y in the Iraq/Afghanistan tragedies. Cui bono?
8. PRC spends a smaller fraction of GDP on defense than the US, but because they have mastered the entire military technology stack cost estimates should be PPP adjusted. After PPP adjustment the PRC economy is substantially larger than the US economy. This, plus the fact that their manufacturing capacity (e.g., ship building) is far beyond that of the US, means that their overall capability to produce war materiel (i.e., to engage in a rapid buildup on, e.g., a 5y timescale) has easily surpassed ours. Anyone following their recent naval or air power or missile or satellite build up can see that this is the case.
I'll be discussing some of these topics with Lyle Goldstein (US Naval War College, Watson China Initiative at Brown University; BA Harvard, PhD Princeton) in a future podcast.
See also this documentary produced by the US Army University Press. Queued to start at discussion of missile technology and nuclear weapons.
Tsinghua University (dad's alma mater) seems to be the only academic institution in the world keeping up with big corp labs like OpenAI, Google Brain / DeepMind, Baidu, etc. in large AI models.
Wordcels (e.g., in policy or geostrategy) have mystical ideas re: at-scale AI research, mistakenly linking progress to lone geniuses / democracy / open society..
They don't realize it's an engineering problem that requires *very* capable teams, but well within PRC capability 🤔
RUSI report: semiconductor content of Russian weapons. Snapshot below from conclusions.
Miltech almost never uses leading edge (e.g., 7nm) chips. Much older e.g. 200nm process sufficient. RUS can source from PRC or use sanction evasion networks...https://t.co/ol5cpTPA0lpic.twitter.com/bdL4SqEn4f
I quote "expert" reports like this because wordcels / midwits can't reason from first principles.
Right-tail obvious inferences which go against conventional wisdom ("sanctions will crush RUS economy and war machine!" "UKR will win!") need to be "sourced" from "real experts" 🤔
On midwits and wordcels: g factor depends on M,V,S. If only V is high while M,S are mediocre, implies total g is ony in midwit range even if V (ability to make vacuous but impressive sounding BS arguments) is exceptional.
Putting this tweet thread here for future reference. If you read this blog you may want to follow me on Twitter as I sometimes say things there that might be of interest.
In my conversation with @RichardHanania on his podcast we discussed meritocracy and political leadership in PRC. This short video gives a good overview of how it works. Keep in mind CCP ~ 100M people or ~10% of adult population! 1/4https://t.co/dgLrW25fM8
PRC civil service exam appears highly g-loaded and is taken by 1-2M people each year. Further promotion depends on performance over ~20y timescale, purportedly monitored by a dedicated and independent I/O sub-org. 2/4https://t.co/W5YC2juWRI
For example, Yuan Jiajun, frmr gov. of Zhejiang province and Central Committee member, is a PhD in Aero Eng and ran the manned spaceflight program. Resumes of top PRC leaders are qualitatively different from those of western politicians... 3/4https://t.co/CWqjnLdfyT
Kishore Mahbubani is Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.
Kishore enjoyed two distinct careers: in diplomacy (1971 to 2004) and in academia (2004 to 2019). He is a prolific writer and speaker on geopolitics and East-West relations.
He was twice Singapore’s Ambassador to the UN and served as President of the UN Security Council in January 2001 and May 2002.
Mr. Mahbubani joined academia in 2004, when he was appointed the Founding Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKY School), NUS. He was Dean from 2004 to 2017.
In this episode Steve and Kishore discuss:
0:00 Introduction
2:52 Upbringing in Singapore and Asia's rise
11:35 How western thinking influences China-U.S. relations
23:05 Is China a threat to U.S. hegemony in Asia?
25:52 The United States' long-term strategy for China
32:13 How trade with ASEAN influences U.S.-China relations
40:58 Can ASEAN countries play a diplomatic role between U.S. and China
43:05 Xi Jinping's leadership and the zero-sum view of China
This interview with John Mearsheimer was conducted in 2020 on the original Manifold podcast with Corey Washington and Steve Hsu. Parts of the conversation are prescient with respect to US-China relations and the situation in Ukraine.
John Joseph Mearsheimer is an American political scientist and international relations scholar, who belongs to the realist school of thought. He is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He has been described as the most influential realist of his generation.
Mearsheimer is best known for developing the theory of offensive realism, which describes the interaction between great powers as being primarily driven by the rational desire to achieve regional hegemony in an anarchic international system. In accordance with his theory, Mearsheimer believes that China's growing power will likely bring it into conflict with the United States.
Steve, Corey, and John discuss:
0:00 A quick message for listeners
1:21 Introduction
2:39 Realist foreign policy worldview
15:46 Proxy conflicts and the U.S.
21:31 U.S. history: a moral hegemon, or just a hegemon? Zinn and Chomsky
Carl Zha is the host of the Silk and Steel podcast, which focuses on China, history, culture, and politics. He is a former engineer now based in Bali, Indonesia.
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