Keyu Jin
Economist specialising in China's economy, international macroeconomics and global trade, and author of The New China Playbook.
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Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 16 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
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China is politically centralised and economically decentralised, and the belief that a handful of people run its economy is the West's biggest misconception about it.
The biggest misunderstanding is somehow that a group of people or even just one person runs the entire Chinese economy. It is far from the reality. It is a very complex, large economy, and even if there is an extreme form of political centralization, the economy is totally decentralized.
Keyu Jin: China's Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism | Lex Fridman Podcast #477 Said 13 Aug 2025
Economically China is one of the most capitalist societies on earth; it is the social fabric, not the economy, that is socialist.
I’ve rarely seen a more capitalist society than China, from the pure economic side. I’ve rarely seen companies that are as competitive as Chinese companies. People as ambitious and obsessed with making money as Chinese people. Kind of ruthless actually. And look, consumers shop, firms invest. If you invest well financially, you’ll get great returns. What is not capitalistic about the Chinese economy? At the same time, the social fabric is highly socialist.
Keyu Jin: China's Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism | Lex Fridman Podcast #477 Said 13 Aug 2025
China's biggest economic challenge is consumption, not production: it cannot become a rich country until it becomes a consuming one.
I say now that China’s biggest challenge is consumption, it’s not production. We know that China’s very, very competitive in production and supply. China needs to be a consuming country to be a rich country.
Keyu Jin: China's Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism | Lex Fridman Podcast #477 Said 13 Aug 2025
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Chinese industrial policy worked, and the evidence is that the cities which pushed hardest on a sector ended up best at both production and patents.
Industrial policy was heavily criticized and again, if I talk to my Harvard professors, they’ll be very, very, very skeptical about the role of the state, especially in such a major way. But if you look at the Chinese experience, the evidence for success is all there. The cities that have pushed the most on supporting that particular sector ultimately did the best in terms of production, but also in terms of innovation, measured by patents. It’s all in the data.
Keyu Jin: China's Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism | Lex Fridman Podcast #477 Said 13 Aug 2025
A country cannot have radical technological breakthroughs and also refuse to tolerate uncomfortably rich people, because the financial system it resents is what funds the innovation.
Do you want technological supremacy and radical breakthroughs? Well, yes. If you do, then you have to tolerate that there are going to be some people who are just going to be uncomfortably rich, like in the United States. You can’t say that you detest the financial system for its greed, but then not accept the fact that it is what fuels innovation, right?
Keyu Jin: China's Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism | Lex Fridman Podcast #477 Said 13 Aug 2025
The Chinese state does not suppress the private sector; local officials' incentives make them work hard to help the best private companies succeed.
Another big misunderstanding, and a fundamental one, is that people somehow think that the state suppresses the private sector. It’s not at all as simple as that. For the most part, if we look at the local government’s incentive system, they want to help the best, private companies, which are the most promising, because it makes them look good.
Keyu Jin: China's Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism | Lex Fridman Podcast #477 Said 13 Aug 2025
China lets companies innovate first and regulates afterwards, which is the opposite of Europe and is deliberately meant not to slow innovation down.
One interesting point is that, in China, you ask the companies to innovate first, and then you regulate after, right? So, that has led to things like P2P platforms. It’s led to lots of kind of financial innovations, some of which has actually been very helpful and good, some of which had been disastrous, but the intention to regulate after the fact is to really not slow down or hinder the innovation. This is a very different approach from Europe. You regulate first, and then companies have to work around that.
Keyu Jin: China's Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism | Lex Fridman Podcast #477 Said 13 Aug 2025
The core difference between America and China runs in opposite directions: there capital controls politics, here politics must rein in capital.
In the US, capital controls politics, one could argue. In China, it has to be the other way around. Capital must be reigned in by politics. As part of the capitalist class, do not have the ambition to exceed the powers of the political class, is really at the core of it, I’d say, is the biggest difference between US and China.
Keyu Jin: China's Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism | Lex Fridman Podcast #477 Said 13 Aug 2025
America will keep leading on zero-to-one breakthroughs, but it is diffusion that decides how much productivity a technology actually releases, and China is better at that.
The US will lead for some time on breakthroughs on disruptive technologies, the zero to one technologies that ultimately change the world. But innovation is a process. It goes from invention to production and commercialization and diffusion, diffusing technology throughout all parts of the economy. And on those two stages, I think that China has a unique advantage, even if it still can’t do the zero to one breakthroughs, because in the end, how much this technology is adopted by the countries and by the various parts of the economy is fundamentally crucial to how much productivity will be unleashed.
Keyu Jin: China's Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism | Lex Fridman Podcast #477 Said 13 Aug 2025
US export controls produced China's chip breakthroughs rather than preventing them: while China could comfortably import American chips, its own industry stalled for twenty years.
And remember that DeepSeek happened in times of crisis, urgency, not in times of comfort. A lot of these technological breakthroughs and leapfrogging happens in times of crisis. This is called crisis innovation. And you got to thank the US for that. When the Chinese were comfortably importing chips from the US, the whole industry stalled for 20 years.
Keyu Jin: China's Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism | Lex Fridman Podcast #477 Said 13 Aug 2025
Economic coercion has a half-life: use your leverage once and it is much weaker the second time, because everyone starts substituting away from you.
And what’s more, you use your leverage once, and that leverage has a half-life. It becomes a lot less effective the second time around because other countries, other companies are going to try to substitute away. If China uses the rare earth leverage, which I think it is now a little bit, there will be alternatives and substitutes.
Keyu Jin: China's Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism | Lex Fridman Podcast #477 Said 13 Aug 2025
Tariffs will not fix what is wrong with global trade; they are a distortionary protectionist method and they will be bad for the country imposing them.
Tariffs, this kind of highly protectionist method is very distortionary and it’s going to be bad for the US. I’d actually argue that both China and the US have totally taken advantage and also enjoyed the global economic realm under the US liberal order.
Keyu Jin: China's Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism | Lex Fridman Podcast #477 Said 13 Aug 2025
The American trade deficit is a macroeconomic fact, not a trade one: the US saves less than it invests, so no tariff can close it.
The trade deficits have widened since Trump, right? They haven’t closed the imbalance with China and with the rest of the world because ultimately the US saves less than it invests. And that’s a macrophenomenon. It’s not a trade phenomenon
Keyu Jin: China's Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism | Lex Fridman Podcast #477 Said 13 Aug 2025
Since 1990 ageing economies have grown richer rather than poorer, because ageing pushes a society to adopt automation faster.
If you look at the most recent evidence on this issue, they found that post-1990, aging economies became richer. Not the other way around, which was true for the pre-1990 sample. And the reason is that these aging societies much more rapidly adopted new technologies, automation that actually helped the entire economy.
Keyu Jin: China's Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism | Lex Fridman Podcast #477 Said 13 Aug 2025
China's economy will not collapse, whatever the West has been predicting on and off since the 1980s.
Collapse is such a strong word, and the West has been using this word repeatedly. If I remember correctly, maybe four to five times, maybe even six times since 1980s during the period of China’s fastest growth. I tend to not think that Chinese economy will collapse.
Keyu Jin: China's Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism | Lex Fridman Podcast #477 Said 13 Aug 2025
The one-child policy accidentally produced a golden age for Chinese women, who received the education investment that would otherwise have gone to a son.
Maybe on the good side, it’s actually a golden age for Chinese women because the Chinese girls never had as much education investment apportioned to them as they’ve had after being the only child in the family. And you raised a daughter like a son. And if we look at all the skill gaps and the education gaps and the returns to education, actually girls fared better.
Keyu Jin: China's Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism | Lex Fridman Podcast #477 Said 13 Aug 2025
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