From one piece Keyu Jin: China's Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism | Lex Fridman Podcast #477 7 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
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
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Their words
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.