This week on Sinica, MIT professor Yasheng Huang joins Kaiser to talk about his brand new book The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why they Might Lead to its Decline. This ambitious and thought-provoking book is bound to stir up quite a bit of controversy. It’s a long conversation — but worth the listen!
04:11 – The impact of the Keju system on China today – an overview of the big questions in Yasheng Huang’s newest book
07:31 – How does the framework of scale and scope correlate with homogeneity and heterogeneity?
12:33 – M-form and U-form economies – which one describes contemporary China best?
23:43 – How did the Keju system develop into a perfect scaling tool?
36:22 – Did Imperial China have a weak civil society?
44:05 – The GDP metric as a modern equivalent of the Keju system
50:00 – The design behind a political ladder to the highest positions in the central government
1:06:26 – The question of literacy and its possible neurobiological impact on people in the West and East
1:24:05 – Gordon Tullock and the succession problem in China
1:30:36 – T in the WEST: Technology
1:37:57 – The correlation between technological inventiveness and the prevalence of warfare
1:53:58 – Can Xi Jinping step down? Xi’s anti-corruption campaign – its consequences, and other possible scenarios
A complete transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com.
Recommendations:
Yasheng: American Prometheus: The Inspiration for the Major Motion Picture OPPENHEIMER by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
Kaiser: @DrewDurnil (YouTube channel)
