The Lights Wink Out in Asia
Japan's 2022 National Security Strategy concludes with a dramatic pronouncement: At this time of an inflection point in history, Japan is finding itself in the midst of the most severe and complex...
View ArticleMaoist Echoes
In an essay published in 2018, Geramie Barme recommends observers of US-China relations read through five pieces that Hu Qiaomu and Mao Zedong published in 1949 under the latter's name. The five pieces...
View ArticleWatch Xi Jinping Slowly Strangle the Dengist Economic Paradigm
Xi Jinping’s decision to openly label the United States the source of China’s ills rolled through the newsletters, wire services, and commentators on China this week. Much has been written about this...
View ArticleLessons from the 19th Century
Readers of the Scholar's Stage will be familiar with a thesis I have pursued in multiple essays and posts over the last half decade: America was once a place where institutional capacity was very high....
View ArticleSoviets, Cybernetics, and China: A Reading Program
Two years ago I ran a small reading group that met over zoom. Our reading topic: Leninism. Curious about the claims that modern Chinese politics are an outgrowth of Marxist ideas and practice yet...
View ArticleGaza and the Extremist’s Gambit
Can strategic sense be found in "senseless" violence? This is the question I attempt to answer in a column I have out this week for Mosaic, tilted "The Extremist's Gambit Helps Explain Why Hamas...
View ArticleWang Huning and the Eternal Return to 1975
A few years back Ross Douthat published an interesting book titled The Decadent Society: How We Became Victims of Our Own Success. The thesis of Douthat's book is simple: American society is stagnant....
View ArticleChristmas Day as Judgement Day
To write of Christmas after December 25th is neither a sin nor a crime, but there is something untoward in my tardiness. We meet the overdue Christmas missive with the same misgiving we reserve for the...
View ArticleAmerican Nightmares: Wang Huning and Alexis de Tocqueville’s Dark Visions of...
There is a passage in Democracy in America that has appeared in many of my essays." In the United States,” Tocqueville reports, “there is nothing the human will despairs of attaining through the free...
View ArticleXi Jinping’s Plan to Save China Through Science
Does China have a plan to save its wobbly economy? Last week in Foreign Policy I argued that it does—but not the sort of plan most Western economists are comfortable with. Western analysts blame...
View ArticleMore on Xi Jinping’s Industrial Drive + London Meet Up
A few items of interest to my readers: First, at the end of last month I appeared on the German Marshall Fund's China Global podcast to discuss the CPC's current techno-industrial drive. You can listen...
View ArticlePatronage vs. Constituent Parties (Or Why Republican Party Leaders Matter...
The Republican and Democratic parties are not the same: power flows differently within them. The two big political news items of this week—the happenings of the Republican National Convention and the...
View ArticleUber is a Poor Replacement for Utopia
Two items of interest passed through my feeds this week. The first is the podcast Marc Andreesen and Ben Horowitz released to explain why they are endorsing Trump for president. The second is an...
View ArticleFive Fundamentals of Chinese Grand Strategy
Last month Civic Future invited me to join a panel at their annual policy forum. The topic: what the United Kingdom should do about China. As I am neither a British citizen nor an expert in British...
View ArticleThe Silicon Valley Canon: On the Paıdeía of the American Tech Elite
I often draw a distinction between the political elites of Washington DC and the industrial elites of Silicon Valley with a joke: in San Francisco reading books, and talking about what you have read,...
View ArticleWashington DC is Not a Popularity Contest
IN 2009 PAUL GRAHAM WROTE A THOUGHTFUL ESSAY titled “Cities and Ambition.” There he proposes that a great city is defined by the sort of ambitions it kindles—or perhaps more accurately, the sort of...
View ArticleDionysus Against the Daoists
IN WESTERN PHILOSOPHY AND AESTHETICS a contrast is sometimes made between the Dionysian and the Apollonian. Made famous by Nietzsche, this schema was first used to describe the thought and art of...
View ArticleRepublican Debates on China: A Political Compass
MANY HAVE TRIED to pin Trump to Heritage’s “Project 2025.” The Trump campaign has not only refused to endorse Project 2025—they have refused to endorse any detailed policy plan whatsoever. Trump...
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