A new theory of China's rise: rule by engineers

https://www.economist.com/culture/2025/09/04/a-new-theory-of-chinas-rise-rule-by-engineers

by guiambros • 10 months ago

28 34 10 months ago

xyzzy123• 10 months ago

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44925913 (China Is Run by Engineers, and the US by Too Many Lawyers (bloomberg.com))

mitchbob• 10 months ago

https://archive.ph/n721n

sigmoid103• 10 months ago

Why do people bother with new theories in this space? Just to throw shade at other countries' political systems? It is perfectly clear what caused China's rise and why it is a historic and geopolitical exception that will not translate to any other country today. And it's certainly not their authoritarian political system that deserves praise, even though right-wingers in the west love foreign autocrats these days and want to bring that shit here.

anovikov• 10 months ago

So what is your theory of it?

Also, how is this an exception? Didn't many the other Southeast Asian countries do the same, with the result being less remarkable just because of their smaller size?

hshdhdhj4444• 10 months ago

Yeah it’s not clear what China achieved was qualitatively significantly superior than Japan or Korea’s achievements.

I think China’s biggest source of fortune was that their rise coincided with the unraveling of American democracy, which arguably began with the 2020 election, but was well and truly set in motion when American leaders exploited 9/11 and lied to the public to start a war in Iraq.

sigmoid103• 10 months ago

This is not "my theory." This is pretty standard historian stuff. It's a combination of cold war shenanigans from the US, globalisation and favourable demographics. You can easily find this by looking at any source that is not pushing a certain political agenda. Here's a pretty good summary that is not particularly tainted: https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2025/06/27/chinas-rise-is-an-exce...

meekaaku3• 10 months ago

Do these people really have no clue?

China is just undergoing its own Industrial Revolution which the western world already participated in. They Chinese Industrial Revolution was sparked in the rural village of Xiaogang. The local farmers were fed up with the communist control, lack of freedom, enforced collectivism, stringent quotas and all. A group of 18 farmers (illegaly) divided their communal farm and went into competition. They outperformed the allocated quota by a large margin. Even the communist government could not ignore the results of this capitalistic experiment. Then they slowly allowed this freedom across the country. Engineers were running the country back then in the communist era too. Soon China opened up to foreign investments in their special economic zones, that enabled technology transfer.

You see, this is the natural result of private property and freedom. People will trade/exchange/compete resulting in better outcomes for all. This is the same thing that happened in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Europe/America and pretty much all developed countries.

CCP has largely adopted capitalism in the economic sector. It still controls other freedoms, mainly speech, press etc.

America is drowning in unnecessary regulations/taxes/red tape. America and Europe did move fast when it was young, just like China is doing in its young phase of this industrial revolution.

I am no American or Chinese. Just an independent observer from a third world country.

belter• 10 months ago

America is drowning in unnecessary regulations/taxes/red tape.

You must be joking...

- Unlike most OECD countries, the U.S. lets employers fire workers without “just cause” or severance.

- The U.S. is the only OECD country with no national paid parental leave mandate.

- There is no federal privacy law or something like GDPR

- No nationwide rules or regulations on Payday lending caps with interest often >450% APR

- Fines for U.S. workplace safety penalties are flat and modest

- TSCA lets many chemical substances stay on the market, while for example in the EU, the REACH program requires precautionary testing and registration.

- U.S. oil & gas flaring rules are a joke

yostrovs3• 10 months ago

Just because some regulations that you would like to exist, but don't, doesn't mean there aren't regulations that exist, but shouldn't. I'm most US states you need a license to cut hair. I'm summer states you need a license to braid hair. These licenses are actually expensive and hard to obtain, keeping a lot of talented people from actually working in the field. I bet in China you can just cut someone's hair.

epolanski2• 10 months ago

America is drowning in unnecessary regulations/taxes/red tape

Which regulations are unnecessary?

Those that make it more difficult to hire foreigners?

Those that put requirements on energy providers to invest in excess capacity so you don't end up in blackouts every time the grids are stressed?

Those that prevent companies from collecting minor data online?

Those that force major websites and devices to serve people with disabilities?

Or the national standards for healthcare data privacy?

I could go on and on, but every time people complain about regulations, they seem to be coming from a place where they don't realize that regulations have a purpose in general, they ain't there for the lulz.

Sure, there's always things to look at and review, that's the nature of progress, but to say that companies are drowning in regulations, what are those regulations?

Are you sure we can't find plenty of examples that would require more?

pjc502• 10 months ago

I'm very sympathetic to this point - regulations are usually there for a reason, and it's important to know what it is - but there's always a grey area between genuine public need and regulatory capture by special interests, which the incredibly dysfunctional nature of US politics hides.

The big ones are probably zoning and protectionist car regulations.

(Note that having a one party state makes a lot of the problems of partisanship go away. However, the problems of "working towards the leader" and the tendency to hide unfavorable news leading to poor decisions are still there. The tradeoff that China has is that, so long as high levels of growth can be delivered, political unrest can be contained, or dealt with by blaming "corrupt local officials" who can then be "dealt with".)

meekaaku3• 10 months ago

Some are necessary and some are not, or can be streamlined. In the context of the article, where it discuses China can develop things fast while America cannot, lets take California highspeed rail. - The Buy America law hinders supply choice - Crash test standards are much higher than Europe - Lot of consultation/assessment and pretty much any lobby group could block the construction - Sue friendly environment, so makes things costly.

cedws• 10 months ago

I can’t remember where I heard this from but I once heard that the ideal political system isn’t democracy, it’s a benevolent autocracy. While the CCP may have some corruption, I do get the impression that it is mostly benevolent and serves China’s best interests. Relative to autocracy, democracy is slow and pulls in different directions due to party politics and elections. I went to a museum in Hong Kong recently. It had a very obvious Chinese bias, but it clarified some things for me about how China sees itself. The CCP sees social cohesion as critical to the security of the state. If we look at Western countries like the US and UK, social cohesion is weakening, we’re extremely divided and addicted to bickering amongst ourselves.

Take the Charlie Kirk murder as a recent example which has sparked heated infighting between the left and right in the US. You’re all part of the same country but you pull in completely different directions and hate each other. Driving wedges like this is a tool adversaries can use to dismantle democracy.

pjc502• 10 months ago

The question is always how much violence is required to suppress dissent. Especially given the recent history of Hong Kong.

Some influencer called Matt Forney was calling for a ban on the Democrat party in the wake of the Charlie Kirk murder. I can see how a one-party state might be achieved with popular support in the US.

meekaaku3• 10 months ago

Most people think democracy is necessary for economic development. Taiwan/Singapore/South Korea, were pretty much authoritarian yet developed economically immensely. Democratization came much later.

Well the idea was, adoption of capitalism and economic freedom will eventually lead to political freedom. It did happen that way in many countries, but China is still yet to happen.

legacynl5• 10 months ago

I can’t remember where I heard this from but I once heard that the ideal political system isn’t democracy, it’s a benevolent autocracy.

I don't think this is true. An autocracy is like a super weapon. Even if the power was held by a 'benevolent' group/individual, there's no guarantee that they will keep being 'benevolent', or that someone else doesn't take over, either diplomatically or by coup.

Democracy isn't perfect, but it does protect against autocrats taking your rights away, and you having no way of defending yourself.

dotnet00• 10 months ago

America is not drowning in unnecessary regulations, it's just struggling to accept that the rest of the world is recovering from the various atrocities of the past few hundred years, from which America remained relatively isolated due to its several lucky circumstances.

legacynl5• 10 months ago

drowning in unnecessary regulations/taxes/red tape

I think that's wrong and it's biasing your interpretation of what is happening. First of all I don't think they are 'drowning', business and projects get started every day in Europe/America, and obviously there's great prosperity being created. Secondly, I don't agree they're unnecessary.

It's like saying that someone remodeling the first floor of a large apartment building, can move faster by just knocking down walls instead of first hiring a building inspector to identify the load-bearing walls.

Of course if you're an autocratic country that doesn't care about anything else than the currently stated party position, you can do things that are impossible in other places. But they're obviously going to run into problems doing this. And some kind of problems aren't of the kind that you can fix afterwards by a policy-change.

It's like the story of the tortoise and the hare. Careful consideration might slow you down at first, but it will end up saving much more time by not having to fix mistake as well as redo it better.

maxglute• 10 months ago

independent observer from a third world country.

Have you ever lived in China or the west to see the systems work? What makes your observation worthwhile?

clue

If it was so easy most developing countries more free, i.e. less politically controlled would be replicating PRC. But they're mostly not. Overwhelmingly not. What happens in most places is wealth/elite capture process grab most of the gains, which is typically meagre to begin with (i.e. not enough to lift out of low/middle income level), because most places don't have leadership in place to attract FDI to get that ToT to move past middle income. PRC didn't just "get" that all that because a commune did well and go lol free market, they playedout/engineered an entire Sino-Soviet breakup and slap Vietnam to invite US to the party after USSR (who was also tech power at the time) was stingy with ToT (due to other dram). Then it's meticulous process of state manipulating politics / organizing infra construction and JVs to get what's theirs.

THAT IS WHAT HAPPENS WITH ALL MODERN DEVELOPED SUCCESSES, i.e. asian tigers, they get on the good side of the rich hegemon + some competent execution. Even petro / resource state, muh free market isn't enough. Need to badwagon with someone who can offer ToT. Conversely all the resources in the worlds (IR, VZ) doesn't matter if you're sanctioned by the hegemon and prevented from muh free market activities if you can't even buy the tech stack to extract, or if you did can't see in the common market.

pretty much all developed countries

Essentially all old stock developed countries developed from excess extraction from colonialisms/slavery. It wasn't freedom, it was some form of market + imperial industrial policy. Bluntly it was simply taking a shit load from others from barrel of the gun to accumulate riches that snowballed growth. Loot a bunch of people and use the gains to buy yourself nice things, put your kids and grand kids+ through school, and 200 years later they think it was because of the market.

PRC moving FAST without that stupid levels of external extraction or basically direct subsidies from US (most of the other tigers, or newly minted wealthy petro states essentially all US satraps) is wholly different scenario. It's actual state-building and domestic mobilization (bluntly: extracting domestic labour) maybe not explicitly by engineers, but by career bureaucrats under an incentive structure where their career path is tied to building national power. PRC also unique outlier in that they are large enough to resist US containment now that US decided to breakup and contain. Big enough to now be 2nd bandwagon option since PRC has enough tech stack to replace US in most categories.

Contrast to now shitholes like Iran and Venezuela, was doing well when band wagoning with US, then broke up, and US acrimonious in breakup, so they get less than nothing for spurning US in the first place. It wasn't because they somehow got more authoritarian / corrupt - scraps of pie usually enough in sufficiently rich countries, it wasn't because they can't free market inside country either, it's because they lost access to global market ran by US, which is fundamentally not a free market but a pay to access market, i.e. postwar PRC/CCP couldn't even pay to modernize postwar due to sanctions. Hence they turn into basket cases when that access is lost, because there's isn't a magic domestic configurable, free market or not that can make up for enforced isolation due to loss of global access.

powerapple• 10 months ago

we like to simplify things for the ease of understanding. I wish everything can be attributed to one factor, the world would be so simple and easy to understand.

That said, I do have my own understanding on what has contributed to China's rise, and I agree, the engineer aspect has a big play in it: I read the Lean Startup book, while I was reading it, I realize that a lot happened in the country share similarity to startups. Chinese government is very flexible, they do A/B testing with economic policies, pivoting all the time, the measurement, it is so interesting to see how concepts are very similar in both governing and running a startup.

A new theory of China's rise: rule by engineers

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