Conversation between Tyler Cowen and Yasheng Huang on China.
Wide ranging and in-depth, especially understanding the cultural, historic and sociological drivers that help understand China and turbulence ahead.
“One reason is the charisma power of individual leaders, Mao and Xiaoping … they could do whatever they wanted while being able to contain the spillover effects of their mistakes. The big uncertain issue now is whether Xi Jinping has that kind of charisma to contain future spillover effects of succession failure.”
“This is a remarkable statistic: Since 1976, there have been six leaders of the CCP. Of these six leaders, five of them were managed either by Mao or by Deng Xiaoping. Essentially, the vast majority of the successions were handled by these two giants who had oversized charisma, oversized prestige, and unshakeable political capital”.
Also a super interesting discussion on “why Chinese and Chinese Americans have done less well becoming top CEOs of American companies compared to Indians and Indian Americans”.
