This short debate with Tobias Straumann is a follow-up on my last post here on Substack, in which I discussed JD Vance’s critique of globalisation. A professor of Economic History at the University of Zurich, Tobias has long excelled at offering deep historical perspectives on the state of the global economy. His book, 1931: Debt, Crisis, and the Rise of Hitler (Oxford University Press, 2020) has been translated into several languages.
The subject of our chat is China, and above all its model of economic development.
There has been much talk recently of significant Chinese innovations, and for good reason, with some commentators arguing that the West is loosing the tech race. Tobias Straumann has for some time been sceptical of such claims. Not because he doubts China’s capacity for innovation, but because the country is facing domestic crises on multiple fronts, including a real estate crisis and a consumption crisis. Wages are too low in relation to China’s economic growth over the last half century, and its domestic economy is haunted by deflationary pressures.
The crucial question seems to be:
How much longer can a one-party state exploit its population to finance an industrial policy that prioritises the projection of external power over the spread of affluence at home?
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