China’s Manufacturing Dominance: State Directives & Ruthless Competition — Arthur Kroeber

Dwarkesh Podcast

Arthur Kroeber is a leading researcher on Chinese tech and macro, a founding partner at Gavekal Dragonomics, and author of "China's Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know." It's the most useful, detailed resource I've found of how China actually works.

On this episode, we discuss how China achieved high-tech manufacturing dominance, and where they'll go from here. By Arthur’s account, the Chinese government is like a giant VC fund: they decide on key priorities and then spend hundreds of billions of dollars subsidizing ruthless competition at the local level. They are willing to lose huge amounts of money for a few of their bets to pay off: at China’s scale, effectiveness matters more than efficiency.

There's also a growing bipartisan consensus that we need to combat China's rise. This doesn’t make much sense to me. China is a big, powerful country at the frontier in many fields, and its economy is intricately tied in with our own. Being instinctively adversarial is both unsustainable and risky. Arthur and I discuss how we can create a productive, mutually beneficial version of this relationship.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) – We should reconcile with China

(00:21:21) – BYD, Tesla, & Chinese EV industry

(00:36:05) – Will China have a Japan-style financial crisis?

(00:44:39) – Local debt situation is manageable

(00:57:28) – If CCP is so competent, why isn’t China richer?

(01:05:08) – How China keeps tech under control

(01:33:45) – Does China win AI?

(01:43:34) – Communication with China key for AI safety

(02:10:08) – What foreigners get wrong about China

(02:17:32) – China-US relationship future

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