Louis-Vincent Gave of Gavekal discusses China’s economic growth, its focus on education, and the global implications of its economic and political policies.
It can be difficult to find thoughtful, actionable information about the growing economic competition between the PRC and the US. Louis-Vincent Gave stands out from the crowd of YouTube click-bait prognosticators. He was born and raised in Europe, was educated in the US, and has been doing business in China since the 90’s.
The interview was conducted by Steve Hsu, Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at MSU and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon.
Hsu is a startup founder (SuperFocus.ai, SafeWeb, Genomic Prediction, Othram) and advisor to venture capital and other investment firms. He was educated at Caltech and Berkeley, was a Harvard Junior Fellow, and has held faculty positions at Yale, the University of Oregon, and MSU.
How valid is the Marxian theory of imperialism? This book traces the historical development of the theory of imperialism, the internationalisation of capital and theories of capitalist nation-state formation.
The book’s starting thesis is that state-capitalism is a system in which scarce resources are privately owned, yet under current capitalist systems, property is institutionally separated from authority. As a result, there are two mechanisms by which resources are allocated and distributed: the market and the state.
In the market, productive resources—capital, land, and labor capacity—are allocated by capitalist owners and the distribution of consumption results from decentralized interactions. Yet the state can also allocate and distribute, and it can act on those same resources that constitute private property. Not only can states tax and transfer but they can regulate the relative costs and benefits associated with private decisions. Thus, inherent in state capitalism is a permanent tension between the capitalists’ desires for wealth accumulation and and the democratic or social-welfare goals of the state.
An optimistic review of global economic concerns and factors of growth, presenting an ‘investment roadmap’ for the coming years. An intentionally optimistic review can be forgiven for missing more pessimistic possibilities, but recent history seems to confirm that wishful thinking is not the best predictor of future trends.
Probably the most glaring omission is ignoring human-induced climate change while celebrating the boom in US oil shale fracking.
Although it would have been difficult to predict the COVID-19 pandemic along with the criminally inadequate response of some governments, such as the US Trump administration, by historical standards this was a comparatively mild pandemic and the high likelihood of a more virulent one emerging at any time can not be ignored.
The author did not expect a revolt of the under-educated classes in the West, or the resulting rise in neo-fascist populists.
Failing to predict the rise of neo-fascism, the author missed the growing fragmentation in the US-dominated global order caused by increased nativism. This in turn is promoting the opportunistic rise of antagonistic regional powers in particular Turkey, Israel, Russia and China.
The author did not predict the breakdown of US-China relations, which is leading to military tensions along the ‘first island chain’ and in South China Sea, economic decoupling/derisking, as well as a Chinese drift toward nationalistic authoritarianism in the face of economic and military encirclement by the US.
He probably could not have predicted the Russian invasion of Ukraine in response to overt NATO encroachment, or the genocidal overreach of the Israeli settler-colonial project, both of which greatly accelerate the end of the neo-liberal world order, the role of the US Dollar as the global reserve currency, and the increasingly rapid decline of the US imperial system which no longer possesses the military might to guarantee free and open navigation though all the world’s oceans for every compliant state.
Mark Twain once said, “There’s nothing sadder than a young pessimist or and old optimist.” Despite the omissions, this books is a healthy antidote to the paralyzing wisdom of experience.
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