My scholarship aims to discover and explain patterns in complex political-economic systems, distilling them to their essence - but without over-simplifying. I apply this paradigm to illuminate China's rise and its global impact.
Here are 7 of my key ideas.
Idea 1: We cannot study complex social systems using concepts and tools designed for complicated objects.
"Complicated" and "complex" are often conflated, but in fact they describe two completely different worlds. Complicated objects are made up of many separate parts that do not interact and change with one another (e.g., toasters). Complex systems, on the other hand, interacts and evolves; they produce unpredictable outcomes while, at the same time, displaying distinct patterns of organization and change, (e.g., human bodies, political economies).
The conventional paradigm in political economy studies complex social systems as if they are complicated. And this is obviously misleading.
Taking complexity seriously means more than just saying "life is messy." My work develops methods to distill patterns of complex processes (e.g., the coevolution of institutions and the economy). It also raises and explores new questions: for example, what enables adaptation?
Read more at:
In How China Escaped the Poverty Trap (2016), I piloted and applied this approach to explain China's great transformation since market opening.
In The Age of Disruptions (under contract with Cambridge University Press), I refine and expand this paradigm shift across contexts.
"This book is a triumph, opening a window onto the political economy of China’s astonishing rise that takes as its starting point systems and complexity. Its lessons apply far beyond China’s borders." - Duncan Green, LSE & Oxfam (review here)
Idea 2: Development as a problem of escaping the poverty trap.
Problem: I interpret development not just as a problem of becoming rich, but as a problem of "escaping the poverty trap," i.e., How can poor countries develop when they lack the favorable conditions and modern institutions found in rich countries? Social scientists call this an "endogenous" problem (meaning, the cause is also the outcome).
Conventional wisdom: None of the three major schools of thought in political economy (growth first, good/strong institutions first, or history leads to good institutions and then to growth) point a way out of the poverty trap. This is because their thinking is linear, or deterministic (e.g., colonial legacies determine outcomes).
My solution: I apply a "coevolutionary" method of process-tracing that reveals how societies actually emerge out the poverty trap step by step (more below). The first step, it reveals, is neither foreign aid nor ideal institutions.
Read more at:
How China Escaped the Poverty Trap: "Development is more than a problem of growing from poor to rich... Cast more precisely in game theoretic terms, development is a problem of making the transition from one self-reinforcing equilibrium (poverty traps) to another equilibrium (rich and modern)." (pp. 9).
Idea 3: Development is a coevolutionary process, and the first step is "using what you have."
"Development is coevolutionary. States and markets adapt to each other and evolve together over time." (A Coevolutionary Approach, p. 282)
More precisely, the coevolutionary process of development can be distilled to a three-step formula: harness (normatively) weak institutions to build markets -> emerging markets stimulate strong institutions -> strong institutions preserve markets. (Poverty Trap, pp. 14)
Put different, the first step of development is "using what you have," i.e., repurposing indigenous resources and knowledge to kick-start change, even if it means defying first-world norms.
Read more at:
How China Escaped the Poverty Trap, Chapter 2, "Mapping Coevolution."
"Do Weberian Bureaucracies Lead to Markets or Vice Versa? A Coevolutionary Approach to Development,” In States in the Developing World. [pdf]
“Beyond Elite Innovation.” Forum on Making Prosperity Local. Boston Review.
Reactions to my keynote lecture at UN Cambodia, reported in Khmer Times and Xinhua.
Idea 4: Institutions that build markets ≠ good/strong institutions needed to preserve markets.
Idea 4 follows from the previous one. I challenge an entrenched assumption in political economy, one that has underpinned "good governance" reforms in international development: the good/strong institutional forms found in high-income democracies are universal preconditions for development.
More specifically, I distinguish between the tasks of building markets and preserving markets. I show that because the goals, constraints, and resources are different in these stages, the selections that fit these different contexts must also be qualitatively different. (See Poverty Trap, pp. 142)
Read more at:
How China Escaped the Poverty Trap, Chapter 5 (From Building to Preserving Markets)
"Do Weberian Bureaucracies Lead to Markets or Vice Versa? A Coevolutionary Approach to Development,” In States in the Developing World. [pdf]
“Which Comes First in Development: Good Governance or Economic Growth?” World Bank Governance Blog. 2017.
Idea 5: Directed Improvisation = blending top-down direction and bottom-up improvisation
"Directed improvisation" corrects two opposite fallacies: exert control vs. let go of control. Managing a complex, uncertain environment, I argue, requires a blend of direction from the top and improvisation from below.
Under the leadership of Deng, China adopted an adaptive governing system - directed improvisation - where Beijing directs and local governments improvise. This system "allowed continuous change to emerge, often in unexpected ways" (Foreign Affairs), creating many China models within China.
Read more at:
How China Escaped the Poverty Trap, Chapter 3 (Directed Improvisation)
"The Real China Model," Foreign Affairs, 2018
"Three Fallacies of Embracing Complexity," UNDP Blog and Lecture
Idea 6: China is currently in the midst of its own Gilded Age, a parallel of late-19th century America, where extraordinary growth came with corruption and inequality.
Contemporary China is a close parallel of the American Gilded Age. But their contrasting political systems leads to divergent responses to the excesses of crony capitalism.
President Xi's "common prosperity" drive is an attempt to summon China out of the Gilded Age and into a Chinese version of the Progressive Era; it is more than just a campaign against inequality.
I've been quoted in The Economist, The Financial Times, The New York Times, SupChina, and The Wire China.
Read more at:
China's Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Growth and Vast Corruption (2020), Cambridge University Press
"The Robber Barons of Beijing: Can China Survive Its Gilded Age?," Foreign Affairs (2021) [Link]
"Can Xi End China's Gilded Age?," Project Syndicate (2021) (available in Chinese, German, Portuguese)
"Decoding Xi Jinping: How Will China's Bureaucrats Interpret His Call for Common Prosperity?" Foreign Affairs (2021)
Idea 7: Comparative analysis isn't just about explaining differences across contemporaneous cases. Cases in different time periods can simultaneously share similarities in processes and differences in context and outcomes.
Conventional comparative analysis goes like this: Pick two or more contemporaneous cases and identify the variable that accounts for their different outcomes. In this model, China is typically deemed too exceptional for comparison, or it is only compared with contemporary East Asia and the former Soviet Union.
My scholarship steps outside of this methodological box. In China's Gilded Age and a subsequent essay in Foreign Affairs, I compare China today with the United States in the 19th Century (American Gilded Age 1.0) and the US today (American Gilded Age 2.0). I compare their similarities, but also how differences in political regimes led to divergent state responses to the excesses of capitalism.
In How China Escaped the Poverty Trap, I show that the three-step process of coevolution (see Idea 3) can be found across a wide range of cases, including China, but also medieval Europe, the US, and the rise of Nollywood in Nigeria. In my seminar, The State and Innovation, undergraduate students took the initiative of applying this framework to trace the evolution of mobile banking in Kenya.
Read more at:
China's Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Growth and Vast Corruption (2020), Cambridge University Press
"The Robber Barons of Beijing: Can China Survive Its Gilded Age?," Foreign Affairs (2021) [Link]
How China Escaped the Poverty Trap, Chapter 7
