Partner and China research director at Gavekal Dragonomics. Aspiring blogger. Former Wall Street Journal. Variously from Louisiana, Beijing, Pacific Northwest.
Joined March 2009
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It’s time for the annual books list. It seems like reading 19th century authors was a theme in the culture this year, and I ended up participating in this trend without really planning to: Twain, Stevenson, Whitman were some of my highlights. And more!
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I would wish not to be hasty in censuring any one; but I always speak what I think.
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This is your weekly reminder, this time from Daniel Treisman in The Return (which is excellent), that almost nobody had predicted the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union, that the few people who did predicted it for the wrong reasons and that the others were right not to predict it, because it would almost certainly not have happened when it did had Gorbachev not embarked on a path of radical reforms that were a choice and not something forced on him by circumstances.
I made my nine. Not my favorite albums exactly, though I do love them, but my formative ones—the ones that opened my ears up to all the sound worlds I enjoy today.
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People understandably cite this UNIDO chart, claiming China will account for 45% of the world’s manufacturing value added by 2030, but it’s wrong and shouldn’t be cited.
It comes from a 2024 UNIDO paper, which @JKynge cites in his new @ChathamHouse report on China and European industry. (His report is worth reading. My issue is only with the UNIDO figure!) UNIDO says it took each country’s average manufacturing growth over 2010–19 and projected it forward from 2024. But if you do that with UNIDO’s own data, China reaches 38% in 2030. The published numbers only come out if you use 2000–19 growth instead, which assumes China’s 13% annual growth from the post-WTO boom suddenly resumes in the coming years (it won’t). This appears to be an error in the UNIDO report. The UNIDO chart also says “industrial production,” but its numbers match manufacturing value added.
China’s manufacturing growth has since slowed to around 5%. If we apply each economy’s 2019–25 manufacturing growth rate, China reaches 35% by 2030. In current dollars, China’s share peaked at 30.5% in 2021 and was 28% in 2024 because of deflation and a weaker yuan.
China’s manufacturing sector is the biggest in the world, and it’s still growing. But it won’t reach 45% of global manufacturing in 2030. That would require China’s manufacturing output to grow about 14% a year for five years. Even if the rest of the world’s manufacturing didn’t grow at all, China would need 11% a year. It hasn’t grown that fast in any year since 2011.
h/t @JonathonPSine, who pointed out some of the UNIDO issues last year.
China is going to be nearly half of global industrial production in 2030
The US only 11%
Edifying read from @JKynge
chathamhouse.org/2026/09/chi…
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This was written in 1979 by Maoist critics of Deng's reforms and it is super funny in hindsight.
The most unexpected pairing of author and subject I’ve seen lately
Stephen King on the Chattanooga Choo Choo: “It’s daddy-cool.” buff.ly/Z3iVC1E
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There may be other copies out there of Lenin’s State and Revolution autographed by Sun Ra, but I haven’t yet encountered them. @MatthewSitman
Excellent essay
We already know what a world without work looks like. It's the life of 18th century aristocrats, who concerned themselves with political gossip and petty dramas; of society ladies in the 1980s, who spent their time hosting and volunteering; and Italian-Americans in 1950s Boston, whose status was centered around their peer groups, rather than their jobs.
Relational living comes to us naturally, but – argues @clarabcollier – work offers us dignity, structure, and meaning, as evinced by surveys that consistently find that about 85% of Americans are "somewhat" or "completely" satisfied by their jobs. Work gives us an escape from the cliquishness of relational societies: without it, our personal relationships might become even more stifling and transactional.
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Database of 6,671,784 Chinese documents, from central to local level, all machine-translated into English reconnectchina.org/
Correct takes throughout
An important WSJ article by @greg_ip. A few reactions. First, the bit below gives the plot away. Relative prices matter. Appreciate the yuan and watch prices in China fall further relative to the rest of the world...
