Ho Miu Lam Chair Professor at GPS of UCSD. Expert of Chinese elite politics, economy, and finance. RT does not mean endorsement.
Seattle, WA
Joined August 2009
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How do dictators maintain power for life? I explain in a new book that they can stay in power by forming "Coalitions of the Weak" composed of tainted or inexperienced officials. Not a loyalty-competence tradeoff but one of institutions vs patrimonialism cambridge.org/core/books/coa…
Victor Shih retweeted
The CCP Central Committee's Fifth Plenum just revealed even more purges than we predicted
We expected attendance of ~161 members and ~130 alternates, or 77.4% of the original 205 + 171
Actual attendance was 162 members and 117 alternates, or 74.2%
A new post-Mao low
1/
Ok I am sorry but the bar for receiving praises from the official press for being a foreign friend is incredibly low. And the bar for being labeled a foreign enemy also is incredibly low
Victor Shih retweeted
With thoughts on the fifth plenum from @vshih2 and me
As hundreds of China’s top politicians gather in Beijing this week, President Xi Jinping is facing a problem of his own making: His sweeping purges are draining the pipeline he needs to staff senior roles next term bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
What?? She is not that old
刘延东同志逝世 -- 央视网消息（新闻联播） tv.cctv.com/2026/10/28/VIDEV… Announcement on the passing of Former Vice Premier Liu Yandong.
So if you completely localized parts for cars made in China, why not also use Chinese parts extensively for cars made elsewhere?
Mercedes readies 2030 strategy update with China at its core reut.rs/4iebuNm
So if they price the chips competitively, wouldn’t that be evidence of heavy subsidies?
China's CXMT plans to start production of HBM3E, an advanced type of high-bandwidth memory chip used with AI processors, despite as little as 20% of the chips it makes being usable
reuters.com/world/china/chin…
Yes but these are not dramatic increases and isn’t 150 billion a day still tiny? Maybe more money overall is being transmitted cross nationally.
A notable increase in activity on CIPS since the start of the Iran War. Great work by the @ACGeoEcon team, keeping a close eye on this.
Not good but we will find a way around. The problem with not announcing who the leaders are in various units is that it will invite fraudsters to claim they are the leaders. There is a tradeoff
教育部从2025年3月开始，就停止披露司局领导的任免了。从2026年2月开始，就停止披露所管高校的领导任免了。
这些任免状，原本会清晰地写明谁获任了，担任职务，具体任免日期（图三）。以后都不会再披露了。
公务员队伍建设：moe.gov.cn/s78/A04/gongzuo/r…
高校领导班子建设：moe.gov.cn/s78/A04/gongzuo/r…
Will try
This week, we’re back at Wu’s Wonton King for their Chow Fun! Located at 165 E Broadway, they offer a wide array of authentic Chinese Food. Where’s your favorite spot for Chow Fun? Video by Noah Hrung Translation by @hccassie #savecantonese #cantonese #chowfun #chinatown
So checking the party constitution, it’s literally not legal to fully elect replacement full and alternate members of the Central committee at the plenum because of this rule “调整和增选中央委员及候补中央委员的数额，不得超过党的全国代表大会选出的中央委员及候补中央委员各自总数的五分之一”
Bloomberg: “An estimate by the Asia Society Policy Institute puts attendance at this plenum at about 291 members — or 77.4% of the original cohort with 376 members — following the purges.”
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
We (Jonathan Elkobi, me) are happy that @chinaquarter has accepted our new piece “The End of Fiscal Autonomy. ” Yes, it’s provocatively titled but this is an important data point for analyzing China’s economy. A large literature suggests that local autonomy, including fiscal “federalism” has been a key ingredient to growth and local reform initiatives. If local governments literally have little to no autonomy, their incentives and ability to use local initiatives to generate growth also declines. Below, I summarize our findings with link of pre-pub version at the end.
Quick primer: Chinese budgeting is broken into 1. ordinary budget to finance public services, civil service salaries and 2. Extra budgetary fund (EBF) used to finance land acquisition/sale, infrastructure projects and other discretionary spend. The source of the problem is here—ordinary revenue at the local level has grown very modestly over a 6-year period (21%), while EBF revenue (land income) has not grown at all due to the property crackdown. Central transfers made up the bulk of the growth in non-debt sources of income for local governments. (1/N)
In regression analysis, we show that EBF revenue (land sales) now have half as much positive impact on EBF expenditures and even ordinary account expenditures compared to the 2017-2020 impact. Basically, when land revenue was high, the EBF account transferred funds to the ordinary account to finance public services and policy initatives. Now, much less of that is happening. Meanwhile, centrally allocated SPB issuance now has more than twice the impact on EBF expenditures compared to the 2017-2020 period. SPB issuance never had and still does not have any notable impact on ordinary budgetary spending. Since SPB financed projects are heavily monitored by the Ministry of Finance, you can’t just transfer the funds to various accounts to finance unapproved initiatives. Link of the pre-pub version of the paper is here: END
Oops, here is the link to the pre-print draft of the paper, probably has a few typos...jonathan-elkobi.github.io/ho…