Odd Arne Westad on how China First Joined the Global Capitalist Economy
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Hello and welcome to another episode of the odd lots podcast. I'm joy ent though.

and i'm Tracy all the way.

Tracy, now that i'm like a middle age old man, don't i've been getting really into reading history, lady.

is IT roman history?

No, no, it's actually worse. The roman history i've been reading a lot of twenty years, century history. And the problem will, one problem is a bit of a diversion. But one problem with reading to twenty th century history is that i'm eventually going to have to get around to really learning what world war two is all about. And i'm going .

to a fifty year old men.

I am year old man in a few years reading robot two books and watching world war two documentaries. So we guess i've been reading a lot of twenty of the century history.

and you know how you know that you are really old. It's when you start reading twenty century history books and realized that you were like there and sort of participating in that time period.

Well, it's so funny that you mention this because this is increasingly dawn on me when I read history and in slight cyclic. But I mentioned before a couple of times I lived in a malyn a for a year in one thousand and eighty nine and thousand, nine hundred and ninety.

And I discovered in reading history recently that I don't know if they called the male sian civil war, but the ultimate piece agreement between the male sian government and the communist party of malaysia was signed in one thousand nine hundred and eighty nine. That ended that conflict. And so I was there.

I had no idea. But reading great school, joe was living through history.

I was, and IT sort of reminds, I think this is an important thing that everybody, zed, reading more history, is that the modern world, as we know, IT, is so Young, it's basically like the length of a person's life I have, depending on where you want to start IT. We're just getting started here.

So the history we're gna be talking about really big here is china. Yes, and I was thinking about this because the first time I went to china was in one thousand nine hundred and ninety four. And IT was completely different to how IT is now like there were still rickshaws on the street.

Friendship stores existed. Friendship stores still existed in the early two thousands when I was there. And I don't know. Do you know the friendship stories?

I guess, so don't know.

It's like where foreigners we're basically allowed to go. And like barnt es specific goods, they had a lot of like tourist tat and stuff like that. But if you went to a friendship store in beijing in the early two thousands, IT was basically like going to the east block.

IT was like a full employment program where you would find a sales person on the floor and you would say, I want this item and then they would give you a little like token or receive, and then you would take that to the cashier and pay, and then someone else would bring the item to you. So in the two thousands, and now when I think about beijing, like IT has changed completely. Like stuff that used to be one story. Neighborhoods full of bars, like, sadly turned, is now like luxury shopping centres.

totally. So this is the other thing too, which is that, you know, we talk a lot about a china right now for obvious reasons. But I kind of feel that like if we're going to talk about today, there probably is some justification for like how we got here. And I have to admit you my understanding is really very rudiment mentally limited like in my mind it's basically like mad died, don't show paying, liberalize the economy that was the economy plugged into global .

can happen yeah .

and then the a lot of business and then they entered the W T, O. In here. And I would say, no, basically four facts about the history of china and those you know one nine hundred and seventy eight W T O now. So maybe there's is three. And so I actually think it's important to sort of deepen are under standing of how we got to the china that we are so deeply connected to today.

I am in favor of you using the podcast as an excuse to read a bunch of history.

but manifest .

itself. That's fine.

It's Better because if I have to read books, that means i'm not just strolling twitter all the time. So I have to prepare for episode. Anyway, we are going to be speaking with one of the co authors of the new book came out in october.

The great transformation, china's road from revolution to reform. And I would say IT complexities es a bit the very rudimentary story of the last at of forty plus of chinese, more than just three specific dates IT complexioned that story and sort of fleshes about in a big way. The co authors are odd and rested and chenjr n the first time on odouart that will have a guest with the name odd, truly the perfect, so is truly the perfect. So we are speaking with professor of history at e on west ted, professor wester. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Thank you for having meal you to yes, we do. It's it's really ashamed that you haven't had me on before. I mean, reduction with me as you first we had .

to wait for joe to enter his history face.

That's right, but you you should have in the first guest. So why this book? Because I imagine if I go on amazon, they're probably hundreds of books that are some version of how china reformed, how china went from being this backwards economy to a dynamic capitalist economy. I know it's been written about in various forms, new, numerous, numerous times. Why did you in your coauthor still feel at this point that this was an important story or collection of stories to tell?

I think two reasons. First one is quite personal, in a way, I mean, almost was back to what you are talking about the minute. So I thought came to china as, and I change student back in the late mountain seventies and friend, of course, my cover to live there during that period.

So this is always so a personal process while we live through corps of the period that we are talking about in this book. And there is no Better incentive as you you touch able to go back to look at history again, then trying to understand the period that you live through. So that's the first place.

And the second reason is, of course, that we think we do with that of anyone else. And we think we do with that of anyone else because we have more access to sources and more access to information about what actually happened during that time. There is you ready book. You can see how, at least when we do this as well as we can, we are able to get on the inside of many of the things that took place during that time and and showed complex. I mean, show you how complex step period of very early chinese reform opening was and in many ways, how can contingent the processors and how surprising IT is in more than one sense that to be ended up where you today.

So speaking of access, you mention this, I think, in the very beginning of book. But you started researching this in twenty ten, and you said that the research process in the access, you had kind of changed over the next, I guess, thirteen or fourteen years or so. Give us a little bit more detail, like as a researcher of chinese history, how have things actually evolved for you?

That's right. We started thinking about this and started researching IT can do early twenty teams. And of course, back then, we had much Better access to sources, much Better access to our to talk to people, to travel around and count, to have informal discussions with people who would be in the know.

Then what is the case today? So china has really, since twenty, sixteen, seventeen, there was close down in terms of access to historical sources of all kinds. So we were lucky.

We thought that this process called early on and had some good yg in which you, we actually could collect material. Then we did something really silly. We put in a oil for other projects, hoping that we would get even Better access in a few.

That happens sometimes that he makes the wrong call on these guys of things. And instead, of course, good much was. So what we had to do was to go back to some of material before we switch to other projects completed before we return to this book, and then try to fill that interests as we could with other materials we could get now. But the the level of access, the level of information is very different today from what you could get out of back.

And so I want to get into some of the content of the book, obviously. And like I said in the intro, you know, I have this very cartoonish vision of history in my head where my od dies, don show paying, becomes a the new leader of the country after a little bit of attention and turmoil, and then china to liberalize this. So one of this sort of eyebrow ing, or sort of mind expanding moments in the book, you talk about the cultural revolution and how even there, you know, we think of that is going, I guess, from one nine hundred and sixty six to sometime in the one thousand nine hundred and seventy, you argue that a the real intensity of IT was two years where the sort of the youth of china rose up again, the old culture within the communist party. But even in that time, amid some of this incredible turmoil that the communist party was going through under mile, some of the seeds of, I guess, capitalism were actually planted in the turmoil.

Yeah, that's right. I mean, that I think is longer. The contributions of this your summarized history will happen is not wrong OK if your start IT was really difficult, and as I said, very contingent in terms of the various things that are happening to get from warm to the next of those stages.

And one of the things that we do show enable is how the control revolution, which was undertaken, of course, in order to leadership and a take the old leaders in the communist party, who he regarded as being too backward to take china to in this new common paradise at this cultural revolution, has effects that very no way for me, and part of them wants, in many ways, the destruction of all china. I mean, they go to rid of many of the traditional ways of thinking and loyalties and take approaches within families. All of this, because of these political campaigns they undertook, directed almost against any kind authority, except all authority.

And in a strange kind of way, when you get into the north and seventies, more is still alive, still ruling from beijing. Things start to change in some places from the ground. Da m, so this is.

Turning to markets, almost as a kind of revolution reacts out of desperation. But most people along the coast, in the south, in the areas that have some experience, captain ism, and with markets, they are worried that when these campaigns, things have got to to get even worse. And some of these people have been started, you know, back during the gradually before the late fifties and early sixties. So they stop reading, they stop building up the opportunities that they can take for themselves in a little way. I mean, this is not a could dominant act in china in the only nineteen seventies, but he didn't seed something that is incredibly important for the future, and then comes into full flow after the party takes a step back of the model and opens up for these council reforms happening on the country.

Sin, I apologized in advance for asking a hypothetical, but do you think the economic liberalization of the late nineteen seventies, early one thousand eighties, would have been able to happen, or would have happened in some form if china hadn't experienced the cultural revolution and all the, I guess, emotional trauma and political chaos that came with IT IT .

wouldn't have happened when that happened? That's for sure. That's not even on how to typical. I mean, I think if china had continued basically alone, the soviet model of developed, which is what they took up after the people s are probably was to be in space, in the later and forces, soviet style, everything, right, planning, centralization, the whole of, I don't think the kind of reform that we saw in the late seventies and eighties would have happened because there wouldn't have been any fundamentally reason to undertake IT.

I mean, china would probably have travel alone in the same kind of way as the soviet union did until phone point, when that model started waking down. No, i'm not saying that the control revolution was a necessary condition for these changes in factors, but the period of cultural revolution activities did did many ways prepare the grounds for the timing of this. When I was to happen also because, you know, china, at the end of the cut of using also this office, you know, when I closed the rider in one hundred seventy nine, this was a dirt poor and terrorized country.

You know, a poor in terms of income to capital in most african country. And things, we are getting worse, not Better. So that kind of desperation at all levels of chinese society fit into these changes. Something had to be done. And going back to the soviet model of development that exist on when you get into this does not see as a viable.

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What does IT mean when you talk about history being contingent ent? You use that we're a couple of times and I actually don't know. I fully understand what that means. But when you're telling these stories or this story and you're keeping in mind contingency in history, can you talk a little bit more about this idea?

So you have seen from the books that we go in and out, from the micro to the macro o level of telling history. And if you look at the night one, the cool against the radicals in the social gang of four within the party took place, which we described in some detail what, you know, what happens from hour to hour.

right? This was the moment in which the left faction, after meadii, was arrested and allowed for the sort of more moderate .

path to emerge. But the underlying and security forces against the people who move himself had put in charge of the party, including his world, was most prominent of old, Young change. Now, that night, the following few days, things could have ended up very differently. In shanghai, the biggest city in china by far, was still on the control of the radicals over military units that supported the radical approach to politics. This could have ended up very differently from what that is.

And as we describe in the in the the book, some of the process, some of the the cum kers themselves in those days that allow be the cool itself were completely surprised by how little assistance there had been from the left and how little chaos there had been on the stress. So that's what I mean with IT being contented. I mean, this is something that obviously connects to the larger picture that we see today, going back to use three level version of what happened right in china. But he didn't seem that obvious at the time, and I could have gone in very different directions from what we are seeing today.

How important was the frame of the relationship between china and the soviet union in the sort of one thousand nine hundred and sixties, early one thousand nine hundred and seventies to spurring or catalyzing that opening up? Because IT does feel like the sudden emergence of the soviet union as an external enemy. IT feels like that LED china in some respects, to open up to the us. And some other countries.

This is that the trajectory that I think it's really important to get right, because what now, when his group of leaders did in the light mountain, six, was to turn to the new states, S N I A suda I security against the soviet union, because they were so deadly afraid that there would be a war with the soviet, all that china certainly would have lost, given the state themselves for china into during the cultural volume.

So what mounded was to turn to the enemy for away the united ted states to help back in against the enemy much closer to home is of the union, which that had this falling out with, mainly for our logical reasons. For most perspective, this was always intended to be a strictly security oriented judeo alliance, right? IT was directed against the soviet union.

More to the end of this states was puzzled that you, you know, the states would support the real communist st, meaning him, against the very common ist, meaning the soviet june. But as long as they were willing to do that, he was certainly willing to read benefit. But he never intended that this would have any effect in terms of the increasingly radical communist st direction that he was taking for china internally, domestically.

So that's when what happens in the to six of the most death becomes so significant because the people who tend to go over, they told, ahh, we have this relationship between other states. They are supporting us for their own reasons in the cold war against the soviet union. We can now also make use of this to suit the charge.

Chinese reform, right? If I hadn't been for that relationships trick the security ory of the that already existed between china and united states, I doubt a double possible. So it's very important for about the longer term U. S. Channel relationships to think about that origin and and how this actually consult the very different from the way most people think about IT, where the security element and the reform and conflicted .

on it's also just hard in twenty twenty four to imagine that various communist states would not be natural allies. Ed, and of course, china. After the vietnam war, china also went to war against vietnam.

M defect that they're so concerned about the soviet invasion. It's just sort of this fascinating dimension that I don't think it's neily into our heads. You know, I also read your coauthor is book.

He recently wrote a great biography of john lie and IT occurs me like reading that book in the new book. Obviously, I think moo associated ideologically with the left faction in the ccp and the gang of four other. But he always seem to keep a couple of, I don't know, the world is liberals, but to some extent, liberals around. So joe, he never got perd, even though didn't even like .

beral token .

liberals. And don show ping got page multiple times, but never lost his membership of the communist party, and always seem to find his way back, even during the matter. Why is IT that despite his ideological prelections towards the left, that in these important roles, he couldn't bring itself to urge some of these perhaps more reformist minded characters IT .

cost he needed to have things. So, I mean, more wasn't just the other large, which was the most important that that I think when you look at this historical road, he was also the leader of the country and he needed to get certain things to work with in the country he was in the and for that having seen time and again that his ological alis, but not particularly good at this, they were good at reciting, uh, Marks lemon, but have not particularly good at thriving things.

He needed people like join I, he needed people like them shopping to getting storm, but as to great join life. Biography shows very clearly never limits to how far he would go in working with people like joe, although he was willing to work with them as long as they sold his purposes. And if there was any sense that they actually trying to have a doric political influence above or or different from this, they will get into trouble.

So i'm not sure if i've talking liberals here is the right term. I mean, liberals in terms of their thinking of what politics these people served as stronger sy was allowed, served shaman, and they sorbed him at his life. So if he got a desperation with them as so many other people, that they will look serving his radical interests.

he would actually against them. You mentioned earlier that your book brings together the macro and the micro. And in terms of the micro, IT reminded me a lot of second hand time, which is an oral history of the end of the soviet union. And there are lots of stories in there about individual experiences and entrepreneurs who suddenly are starting their businesses in the post communist period and things like that. I've been trying to get joe to read this.

but oh.

it's amazing. But can you talk us a little bit more about the individual stories that you heard from this particular period in chinese history?

Many stories, and I, the kind of stories who are story tell us. We like to tell these stories. We like to focus on individuals and their experiences. And that, of course, what sets this period apart is certainly incredibly dramatic era, in first to cut revolution and is the voice.

And then this period of almost unbelievable change, which I remember very well myself, I am from one day to the next, things that have been seen as being true forever or no longer through, right. And things changed so very quickly in entrepreneurs who had a few weeks early, had been put in prison for their activity was suddenly held up. The heroes of economic development, right, that was china during this time period.

And it's wonderfully well tie ground for historians who like to tell stories. So we tell some of these maybe for the most fascinating ones we came across. All the ones of the usually entrepreneurs mean people who get started even before the political changes here in beijing has taken place, very often coming out of collective enter Prices of some salt people's communes, or whatever you have, and finding that I was pretty good at doing what I was saturday.

We have one example in there, which is want to track the repair shop to know to be incredibly good, that repairing tracts in wrong province, the to china, and then stopped gradually to get payment in kind of bartering system their services against a little bit of steel or a little bit of machine the real sale can put up right, which they couldn't create a while. They could have smuggled into hong kong in three, thereby the midnight and seventy. These folks have a hong kong bank account well before anything has happened in beijing in terms of.

So if these guys had been called, they would probably have been shot right for smuggling and currency when the reform really gets started. In number and seventy eight, they have a leg up, right? And they can do things if no one knowns him.

I know that heroes. So this is the origins of one of the biggest companies in channel today. So these other council stories that we would like to tell, I mean, political level as well. I mean, one of the most fascinating people that we came across is who are well found the the guy who became somewhat unwillingly most handpicked successor and who was actually quite a decent either in many ways, not a very imaginative, not the of DNA ism that don't had, but still probably someone who was unnecessary figure you in order to facilitate that. So yeah, that happened in the .

in the late yeah, I get the impression to reading about him that obviously he was in a difficult position having to uphold most legacy who's pushed decide eventually, more or less by a dung japan, but also sort of went gradually and didn't put up a huge fight that probably saved a lot of terminal.

You speaking of some these early companies, I hadn't realized that the china's number one electrical appliance manufacturing, I don't know, i'm prunty right. But my idea IT looks like that was actually founded in one thousand and sixty eight, as you point out the book. So really, I mean, here's this gigantic publicly traded company. And he was found IT right in the heart of the cultural revolution.

And those I mean, those were perhaps for some of the most policing examples. I mean that not many. I mean, we should be careful with not exaggerate OK.

This is not an attempt having to revolution. IT was possible under extraordinary circumstances and by extraordinary people to do things that probably early on could not be on. I mean, they didn't do IT because the company I wanted them to do IT.

I did IT because the company party lose control and couldn't go on with the kind of central loise planning that they had done before. Look everywhere in the times anyway. So media is a good example of that.

And i'm sure of one hundred thousand of these documents. S cultural revolution era of that didn't succeed for these people were called the number of prison camp. S so what the right? So we shouldn't overstate the county board importance of these attendant entrepreneurs of them ended up not going. And 那个 but there was this opportunity among those that survived to have that fundamental advantage over others when then country void， uh, national reform came about in the late mountain centres. And that actually connected to appointed legal phone because at that point, Normally in chinese politics, someone who fell from Grace the way who are go home did would have met with quite a terrible fate.

What allowed himself to be replaced at the top because he simply told he goes back for china, that he went in the direction that he did peacefully, and then spent the rest of his life cultivating grapes in his residence in beijing, he became one of china's foremost experts of native grape. So to which you publish at least two articles, of course, on the students. So you know, this kinda thing earlier on in china would have been one thing given the cut throat aspects of chinese voices.

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I didn't realize that china had native great varieties, so that's interesting. okay. But just on this point, what was the downside for individuals in accepting market liberalization? Because nowadays we talk a lot about the social contact in china, the idea that, okay, maybe people don't have as many democratic rights as in other parts of the world, but the promise from the c cps, that we're all gonna get rich and IT feels like in the one thousand nine and seventy and one thousand nine and eighties, there was some loss of a social safety net that came about as a result of the promise that, like, okay, you're not gone to get as much welfare, social welfare, but you're going to get a chance to become really.

really wealthy. And that was the cause. Part of this great transnational that we are talking about is what happened when much of social welfare disappeared.

I will be very bw to process. I mean, we have a tendency, I think, in this country knows what to think about. Chinese reform is the good reform in terms of results, and russian reform is the bad reform.

right? Me, where things went wrong after collapse. But these two are, in many ways, much more similar, we discovered, than what they generally have been taken to be.

The desperation that you find among a lot of chinese when these social welfare system should went away, mainly in the late date and ninety two thousand, was very profound. IT was a market revolution, but there's all market revolutions. IT has its wines and its uses.

And what was remarkable about the transformation in china was that when one went through that first period over relative production, then of course, the general economy started to pick up, giving more people a chance to enter into limited loss. But these two time periods are not the same. There was a period of real hardship to begin with. And then point a bit later, this opportunity for many people, still not everyone, still they are up about four hundred to five hundred million poor people in china and a lot people, but for many to take a step into ability just, and that's in a way, the story of channels were formed that they were able to make that jump for. In russia, most of the efforts are setting up, and the economic actually work domestically failed.

So one thing that people say a lot is that the chinese communist party for a long time, up until the day, is obsessed with the fall of the soviet union and figuring out how to avoid a similar collapse at some point. And part of me wondered, like the two countries seem so different and the circumstances that seems so different that it's like hard for me, like they like, oh, you do this, then you do get that outcome.

And who knows? But there is some school of thought that part of the problem with the soviet reform starting under orbit shop was the sort of political liberalization. The maybe economic liberalization is okay, markets, but you still need that strong central party and that maybe global charge mistake was doing both at once or maybe doing the political liberalization at all. It's set a you talk also in your conclusion about some of the most opportunities of more political liberalization along with the market liberalization that china has seen over the last several decades. When you think about the fall of the Silvia union and what contributed to the that collapse, how much of IT is that the market reforms versus the structure of the soviet union verse the political liberalization? And is there an argument to be made that the reason that the ccp and the country is stable as IT is today is because they didn't also pursue the political liberalization?

No, I no, I don't think is the key reason. I think the key reason what he succeeded was more that they were willing to experiment, I mean, under a situation of political dictatorship, they were willing to experiment in ways that the soviet leadership ever was.

And maybe, I mean, this is pure speculation, but maybe that goes back to, will be talked about to all your own, that the soviet union kept jogging alone, you know, with some growth, are very, very long time. That wasn't that kind of desperation that you in china, the everything that had had failed. So these people were really running both to transform channel, but also to protect the identity, right? They had to do something, and then they introduce gradual reform, and all that gradual economic reform without other thinking that they would give up political controller.

So this is one of the things that we show the book. And I think this is the recent why is chinese common reporting today is so obsessed with learning the negative lessons from the soviet union, is that much of this was, of course, not just about creating a china that was recent strong IT was being able to recreate the most part, that putting control of most right. So that story of how the dictatorship was reenforce at the back of reform already in the mid mountain eighties is a very central al quote of our book.

And we do see a period of openness from late seventies to the mid ninety eighties when there would have been a real possibility that china would have moved in the more, if the democratic, but more pluralistic, more open direction than what happened, what happened. They drawn about ninety four, their ables. That theory is ended down, is lying down.

The law saying the direction that channel will going is one of increased deepening market reform and communist party control. There will be no alison of any thought. There would be no freedom of of speech. All of that is. And this is, of course, very important in terms of underside china today.

I mean, yeah, this is what created the kind of situation that now, even though, no, of course, all I was in in, in china in the spring, and one of my businessman friends was joking that maybe the reform and opening should be seen as a amic. Yet, you know, let this new economic policy back in the ninety twenties where people were allowed to generate wealth for a while just for the party to come back in and confident everything. So don't say that i'm sharing that view. But given what he in pain has been up to recently, you can sk of the since .

were up firmly in the one thousand nine hundred and eighty. Now talk to us about coca cola and its presence in the chinese market because I kind of think this is like a nice little microcosm of the change that happened to the chinese economy around that time.

So the cover collective is really interesting because it's a typical example in a way of how IT was possible for I moved the national company to come into channel. You start working in china because of the attractiveness, the symbolic sm of the product that is delivered, but also was able to work with local people and local businesses. And what's also fascinating here is the connection between cola, cola and its political significance. And the american right.

Cocos, like a symbol of american capital, yes.

And the chinese leadership wanted to embrace that, symbolize sm, with all necessarily having embraced ed, the full package. So they were trying to figure out how they could be up with this particular american company. And they did other american companies as well in order to be seen as helping bring toka cola to china. But one conditions that would be acceptable to them, and this is the story that is repeated over and over again in china. But IT comes to foreign companies, the connections to local governments, how the the government oversees this, insert political terms, but also how IT can turn out to be immensely commercially successful under those circumstances.

You joked about your businessmen friend in china saying maybe that whole reform period was like linn's net period, and you had the dominance of the party, and then wealth was created, and then now the party reemerges in strength, then sees the control of that wealth, so to speak. I'm curious your take here in twenty twenty form, do you find that to have been an in inevitable R I mean, I why doesn't sound like you believe much as inevitable given your focus on contingencies of history, but was this something that like due to the specific leaders who emerged in china most prominently decision, but also to some extent with the more nationalist edge of huge and to like, is this something that is like as the result of these specific individuals that has bent the curve of history, so to speak? Or do you think there is sort of like structural forces and play that brought back the sort of like very high level of state control?

But I think IT was both. I mean, in in in in the hem pink case, I think he was picked by the poverty as the chinese could call the cool leader back in the early twenty teens, in response to what was seen as a bunch of real problems from a chinese communist part perspective over liberalization, degenerate zone corruption, strength of private companies, that there in a lot of things that the companies didn't want them to middle.

They wanted to get a strongly the win who could deal with those issues in a way that is Peter Young man, who jane had not been able to do this right. So they wanted a strong leader. Is just that make you, I think even for many communities, leaders of that innovation, they got more than they will go.

So that's what the personality of state comes in. They got a leader who really wanted to return at these on some issues to the more is even three more period in terms of the C, C, P, S. History and emphasis the party position over what even many party leaders back ten, fifteen years ago, gold would be good for china.

And it's a classic example, right, of responding to real world problems, not unknown in this country by going very far in one direction, hoping that that would resolve the problem that is there, and then getting stuck in a way in which the of the. That you have in this case, in t in pay. So I think that's the story, the way we can tell IT.

Now I hope at some point to be able to tell that story. They stone our kind and primary documents that story do. But I think at some point we will be able to do that. And then I would be fascinating to test that I protesters of what how this happened.

So just on the the revolution from below point， one of these things that you emphasize on the book is a lot of the stuff that happens in this time period is a result of people feeling that they are heading somewhere, that there is like a grander chinese vision that can be achieved. And so that motivates people to actually do something. I'm curious, just going up to the present day, do you get a sense that people feel that, that there is like a direction that china is heading in that is clear to people like what they are trying to do .

at the moment? absolutely. The note, I think it's very, very clear that the local people in china do not understand where the country is adding and what the reasons are. You know, you don't spend much time in beijing before you realize that these days. I think he was very different in the time period that we are talking about, which was generally at time of uplift at these in economic and social terms.

And it's right to say, I mean, as many historians ans said, but there was an element of barges that this for some chinese, not not everyone, but for some chinese may be particularly in business that would accept the dictatorship for IT was and then went on getting ration and establishing movies. Great for middle fortunes that you find so many of in china today. And that is good. I mean, that was positive.

IT was much, much Better than the dark past that we described at the beginning of the IT was just that china wasn't able to take what an all view is a necessary to improve its political system, its overall attempt at trying to become a more open, more clearly tic country in the period when the going was good, when there was a general sense that china was making advances, domestic and international. Now I think even if people from with india, chinese companies, coffee of the hint, would try to move in the direction of increased liberalities, which I think they will have to do at some point, because people are just very unhappy with the local system at the moment, IT would be much more difficult because the going is not that good, and IT probably never gonna that good again. And IT was a remarkable period of economic transformation, ten percent per year growth rates. IT would have been impossible to Carry out necessary reform, but these people didn't want to do IT because they had become so crocus ed with holding on power themselves. And I think history ally that that might to annoy to be the biggest mistake that the only .

problem is for me has od earn vested. Thank you so much. Truly the perfect st. Really appreciate .

you coming .

on the nominated .

determinism to A N Y C. regardless. Yes.

thank you so much.

Congrats on the book and people to check this out and appreciate 北京。

Tracy, i'm totally down and my daughter to just turn this to do history podcast. We read books, that story I feel .

like podcast becoming. History podcast is also, and right.

you run out of things to talk about as you get to start mining the past.

You know what? Actually in all your recent reading, you might know the answer to this question, which I forgot to ask R N about, but why was the soviet union and in like the one thousand nine hundred and fifty is obsessed with steel production. Do you know .

why I actually don't know the answer my guess would be is just like the most sort of objective thing of what you need to modernize in, uh, twenty years, century economy, you need deal for pride, literally everything that gets built. It'd been a good question.

And other thing that I wish I had, as is how paranoid, how justified, was because you that great question about the importance of the tension between china and the soviet union in mouse turning, at least to some extend to the us, which then expanded greatly over the following decades. But I never get the impression that there really was any actual prospective war. Like there's one point in the book where like the leaders all scrambled away from beijing because there were fear of a nuclear attack from the soviet union. It's not clear that there was any real anything happening.

I guess hindi is twenty twenty when IT comes to a lot of the stuff, including the cold war, kind of similar, I guess like nothing happened in the end in terms .

of like a nuclear .

and that is true. But like IT didn't happen, yes. But one thing that I got from this book is, again, the importance of an external enemy when IT comes to radical economic transformation.

And I think we've seen so many examples of throughout history at this point. So china, china's market liberalization as a result of its fear of the soviet union, is a great one. I guess the return of industrial policy in the us as a result of it's fear of china's economic dominance is another one. Japan in the one hundred and eighty would be a good one. Two IT feels like in order for anything to get done at scale and in inefficient time period, you have have like some sort of threat hanging over you.

This is why we need the pool, crude man, like we need to convince everyone that thread and then development without IT actually. And then there's no aliens in the end. But yeah, I know those things I know is such a clear shame. I hate to admit IT, but IT does seem like understanding the modern world. You can learn something by reading the past.

I D be surprised.

I resisted the reality for a long time in my life, and now I have become ed. We have to know how we got here.

Okay, now that you've ve discovered history, so we to leave at there, we leave at there. This has been another episode of the outbox podcast. I am Tracy allways.

You can follow me at Tracy. Away, away, you can follow me at the store, follow our guest, odd arn wester, his O A wester, and definitely check out his new book, the great transformation. Follow our producers, common rud rigs at common urman dash of Bennett, a dash bott and kill Brooks at kill Brooks.

Thank you to our producer mosses on them. For more other lots content, go to bloomberg g come slash of lots. We have transcripts, blog in a newsletter and you can share about all of these topics twenty four seven in our discord. There's even a books channel, which is where I think .

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Thanks for listening.

What is you can want to to to ask people why they should listen? You can to was also to asked them why they should read. no.

Mh, my blog is called no opinion. It's fun. I say I read about economics, but really what I do is I just try to analyze current affair pid lens of economics. I'm an unusual blogger and that I blog about everything.

As was pretty broad, we decided to do this podcast where basically you interview me about stuff that I write, laying IT out in over the questions that we've dealt into our like what's ending with the middle class, what ending with millennial, what's happening with energy? How do we think about geopolitics, immigration, trade? There's a lot of things that intersect.

And in using the lens of economics, we can go deeper and not make mistakes like thinking the economy is doing really poorly when it's not right. exactly. So subscribe to e on one or two on apple, spotify, youtube or wherever you get your podcast.