Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…It’s difficult to pick one, but maybe the best would be fly to Kashgar in China, in Xinjiang Province, and then cross the border to Pakistan, and perhaps go down all the way to Lahore and then Delhi. First of all, you will see the Pamir Mountains. You will see a mix of different cultures, Kyrgyz, Kazakh. You will make one of the classical trips, which is to go from China to India by land. Many people have done it by sea, but by land is a little more unique. China. Your next book is on the One Belt, One Road project. You’ve argued on Twitter and, I think, elsewhere that Chinese foreign policy . . . A year ago, China’s so-called coming out party was actually a big disaster, and not a triumph for the Chinese rulers. Do you still think that? Make your case. Yes. It’s so obvious. It’s one of those cases where people a year ago were saying that China was brilliant because China was the anti-Trump. Trump has corrupted all our thinking about everything because you first think about Trump, and then you think about whatever you’re supposed to be thinking or talking about. That was one example. It was very clear to me that China was making lots of mistakes. Now I think everyone agrees on this, even the Chinese authorities, which are openly talking about self-correcting and going in a slightly different path, which, if you know the Chinese regime, it’s a big deal when this is all out there in the open. They made lots of mistakes in terms of pushing too hard, in terms of not understanding the countries they were dealing with, their culture, and really creating problems almost everywhere, from Australia to India to Europe to the US. There isn’t a single place where they are not in a worse positon now than they were two years ago.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.