Dan Wang: belief

Transcript context

…No, they can’t seize Japan. Japan will just build nukes. The US will protect Japan, even if they don’t protect Taiwan. I think that is likely. I think that the case for Chinese expansionism is more limited. I don’t think that they will be extremely expansionist. Then the question for the experts is, to what extent should the US defend a country like Singapore and Malaysia from Chinese influence rather than American influence? If I think about the spectacular record of Chinese economic growth, and this is not only in the nation of China, but around the world, my unconfirmed hypothesis is that a lot of it is due to the fact that Chinese ex ante, before they were rich, already had high IQs, whether that’s this tradition of education, the exam system, earlier urbanization in mainland China, whatever. The Chinese started off quite smart relative to their per capita income. When other better developments came, they could just keep on growing without obstacles in a way that, say, India has not managed to do. Agree or disagree?…

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