Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…I don’t listen to any American contemporary music. I would ask you, why is American contemporary music so weak relative to Mozart? I was just listening to the latest Beyoncé CD. It is not as good as Mozart, but I think it is wonderful, and it will last. American contemporary music has been a bit slow for the last, say, dozen years, but I think the last 60 years have been amazing. Well, I would say that Chinese music is not a special case, in which Chinese films have gotten steadily worse over the last 10 years of Xi Jinping’s rule. You have the top art house movie director Jia Zhangke being openly frustrated about the censorship regime, that there is this clear preference in China for ballads, which are a holdover from, basically, the Communist days plus the Cantopop that was imported from Hong Kong. They haven’t really been able to move on. That Chinese visual arts has gotten also weaker steadily over the last 10 years of Xi Jinping’s rule. I would say, generally, Chinese culture has gotten weaker and weaker. It is no surprise to me that Liu Cixin wrote most of The Three-Body Problem before Xi Jinping came into office. A lot of things are getting worse. It is not just the music.…

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