China, As I’ve Seen It

Over 16 years of traveling through China—from major cities to rural towns—I’ve consistently encountered a country utterly unlike the dystopian caricature offered by Western media. What I see is safety, order, pragmatism, competent governance, low corruption, efficient bureaucracy, and a population focused on stability and self-improvement.

The following is my article, adapted from the speech I recently gave at the last Capitalism & Morality seminar. In the speech, I suggested that China may well become the next USA; in this article, I argue that it likely will not. I remain genuinely conflicted over whether China can ever place truth-seeking and philosophy in the driver’s seat—and this internal struggle explains my vacillation on China’s long-term civilizational trajectory:

In my recent discussion with David Oualaalou, I explained why Modi will never sit in opposition—how vote manipulation, institutional capture, and the subversion of constitutional bodies have ensured that these organs now function almost entirely at his bidding. India today is a place where checks and balances have collapsed, where political competition survives only as theatre, and where the other parties offer no redeeming virtues of their own:

On Investments

This evening, I had a discussion (linked here) with Albert Lu of Rule Classroom. The following are the companies I mentioned in the talk, listed in descending order of my priority based on annualized upside. Because the merger-closure dates vary, a company with a low absolute upside can still offer a very high annualized return.