Why China's manufacturing economy is dominating — Arthur Kroeber

Arthur Kroeber is a leading researcher on Chinese tech and macro, a founding partner at Gavekal Dragonomics, and author of "China's Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know." It's the most useful, detailed resource I've found of how China actually works.On this episode, we discuss how China achieved high-tech manufacturing dominance, and where they'll go from here. By Arthur’s account, the Chinese government is like a giant VC fund: they decide on key priorities and then spend hundreds of billions of dollars subsidizing ruthless competition at the local level. They are willing to lose huge amounts of money for a few of their bets to pay off: at China’s scale, effectiveness matters more than efficiency.There's also a growing bipartisan consensus that we need to combat China's rise. This doesn’t make much sense to me. China is a big, powerful country at the frontier in many fields, and its economy is intricately tied in with our own. Being instinctively adversarial is both unsustainable and risky. Arthur and I discuss how we can create a productive, mutually beneficial version of this relationship.Watch on YouTube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.Sponsors* Scale is building the infrastructure for smarter, safer AI. In addition to their Data Foundry, they recently released Scale Evaluation, a tool that diagnoses model limitations. Learn how Scale can help you push the frontier at scale.com/dwarkesh.* WorkOS Radar ensures your product’s free trials go to actual users. Radar uses 80+ signals to distinguish malicious bots from real people, eliminating costly free-tier abuse. See why companies like Cursor, Perplexity, and OpenAI use Radar by visiting workos.com/radar.* Lighthouse is THE fastest immigration solution for the technology industry. They help you understand your options and navigate applications for expert visas like the O-1A and EB-1A. Explore which visa is right for you at https://www.lighthousehq.com/ref/Dwarkesh.To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.co