Lessons of History: The Rise and Fall of Technology in Chinese History

I'm Julie sweet kind singer the senior associate University librarian for collections and public services it's my pleasure to welcome you in person and to our live audience via Zoom to the 13th Dr Sam Chung sheia Memorial lecture today on what would have been the 77th wedding anniversary of Sam and his late wife Alice as an intellectual Nexus on campus the Stanford live libraries offer students faculty and Scholars online and offline environments to in to explore investigate and collaborate with a network of more than 20 libraries and centers visitors can engage with primary resources connect with journals articles databases and data partner with subject matter experts for assignments and research and discover ways to access and manipulate collections in digital libraries across the globe before we introduce today's speaker I would like to tell you a bit of history about the Shia Memorial lecture the family of Dr Sam Chong xier several of whom are tuning in online today donated his personal archive to the Stanford Library special Collections and endowed the Dr Sam Chung Shier Memorial lecture Series in honor of his legacy and to inspire future Generations Dr Sam Chong xier was born on November 13th 1919 in Quang Tong mainland China he received his PhD in production economics from the University of Minnesota he began his career with the Sino American Joint Commission on Rural reconstruction jcr in Taiwan as senior specialist Chief Economist and later as Secretary General he served as professor at the national Taiwan University and as visiting professor at the Ford Foundation sponsored University of the Philippines Cornell University joint graduate program when the Asian development Bank ADB was first established in Manila Philippines in 1966 he served as director of the projects Department until 1981 when he returned to Taiwan to become Deputy chairman of the council for economic Planning and Development from 1983 to 1989 he was chairman of the bank of communications Taiwan 's National Development Bank he was appointed governor of the Central Bank of China a position he held from 1989 to 1994 from 1994 to 1999 he served as the chairman of the Executive Board of the China Trust Bank from 1999 to 2003 he served as chairman of the in Industrial Bank of Taiwan additionally he served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the international rights Research Institute irri I a member of the board of directors of the Metropolitan Bank and Trust in Manila Philippines chairman of the Chang haa Institution for economic research and as Deputy chairman of the Cross Straits exchanges relations council with mainland China Dr Shia was married to Alice Shia for 58 years they have two sons two daughters and 11 grandchildren he passed away on April 24th 2004 in Los Angeles Califor California at the age of 85 here's a listing of the past 12 speakers in this lecture series as you can see we have been very fortunate to have an incredible selection of speakers over the years and we're delighted to in conclude Professor Hong in this group with that I will hand it over to Jennifer Chu Stanford uh Jennifer Chu from SC ccei Stanford center on China's economy and institutions to to introduce today's guest speaker Stanford libraries and scce have been partnering since 2019 to bring the memorial lecture to campus and we're thrilled to be collaborating again on this year's [Applause] lecture thank you Julie and thank you to the great team at Stanford libraries for collaborating with us on this great event it's my honor and my privilege to introduce to you our special guest Dr yashang hang I am Jennifer Chu strategic policy adviser for the Stanford center on China's economy and institutions a a joint effort of the Freeman spokely Institute for international studies and also the Stanford Institute on economic policy research for those of you who do not know the center let me give you a brief overview uh Stanford center on China's economy institution which is um also short for sky is Stanford hub for multidisciplinary data Centric and Empirical research on China's economy it was started Just sh of three years ago in 2021 under the directorship of Hong bin Lee and Scott Roselle who are both in the audience today and um with over 30 faculty Affiliates and researchers it conducts a gamut of research anywhere from demography to education Environmental quality to health to firms and productivity to political economy so our Center strives to commit it to data Centric and cuttingedge research also to provide extraordinary experiences to our students and help the public like yourself better understand China but before I go on about our Center for which I can go on forever let me go ahead and introduce our special speaker Dr yashang hang is the Epic Foundation Professor for Global economics and management at the MIT Sloan School of Management author of 11 books in English and in Chinese he is one of the foremost world in the World Foremost expert and Scholar on China's political economy and in particular had to defining role in helping us understand China's transition from plan to Market but in thinking about today's lecture I was struck by something which is that we are honoring Dr Sam Chong xia whom we heard was the former Governor of the Central Bank in Taiwan and was instrumental in sparking taiwan's the Taiwan miracle and Dr hang in his latest book has probed deeply into the question that Joseph NM had asked in the 1960s which is how is it that Imperial China that it Advanced so far in terms of its own technological inventiveness and science including print make uh paper making and uh movable print compass and gunpowder had actually fallen so far behind the west and that the Industrial Revolution began in the west and not in China and so here we are sitting in the heart of Silicon Valley honoring Dr AIA and it seems most app and fitting that Dr hang should be our keynote speaker today but Dr hang does not just rest on Imperial China but he brings the historical analyses to today we can all agree that China has achieved enormous amounts in terms of economic growth and technological advancement over the last 50 years and he brings the implications of his historical findings up to not only those reform eras but up to today which confronts a very different political environment so I'm very excited to have Dr Hong here to speak with us um it should come as no surprise that Dr hang is a recipient of many prestigious fellowships and awards including the wooder Wilson Fellowship the US uh peace Institute fellowship and also the social science research Council McArthur Fellowship currently he is faculty member at MIT Sloan uh management School of Management but prior previously he was also a faculty member at the University of Michigan and at the Harvard Business School so before I bring up Dr hang to the podium I want to go over a couple of housekeeping notes first we have people joining joining in from zoom and therefore I hope that those who are on Zoom will add your questions to the Q&A box at the bottom of the screen and those in the audience here uh in person uh please wait for the microphone to be given to you so that those on Zoom can also hear your questions Dr hang will speak for about 30 minutes and then we will open up open it up to public Q&A this event is being recorded and the recording will be available to you soon after the event thank you very much Dr [Applause] hang uh thank you so much Jennifer for the introduction is uh uh always a tremendous pleasure for me to come to Stanford uh in part because my brother graduated from Stanford and like other Stanford graduates uh he went into business and he made tons of money uh uh leaving me much behind uh so um um so I I uh second guess my own uh decision um I went into Academia and for many many years um you know chungang and I um went to graduate school together and we have been discussing the issues that we're going to present uh I'm going to present uh for many many years let me also say it is my great honor to present the uh 2023 Memorial lecture um Sam Chung shares a memorial lecture um and and I do agree with Jennifer that it is a fitting topic and fitting theme in the middle of Silicon Valley to talk about technology but I go back to history um and then the title is the lessons of History the rise and fall of Chinese technology in history and I do believe and I'm going to end on that note the lessons and the takeaways we draw from history are still relevant to China today and there um we think about and speculate about the future then this is where history is very useful because history by definition has already happened and history doesn't always repeat itself but it rhymes with uh uh with uh with itself so it is useful to draw lessons and takeaways from history so it's in that spirit that I'm going to make my uh presentation and let me just say that this is a collaborative uh effort um with professors uh mostly in China uh and in ch Jung uh from pin University she was my student at MIT way home from chinua University and Dan from from Jan University of economics and finance and Mason sen um Sun uh who is assistant professor at University of Illinois also my former student at uh MIT and we have a contract with Princeton University press um and and and today I'm going to present the main findings from this research project and later I'm going to introduce our database and that database itself talk us six years to uh construct okay and Jennifer mentioned the book that I just published um I recommend it um and especially if you buy it um and as a business school Professor I care about whether or not you buy it um I don't care whether you read it but as an intellectual um as an intellectual I also hope you're going to read it did one chapter of this book is on on on on historical technology and uh and then we are devoting an entire book to that subject matter because it is so important and so complicated uh and that one chapter simply does not do sufficient treatment and Justice to this enormously important topic so the outline of the book is such the red lined uh two chapters are the ones we have finished and Jennifer mentioned Joseph NM Joseph NM in 1969 asked the famous question how come China was so much ahead and then fell behind the west and it didn't have its own Industrial Revolution so in our chapter one we reframe that question and then we propose our own way of thinking about that question and then we go through the technological trajectories and the developments from 5 Century BCE all the way to 19th century and as I'm going to show in our present in my presentation that the technological development was um was uh was was a very uneven one but over time it trended downward and then collapsed so China did coll collapse before War whether or not it is going to decline whether or not it is going to collapse I think depends on lot a lot on human Agency on policy makers on Politics on global environment so I'm not going to make predictions about the future but it is very very important to keep in mind that collapse did happen in China historically and then in the last chapter we drew broad implications of our findings and bring the findings to China today so that's the uh the book for this presentation uh I'm going to push along because I only have 30 minutes uh I'm going to highlight our findings and the idea there is that uh if if you don't remember anything I hope you remember the highlights and then um this is data driven um so I do need to introduce our data set our database and I do need to introduce our measurements uh to academic audience we typically devote 90% to that uh topic findings are are are are are are less time consuming uh but I may speed through because I do want to get through the uh to the end and then um we asked and try to answer this question why did China uh why did Chinese technology decline right it is purely from our way of reading the data it is not based on ideological priors it is not based on social science training it is really just reading the data draw the conclusions the way that I want to emphasize that is because we still want to have a voice in China today right and I do want I mean let me let me just say where we ended up in our book the way that we ended up in our book based on our reading of the data is that China had technological vibrant technological development when China was more free okay when there was more competition political competition ideological competition less of economic competition but mostly ideological competition and political competition right so there will be people who say oh this is ideological it is based on Western uh liberal values no it's actually based on Chinese own history so I do want to make that point so that it is easier to have that conversation with our friends and colleagues in China to really uh emphasize the empirical approach of our project rather than the ideological assumptions and then I'm going to talk about the lessons and the takeaways okay so let me give the Highlight right basically if you if you look at the uh the trajectory of Chinese technology from 5th Century BCE to 19th century right roughly 24 2500 years there are three kind of distinct eras of Chinese technology the peak was from the 4th Century BC right roughly kind of Waring States period to sixth Century which is the beginning of the Su Dynasty Su and town that was the peak right everything since then is a long process of decline okay the first decline uh began in sixth century and roughly sort of it was a onetime decline and then it roughly held up at a fairly high level at a lower level compared with the previous era but at a high level until about 13th century right so that's about 700 years and then there was another massive decline from 13 Century to 19th century right so basically Ming Dynasty and Ching Dynasty so our findings show that the Chinese technology peaked much earlier than conventional wisdom assumed to be right so just on that I believe the project is interesting and valuable you know we can debate about you know is that the right interpretation or not but just to get the date right I believe is massively important most historians I believe uh argue uh I would say believe rather than argue argue means that you you state your point of view based on the data but mostly believe that the Chinese technology began to decline much later right maybe 14th century 15th century and some including Joseph NM himself believed that the decline began in 16th century and 17th century so our dating is 1,000 years earlier than the previous scholarship suggested so that means that that is important and the next slide I'm going to get into that um that means that we have to look for other independent variables and other Dynamics to understand the reason why Chinese technology declined right so why does it matter right to get to get this right well I think to get it right itself is important but suppose you don't believe that then let me convince you that there are other reasons why we need to get it right the most important thing is to get a cation right right so if you believe that Chinese technology began to decline in 15 Century mostly economic historians sort of have that uh timeline they point to trade closures right the uh the famous ban on voyages and uh protectionism uh so they would point to those factors as causing the decline because uh they believe that decline began in 15th century and those actions happened in 15th century and then if you believe that the decline began in 17th century uh historians point to science the role of science but if you actually read those Works carefully it is actually not based on reading Chinese history it is based on reading in European history so 16th 17th century what happened the rise of Science in the west so it's not really about the Chinese decline it is really about the Western uh the rise of the West um so actually if you read modern economic debates on how science played or didn't play in the industrial revolution It Is by no means clear the science was that important in terms of explaining Western Industrial Revolution so let Al the absence of it little long explaining the Chinese lack of Industrial Revolution if you believe that the decline happened during the Ming and Ching dynast then you would argue that it was because these dynasties suppress Commerce right so essentially cut off the demon side of the technology right and you know many people believe that Commerce and economic development uh raised the demand for technology and Industrial Revolution happened that way and the other uh conventional view is that the two dynasties in China represented the peak of Chinese civilization right the T Dynasty very famous Tong Dynasty and the S Dynasty right and uh you know because these dynastes are associated with um technology and birth of uh uh literature and they are Empires so the political Elites like these dynasties because these are Empires these are autocratic Empires and they believe that the empires are conducive to technological development later I'm going to show that these two dynasties are inventive but they pale in comparison relative to the previous period when China was not an Empire when China was a collection of small kingdoms when there was mobility of human capital when there was a diversity of ideas right so I'm not denying these uh uh these two dynasties to be inventive what I'm saying is that they are far less inventive as compared with China when China was much more free so the sixth Century dating kind of at least cast out on these previous theories or explanations right um because all these things happened together with a decline so they may be concurrent I phenomenal with the technological decline but usually when you say a causes b a kind of has to happen before B right as a as a necessary condition to establish causality if these things happen after the decline then we have question about whether or not these explanations are correct right so what happened in sixth Century right so I would argue that um everything is about politics everything is about the transition of China from a political politically more competitive State of Affairs to a autocratic State of Affairs and sixth century was the Turning Point the so Dynasty so so Dynasty is a short Dynasty established in the late 6th Century reunify China but that's actually less important than the fact that this Su Dynasty put China on a permanent uni path toward a unified empire so if you look at the period before suan day and the period after suan day before suan day there was a period of reunification there was also a period of disunity right in fact the amount of the time that China was in the state of disunity far surpassed the amount of the time that China was in unity before the so Dynasty after that the ratio switched right so China also experienced a short period of disunity but majority of that time China was in uh was a unified uh uh Empire and today China basically is a legacy of the so Dynasty a single government replaced the constellation of smaller kingdoms beginning in 6th century and this is kind of the central part of my current book suan they launched kuu system the civil service exam system and that exam system did number of things as I laid out in my book it homogenized the Chinese ideology right before the the uh the Ki system there was Confucianism there was legalism Daoism Buddhism but Ki famously monopolized the ideological Space by mandating confusion ISM as the only curriculum right a stifled the kuu you know for anybody who uh has the pleasure of knowing kuu it was extremely rig rigid right pure memorization right and one uh scholar suggested that to pass C you you need to commit 300,000 to 400,000 characters to your memory right I think Stanford students are pretty smart uh students are pretty smart I challenge you know majority of Stanford students majority of MIT students can memorize 300,000 characters um Faithfully right so essentially you spend all your mental energy and time and memorization at the expense of coming up with a new idea coming up with creativity coming up with cognitive uh diversity right so a stifled creativity and actually a stifled curiosity because every answer is given to you rather than having you come up with the answer right when when you are being trained uh like that um you basically lose curios curiosity a Consolidated power of the emperor right partially by and this is this is a incredible political change in China in sixth Century which is that if you recruit human capital on the basis of the exam you sidelined and marginalized other metrics right if you look at Europe what was the promotion uh path in Europe it was based on a bloodline right hereditary characteristics your family your relatives and China and this is really really remarkable achievement it was uh a bureau it was meritocratic right a sidelined aristocracy right if you read the history of Western Europe how Europe became more Diversified politically and ideologically aristocracy actually played the very important role in that historical process so essentially could you sidelined and marginalized one crucial actor who over time had a political Capital Financial Capital to challenge the soling and therefore Ki I would argue was the mechanism why China was able to maintain autocracy for such a long period of time eliminating almost all the competition so that's what happened in the sixth Century right so basically that's the highlight of our book right three erors the peak happened before sixth century and then there were two uh substantial declines the way we arrive at that reading of the history is based on our data set right the Chinese historical invention database and there are two sources materials that were used one is by Joseph NM science and civilization of China I think the first volume came out in 1955 the last volume came out in something like 1995 right there were 27 volumes of them right uh Joseph Nan for those who don't know uh was a Cambridge uh Professor he was a biochemist by training but he became a historian in of Science and he single-handedly well not single-handedly but he had research assistants and colleagues uh essentially collected a record of Chinese Technologies through the publication of Science and civilization of China and then we also went to Chinese Academy of Sciences they published the history of Chinese science and technology so we use these two as our source materials uh um it is actually a very difficult job because when they record the Chinese inventions they don't really you know create a table um it is just describing these inventions and so our research assistants had to go through the text and pick out the information that way you know I wish I could tell you that is because of chbt and machine learning it is over done by manual labor and we had a lot of manual labor we have uh 44 researchers at chinua it took us six years and then we had 10 researchers at MIT who uh match the inventions to dynasties to centuries and also we have lot of ambiguities right so we we develop algorithm to to assign these inventions to hind Dynasty to m day depending on information that was not very clear very ambiguous right so this is what we did it took us uh six years um the initial run is that now we have about 10,350 entries in our database just to give you a flavor of uh you know this is not big data right so you say well 10,000 that that doesn't sound like a like a lot um but the previous uh data set that I know of has only 600 right so relative to that well first of all there were probably only 10,000 inventions in China so we couldn't make it big data so relative to 600 uh we have made uh uh a massive uh Improvement so this is what our research it right so they had to read the whole thing and then pick up the information from from the text right so the way that we um we Define invent invention is very straightforward whatever Joseph NM says it is invention we say it is invention we have no independent judgment and sometimes I do get questions from Scholars who you know at I might we quite a few of those who study Innovation right say oh how come this is invention that is not no no no no we just you know we have to build on the shoulders of the Giants and I'm not going to second guess uh Joseph uh neon um and after all I do want to finish the book rather than spending 30 years to clean the data so essentially there are four kind of categories discovery technical Gadget scientific theory production method right and we don't really distinguish between Science and Technology we don't really distinguish between inventions and Innovations uh in terms of measures we have um inventions right Count Of Inventions right say like CH St has say 800 inventions right the modern way of measuring a country's um technology uh technological achievement is to scale it by population right patterns per capita um you know something like that so what we do is that we have two ways is one is that we uh use dasty as the time unit right so the average population in one denate right as the denominator and then we have the account of inventions for that denate as the numerator so essentially a version of per capita inventions except the population here is measured in million persons rather than in one person um so for the Ching dast it is 2.85 it means during the Chin Dynasty of 1 million people in chin they came up with an average 2.85 inventions T say was much more inventive right right for 1 million people in the time Dynasty they came up with about 18 uh inventions the other way we do it is by centuries right um so um kind of average population during a century right and then we we divide the average count of inventions of that Century by that population figure so these are the our two measures so it's kind of a density measure um and then fortunately we drew from really fantastic work by Chinese historians on Chinese historical populations right and it's actually impressively comprehensive um so we we uh we benefited from from the work by the Chinese Chinese historical uh demographers so there are many many measurement issues um and and um usually if I give a seminar here the people will say stop stop you know let me ask you about these issues one is that you know different dynastes have different length right if you scale them that's not quite uh quite right and also population sizes differ across different dentistes right and and it is it is true that the later dast tend to have bigger populations so it's it's this mathematical construct that you show a decline simply because the later denes have more population right the the biggest issue for us those actually not terribly difficult to resolve the biggest issue is this one right we kind of assume each invention to be roughly um um as important as every other invention right um and then as I said before s dynast they although quite inventive was not nearly as inventive as compared with the previous uh era but people immediately say how can you say that son say invented three of the four most important Technologies in the history of mankind right Compass uh gun powder and printing right paper was invented during the handy so even even though quantitatively s doesn't appear as impressive as the previous era so invented these important Technologies so that's actually the hardest question for us and we have thought about number of solutions to that okay so let me go through this quickly because I only have a few minutes left um let me just you know I'll be happy to um to get to that uh if people want to ask me uh that question all I can say is that none of these complications change the qualitative features of our conclusion they're going to change the numerical value for sure right but they are not going to change the fundamentals of our conclusions okay um so whether you scale by population or you scale by the duration of the dtic you see exactly the same pattern right five minutes okay so you see the same pattern right um the population size we can actually have a debate on that um and and the idea that larger population automatically is associated with less creativity that's kind of a mausan view which is not really supported by data and also if you look at other country if you look at uh history of mankind uh the population increases by an all of themselves do not reduce creativity right we have far more population today than 18th century but we have far more creativity usually actually the bias is the other way around usually the bias is more people more ideas right so there's really this is not about doing math this is try to capture the process of human creativity more people is usually associated with more creativity with more inventiveness right so conceptually that criticism is actually quite weak so let me get to the equal waiting issue right so this is our solution so okay so that's a fair criticism that some inventions are more important than than uh than others um so what we do is that we adopted a two approaches one is the unweighted approach and the other is weighted uh approach we wait what historians consider to be important inventions more than other inventions right and we come up with arbitrary weights right 50 times 100 times right we go to these sources one is uh a book written by Robert Temple he lists 100 most important breakthrough inventions in the history of China right so this is the table that he has and then we go to a Second Source published by the Chinese Academy of sence Sciences they list about 88 most important inventions in Chinese history and then we match these inventions with the inventions mentioned in the Nan volumes and then we just gave them more weight right we gave them 50 weight uh 50 times we give them 100 times and let me show you the pattern this is basically the pattern right the yellow line represents uh weighted measure right important uh inventions are given a weight of 50 the uh Red Line represents unweighted measure right so if you look at a trend they gave you identical Trends so I hope that at least I can persuade you that uh even though the measure is not perfect the measure has issues and and problems uh but we have um um we have we have at least TR TR to solve these problems by doing these tricks okay so let me quickly uh uh conclude um when I'm only halfway through my presentation um so the the three errors right so this graph this graph um breaks down the uh the history by giving you the D States right the worrying States the ch and a Han and this is this is our um um that's the period I like the most um I don't know if uh uh those who are from China read uh the Romans of the Three Kingdoms right sang that was that period the most inventive period in Chinese history was during the three Kingdom Period um and then s did something into it right uh this is Tong this is uh five dynasties and 10 kingdoms this is Sun Dynasty and when I talk to uh uh people who study uh Arabic civilization they always blame the decline of Islamic civilization on the Mongols and I think we can do it here too this is Yan Dynasty right and then M Dynasty and and Chin Dynasty okay so as I said before Tong and S you know they're they look good right uh these are the two dynastes but compared with the previous era uh it is it is already China already began the process of decline um so it is not a peak it is a declining portion of Chinese history so this is my favorite period the three Kingdom Period right in the official um terminology it is called uhin nin and Southern and Northern D it is actually not a period that historians pay a lot of attention to uh it turned out to be incredibly interesting period u in our book so this is actually a Stanford Professor uh wter Shadel he this really interesting book about how the claps of Roman Empire kind of liberated European unlocked Unleashed European creativity and uh energy and I call this era of China from 220 to 580 China's European moment it is actually very similar to Europe after the Roman Empire collapsed in 476 very similar right lot of Wars lot of intellectual creativity human capital Mobility right and uh and also the intellectual class was relative relatively independent of the political class so so China for that period actually had a independent intellectual class we also had data um literature right yeah literature and this is a European picture right when the literature peaked it was also when technology peaked right so basically this is kind of Renaissance story um and these were some of the notable inventions math was very developed during this period two of the pure mathematicians in Chinese history uh and lived in this era right uh in terms of numerical value it represented the second peak of the importance of math related to other inventions and these are some of the other inventions um and then I use chpt to translate and to explain what they are um we don't have to go through the details but it's quite diverse there are some military Technologies uh there are technologies that um like you know I like to eat vinegar and now I know vinegar was invented uh during that period uh food preservatives were invented during that period right um how to use natural gas right so it was a period of really really very diverse inventions the reason why I emphasize diversity is for the following reason the reason is that that was also during a period of War right so arguably you can say oh it's just a military technology but that's actually not true military technology was a piece of um creativity but then the span of inventions was much wider than military Technologies okay so the uh uh the warrior States period was the second Peak right and we in States period most people are more familiar with right it was divided into Seven Kingdoms a lot of intellectual Freedom right the 100 flowers bloom um and uh confusas and and others roam around the different kingdoms and so there was a lot of human capital Mobility okay so let me conclude by uh summarizing some of the main take ways and lessons from studying history these are the things we believe IAS are associated with technological Decline and you know we can go further and say they are cly linked with technological declines rise of Empires political Unitarian right ideological Conformity um and let me skip that um so this graph Maps the technological development with the political development right so on this side of the graph lot of political fragmentation lot of intellectual fragmentation and then beginning around six Century you have political unification ideological diversity began to decline and then uh let me just also explain that we also have constructed database on ideologies using these materials these are biographies of 10,000 most prominent historical figures in China we track their ideological beliefs as a way to track the decline of Buddhism DSM and the rise of confusion ISM and that uh uh timeline the ideological timeline matches very closely with the second technological decline the political unification matches with the first decline the ideological unification matches with the second decline okay so let me uh finish quickly going to the um today right um so I I I think you know I in my presentation uh more than in the book I emphasize the importance of diversity uh what I call scope conditions right but I just want to emphasize it is also important for a country to succeed technologically scientifically also to have scale right the level of the government support the level of the government commitment to science and and Technology ol you need both you need both in our book we actually also show evidence on the scale how the Imperial government supported science but today I didn't have time to go into that so but I just want to make sure I don't want to kind of just give one one view both of them are important so Chinese history and today I believe is a case study of getting both things right when technology and science developed fast and getting it wrong when the scale completely went to the extreme and undermines the scope right and um you need both right so if all you have is government support without any diversity you don't succeed technologically and scientifically but the convention view in the west about why China has succeeded in the last 40 years in entrepreneurship in high-tech entrepreneurship in technology is that the government uh has this massive program right made in China 2025 and uh R&D spending as a proportion of GDP exceeding you know number of developed countries roughly around 2% almost no developing countri will spend uh money on R the in excess of 2% China is one is the only developing country that uh does that you know I'm not denying R&D spending uh is important it is it is very important but China achiev its success in the last 40 Years also because China has liberalized its economy has established collaborations with the West has established academic collaborations with Stanford and with MIT and with other universities there's brain circulation right so Chinese students going back to China Chinese business people coming to the United States so you can sort of conceptualize these activities as collaboration between China and the West before 2018 before Trump uh uh Administration imposed um tariff on China Huawei collaborated with 120 American companies huawei's phone has excellent camera it developed its camera in collaboration with Zeiss from Germany right Huawei is a classic example of international collaboration right so it is very important to emphasize the collaborative aspects of Chinese success rather than simply looking at the government support and the government R&D spending and this is my last bullet point and I have to end it there right um so that's my worry right uh if you look at you know what is happening in China right the collaboration with the West whether you blame China or blame the United States the simple fact is that the collaboration has come down substantially right I I don't know about Stanford but at MIT has come down substantially business collaboration has come down substantially right and China is now trying to recreate its own semiconductor supply chain right without International collaboration and and other condition I mean I haven't even mentioned ideological uh closure of the country I believe that no matter how much the government spends on R&D without these collaborative features of Chinese economy I worry about the prospects of technology and science in China in the future drawing purely from history of China rather than from uh ideology but that's you know that's about the future I don't know what's going to happen in the future but I'm willing to say that I I'm willing to say I'm worried okay so that's that's that's all I I want to say thank you very much um but I was wondering uh in some ways uh your story historically sounds like it's about um how there was a closing of the Imperial Chinese mind and sort of that diversity of ideology that um shrinks and things of that sort but um I did peek into your book so I know a little bit about this but um the mechanism that you point to is uh kuu um as being very determinative in many ways and I was wondering because ideas and ideology contestation of idea can actually come through the borders right with come through the um external borders such as from Hong Kong and from different individuals bringing in like uh Buddhism from India or whatnot and even the UN and the and the uh ching were foreign powers yeah could you flush out a little bit more Beyond the 300,000 characters that people have to memorize um and then just very quickly in the interest of time um uh we'll just go on to the audience Q&A afterwards so that's an excellent question there are two kinds of closures one is cognitive closures the other is policy closure and both were in effect when K system was introduced when autocracy became more severe in the history of China the cognitive closure is actually easy to explain right so you just spend so much mental energy on one subject it is just without any policy interventions it is just so much more difficult for you to spend comparable amount of me mental energy on on other ideas so the kuu you know in my book I went into some details describing the kuu system C system at the beginning was relatively Broad so they had um you know exams on confusion ISM but they also had exams on medicine on um military military um skills um but by soon uh it began to systematically eliminate these other components of the curriculum and yate did one thing that was quite remarkable they adopted what is known as a Neo conf fusionism the the the very the most rigid version of confusion ISM right um so just having confusion ISM itself is not enough let's have like the most restrictive version of confusion ISM by mean d say there was this famous a essay right ban ban is really restrictive right so it's it's strict the format strict the Expressions so gradually Ki became extremely restrictive and also tremendously demanding on your time energy and mental capacity right so that's a kind of cognitive closure in terms of policy closure I there I go back to the conventional historical uh traditional historical accounts the trade closure I think that that was a a big big factor and trade closure was issued in the early 15th century but it lasted for 400 years right so even the Ching dasty renew the the the the voyage band and the Jess Jesuit right did go to China that's true um and and Jess Jesuit I don't know how to pronounce that word properly Jes Jesuit yeah so they did interact with Chinese Society uh but if you look at if you read the history of Western Jesuits in in China at that time their activities were highly restricted uh the was it Chong or they they had these Western private tutors teaching them science and math but they would tell them do not teach these things outside of the palace right uh so there's both the cognitive and policy closure and the interactions with the outside world was very minimal if you look at the data on Buddhism uh Buddhism began to collapse at the end of the tongue Dynasty thaism began to collapse around the beginning of the mean dynasty right so we have some uh some measures of of of these things so essentially by 14th century also uh you had only one ideology left that's it got it um great answer so I think in the interest of time um it'd be great if we could group together some questions from the audience and I will also be screening uh the zoom questions that are coming through my phone so perhaps we could group together maybe three or four questions and you can go ahead and remember them yeah okay I I didn't take you so I have a terrible memory yeah um hard to believe that so um back there um the Y you with a blue shirt thank you so much for the uh excellent session my name is Greg tar I've lived out in Greater China uh Korea and Japan for 16 years doing international trade for Silicon Valley technology companies and I wanted to talk more commercially and just get your thoughts around the next three or four years we're faced with um some big uh restrictions for international trade and yeah my take on the situation is southeast Asia benefits big time yeah and I'm seeing that in Vietnam Thailand and Singapore and I'm wondering what your thoughts are on how we can resolve the pressure because we can actually all work together in a positive manner that includes Taiwan China Japan Korea us uh particularly around the automotive industry and it's getting a little bit of tension yeah want to get your thoughts thank you okay anybody else um I'm really curious um because in your work you deal more on the level of dynasties which is we deal on the hundreds of years level whilst um when it comes to lessons from history we're looking at the realm of Economic Policy which we're not really thinking that far so I'm really curious what you think of to what extent these lessons that you draw from this massive periodization can be miniaturized for theing era okay okay one more um um sorry I have kind of different questions if you need me to remind I can repeat myself later but the first one is that uh um it's more academic um I I was quite Amazed by the data divided by the number of population density as well as time but one thing as a technology investor myself I've noticed over the past a couple uh technology Revolution is that the time span of each technology revolution has been shrinking as well so the velocity of the technology advancement has been picking up exponentially right so how do we account for that in this study because in the earlier years they might take hundreds years to develop now it can be decades or years right that's question number one number two is regarding again another academic scale is that you talk about scale and scope I can't stop thinking that you know which one is more important because if I'm looking at you know in the recent history about countries as small as Taiwan with 24 million population they develop amazing semiconductor industry small state countries like Israel they also have amazing Technologies right so between the two which one is more important is a scale or the scope okay would you like to Pi one more or that uh well there are four questions because he has too right go for it I I I I don't want to show my memories and and the so let me sort of maybe answer in the reverse order right Israel Taiwan so remember those those economies are extremely export oriented right and so they are not just selling to domestic market and Israel they usually sell I mean one criticism of Israel is that they sell too early right so the startups are being bought by American companies by European companies essentially the scaling happens all side of the country and then the Technologies there go back and invent a new technology so it's I I don't think these two examples contradict you know the scale part of the equation in terms of exponential the very definition of lack of scientific takeoff is lack of exponential pattern in technological development right so exponential growth is a result of IDE ideas interacting with each other right so it's not 1+ one it is multiplication even uh even more than that right so the exponential growth requires ideas and Technologies working with other ideas and with other technology China in the Asian times simply didn't have any kind of institutional apparatus to create these interactive possibilities right so it's not surpris the pattern that I show sometimes it goes up sometimes it goes down clearly this is not exponential growth the Western um pattern before Industrial Revolution is similar to that so the issue is really how you can have some growth of this is a need puzzle right so how can you have some early growth even though it's not exponential how come that so so if I translate NE question into your question the question basically is how come that pattern didn't translate into exponential growth right so my answer is you know IDE ideology political closure and things like that in terms of the lessons uh how I miniaturize um I I don't know how I can miniaturize these uh lessons I I I I I'm not sure I understood your question correctly are are you saying that these are two oh the present day okay so so I I I think so I I think one thing if we believe in this in this pattern then the idea the overall takeaway is that China's success is no different from success in Europe technology takes off under similar conditions whether it is in China or in Europe or in America right so so the policy lesson is okay if you if your policy is so much against that system which is okay right that's your policy preferences then I would argue that then you should be prepared to give up the upside from technological development and in today's world that's a big upside to give up on right and I you know my view is that you know chbt was probably not going to be born in China but China had an opportunity to develop very Advanced fin Tech but that was basically killed by a political decision right and this idea that somehow you go after internet companies without hurting heart Tech I mean the whole idea now about data is that data can be used you know for software and all of that but also for hearttech for life science right so if you look at the data scientist it's very interesting right CH gbt was developed by a company rather than by University if you look at the top ranked live uh uh data science in the United States they're actually not at Stanford they're not at MIT they're in Google they're in companies right so by going after and financial right and and other platform economies you actually go after companies that probably have a better opportunity to use data science to apply data science in finance in other other areas right but the policy makers view is oh these are internet companies I want to develop Semiconductor in fact there could be connections between the data developed through the internet platforms and these Hardware uh Technologies right on southeast Asia uh I I think it if you look at the trade statistics between China and the United States China is where's the question okay he's okay you're still here so let me just make sure that it can be useful to you and and the the the China today is no longer the largest trading partner for the United States roughly in the last four years the trade share from China of the US Imports declined by about 6% 6 percentage points six percentage points are 6% of the US Imports which is about $3.2 trillion it's a massive amount of money that China has given up because of you know decoupling and der risking and all these things geopolitical tensions of that 6% 4% uh went to Canada and Mexico right so Mexico today is a very large maybe the bigger trading partner with the US than China the other 2% went to Vietnam so you mention soueast as Vietnam has a very small economy 2% of the US Imports is a huge percentage of Vietnamese economy this is a pure gift to Vietnam from China because of these political uh uh geopolitical tensions and the thing that we know about globalization is that globalization tends to happen slowly actually that's true both Global for both for both globalization and Del globalization they tend to happen slowly gradually once they happen they happen very fast okay so there's one idea that oh Vietnam is too small to replace China that's true but actually if you're talking about exports the right way to think about replacement is not whether Vietnam can replace China the right question is whether Vietnam can replace guong that's the right analytically right way to think about that question right gu Jang and maybe jangu right so you know if that's the the the replacement Target well Vietnam has a chance Mexico has a chance right so this idea oh we China is too big you know we have infrastructure and all of that we we are not replaceable that's just not true right also infrastructure infrastructure is actually the result of economic growth lot of business people believe that infrastructure is the reason for growth China didn't have decent infrastructure until the late 1990s and yet it had 20 years of Rapid GDP growth once you have GDP growth you have the money you have the savings you have the Govern Revenue then you have the engineering capabilities you can build infrastructure so this idea that China is Big China has world-class infrastructure and therefore China is not replaceable I don't buy it I don't buy it okay so I don't know if that's good news for you or bad news for you but but that's my bottom line yeah so this Q&A is going so well I'm wondering can we go for another few minutes is that allowed or okay great so maybe just one more batch of questions would that be okay okay so um uh that gentleman met Matt in the green shirt um there's a microphone coming I know Matt from graduate school yeah it's good to see you yha good we play basketball together and you can tell who usually won who could argue the best usually was the dictator of who won you won um could could you yeah be considered a technology of can a door yeah that closes be seen as a technology can a camera that surveils that produces homogenity and behavior be seen as a technology yeah so my in brief can what would it look couldn't we flip this around even and say that actually if you start to consider those things as technologies that starting in this way China started to develop all of these technologies that became very productive for certain kinds of social formation sure yeah I'll stop there okay yeah um let me ask one from the zoom actually um so there's a question regarding because uh there creative destruction um sort of inventions that happened during the the Waring States period and the interum between um Han and the way um the question is uh do you think that periods of War conflict cause inventiveness or is there a way in which it tips over too much violence actually styes uh uh creative destruction sure yeah and anyone else from the audience over I was given a microphone so I'm just going to ask the question I I'm a PhD student in the communication Department um the way that I interpreted your story was that political action resulted in these scientific changes to invention this and I'm wondering to what extent you looked at the result uh the reverse relationship so the scientific inventions causes the political changes okay one more um yeah so uh so my question is that uh did you see any patterns of the types of Industries when you looked at the inventions of uh along so many centuries one and secondly uh did you see any impact of um religious orientations or uh you know or or orientations on those lines on how Science and Technology was affected or not okay yeah okay so um wether C is a technology I think we could do that we can label them in such a way but the usual way we think about technology is that technology liberates rather than restricts right so if you think about CH GPT enables know enables lots of bad things too right but enables research you know in life science and right I think I would probably prefer to go with that conception of Technology right technology is usually is a enabling device right cars enable us to drive further to go further than uh horses right tanks enable us to um to kill more people than than than than Canyon so I I don't feel comfortable labeling I I would label them as inventions and these are remarkable inventions by the way the kuu we did a study of kuu it really really was meritocratic in the uh our data came from the main Dynasty right so this is uh before modern communication uh before modern times um it kind of worked the way that it was designed to work that's remarkable but technology I I I don't know I mean if if if if I could uh label it that way um so and then there's uh the where's the second person who asked the question no there's a religion religion yeah so the the communication uh essentially reverse causality right technology causing politics I I think that's plausible but you have to give me a story right and the my story is straightforward and there are also books now on Islamic civilization that tell essentially the same story right um so how technology this is actually related to mass question right so technology causing closure rather than openness that usually is not the traditional way we think about technology right um think about um how internet can set our minds free it did set our minds free but in a very destructive way right but but the freedom part is not disputable I mean so now you are free to have whatever opinions that you have enabled by technology so so the story from politics to technology um the reversal story that that is a that is a story that is so I try to overturn some conventional explanations but I don't want to overturn all of them so this one I accept uh so but so but but maybe you have a different story so I I I think it's easier for me to answer this question by knowing your logic rather than simply knowing your question on religion um it is interesting right I just finished reading the biography of Oppenheimer and Oppenheimer uh was was uh was not religious but he was a deep believer in Hinduism right sort of Mystique of the universe Mystique of life um Buddhism had had that dosm had that uh Joseph Nan said that deism was very observational Buddhism was very much metaphysical right having to do with your mind your brain right these are maybe modern Renditions of of Buddhism but Buddhism was was uh was very much sort of looking Inward and exploring the universe they didn't survive C you the one that survived and prospered is confusion ISM confusion ISM you know I don't know if there are confusionists in the room and if they are I apologize um confusion ism is the least mysterious the least um metaphysical and the least logic based logic driven right among these three other content contenting ideologies right so if the Survivor is the one that is most antithetical to science right I I'm not surprised by what happened um and it is it is so so so they are actually psychological experiments on people who grew up in a confusionists is thinking clearly abo

2023-10-16 12:55

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