Pearl Lam (林明珠): This is Pearl Lam Podcast. I’m in London and today is very interesting. I have here Keyu Jin, who is an economist and an expert. So I’m really lucky and honoured that she sits here talking, speaking to us. Can you briefly tell the audience what you do and your career?
Keyu Jin: Sure, Pearl. Oh, well, it’s a pleasure to be here with you. You’re so well known in so many circles, so it’s a privilege to talk about US China relations and the rising importance of geopolitics, which is also impacting the art world and, and.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Definitely with this tariff of the 147%. Oh my God.
Keyu Jin: The tariffs are everywhere, and present a clear and present danger. My background is that I’m from mainland China. I was born and raised in Beijing. I was an exchange student to US high school. And then I went on to study in the US for a dozen years and got my PhD finally in Boston. And then I became an assistant professor at London School of Economics here in London. And you know, ever since I’ve been trying to work on issues that bridge the East and the West, but really starting from point of view of facts of evidence from a macroeconomic point of view. But my latest book called The New China Playbook, Beyond Socialism and Capitalism, tries to offer a different lens to look through. I think the world, if only using a very narrow Western lens, is paints a rather dangerous future and a future where collaboration is not so possible. So the work that I’ve been doing, the research I’ve been doing macro on recently on US, China, technology competition is really about trying to speak the facts right, tell the truth, given a different perspective.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): You live more than half of your life not in China, right? So do you consider yourself as Chinese?
Keyu Jin: That’s a great question. I haven’t been asked this question in any of my interviews and I’ve done plenty for, for the book promotion, but the short answer is very much so. Not only because I spend four to six months a year in China. Still my work is there, but culturally I feel so, so very much connected to, to China. I do love the country. I think for all for all the challenges and for, for all the, the, the fallacies of any system. It’s been a wonderful country that has done so much for its people, and yet I feel very global. I know it’s such a cliche to talk about the globalists and I’m writing actually another book about how about how the globalists failed to see the real world. Because I’m a big believer that glocalism, global globalisation anchored in deep true localism, so, so much grounded into the local network with the local spirit is so important on so many levels for not just to say.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Success. But my whole argument about globalisation is it manufacture A homogeneous culture. Yeah, so. So when you see, you know, Americanism, I mean, you know, Americanization, you have the whole world with Hollywood movie, everybody is has has become part American. So this culture thing with globalisation, I thought globalisation, maybe it’s good for trading, for trade, but when you look at culture, it’s disaster.
Keyu Jin: Yeah, well, there’s now a big pushback and this is what my next project is about. It’s about the first of all this massive diffusion and distribution of opportunity at the local level all around the world. It’s no longer just about the core West versus the rest of the world, the core versus the periphery. I think it’s an astounding framing that we still use. What do you mean? The periphery? Nigeria, China, India, Brazil, the middle powers, Turkey and all that, creating their local stratosphere. And then culturally so rich, the pushback, right? In film, in art, in fashion, I’m also part of a luxury group that I know very well. A lot of the fashion trends are defined there. And with this greater comfort, confidence of the local culture, I think number one’s a pushback against this homogenization. Second is the growing confidence that’s afforded by this vast distribution of opportunity there. So all that is to say, I feel Chinese, but I am true at heart, a globalist who’s interested in the grounded local events that are that are happening.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Do you see yourself as a bridge?
Keyu Jin: I hope that I have contributed in my small part to a better understanding of China at least. And I think that things like my book has done a little bit to do that. But I think there’s so many people in my generation, especially from my generation, the younger generation who is more familiar with the multicultural world, the multilingual environment, they have a, a softer approach, more humane approach towards communicating with the West. So I think we all have a role to play in that part.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Let’s let’s begin to talk about when you were in high school. So you you went from China to high school, which is completely a different system. You know, American system, even British system is very, very different. And with China, with your Chinese education standard must be much higher than and then the American standard when you go there, when you went to study in American high school, you must be, I mean A grade throughout, right?
Keyu Jin: I I did graduate with a highest GPA in my rather well established high school in the US. But you know what was really fascinating? It totally was a new thing for me because the first day I step in history class, he sat down and said it’s all about questioning authority. Question this.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): For a Chinese girl.
Keyu Jin: I was like, what do you mean question authority mean what do you mean question your textbook? So that was a complete eye opener. You know, you know what I studied in history? When I studied history in China, it was all about dates and facts and memorization. When I study history in this Mr Devito’s class, it was all about thinking about drawing patterns, about drawing patterns myself, not looking at what the history book tells you, but but piecing together first hand if evidence and questioning authority and having the openness of the mind. That was what was just really surprising. Don’t be judgmental, you know, be open minded. And I find that so thrilling, but also so ironic years later when we’ve lost that in the American mainstream.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Especially now.
Keyu Jin: Yes, that’s what I’m saying now. Having a open mind, not being judgmental and questioning authority and questioning, you know what’s around you establish things. It’s it was, it was really an eye opening. So even though you know, the Chinese system was very different and made you master taking exams very well, it completely opened my mind to thinking about things in a very different way. Using your brain to think logically or to.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Not just to follow.
Keyu Jin: To not to follow, to ask questions. You see, I think, I think going forward with the arrival AI and so for this less about knowing the answers, more about how to ask, ask questions.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): They’re asking questions in our culture. Confucius, I mean with a Confucius study, Confucius philosophy, you’re only supplied to comply and obey. You’re not supposed to question. So this is I, I think the Asians way, whether it is Chinese or Korean or Japanese, because you have this Confucius culture.
Keyu Jin: Yeah, I don’t know the Japanese or Korean culture so well, but in China there’s a really interesting phenomenon which is, on the one hand is very Confucius. On the one hand, they are very good at taking exams, standardised exam. On the other hand, they’re also extremely entrepreneurial.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): That’s very different.
Keyu Jin: It’s a different thing, but they’re trying to find loopholes and just to put it in a very, you know, funny way, they identify opportunities very quickly and they think about how to solve that problem or get around it or tackle things in very creative ways. And that’s not following.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): No, definitely.
Keyu Jin: So they have both.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): And I think it’s also because in Japan and Korea, they’re very deep rooted in this, in this culture, even the mannerism, the way that they and they behave, they’re more, they’re more following, I mean, they’re more Confucius following them. And then China, I think China is very interesting in, in all that. So then you went to Harvard, right? And then in Harvard, must be very competitive.
Keyu Jin: It was interesting that when the the the time when I was going to Harvard as an undergrad, there was at most one or two mainland Chinese students it.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Must be not like now.
Keyu Jin: 2000 to 2004 now there are dozens of course.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Of course, of course.
Keyu Jin: So I think that’s a big change. You know, what was really interesting is that, and this is I’m living the, the, the transformation of China. You know, I, I get to the US people’s image of China was very different from the reality, you know, quite dark, quite oppressive, kind of that kind of environment where actually the Chinese were bidding for the Olympics and they were undergoing undertaking the the most radical reforms in modern history. Very, very optimistic about the future for good reason, because growth was really, you can feel the growth in the air. Meanwhile in the US it was slightly still the 1980s kind of image. But then when I got to, to, to college, you know, there were quite a few students taking Chinese Mandarin as, as a, as a course. And then by the time I graduated, some of them wanted to go work in China. So that goes to show how things very quickly changed because of China’s rise, because of China’s, because people knew about the dynamism in the Chinese economy.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): But isn’t that in early 2000? You know, China was hot, was really hot because it’s hot, and therefore the art is being very hot. It’s hot and people wants to do business, wants to invest in China and there’s great hope. And US China relationship was really, really tight. And of course then everything changes, right? Did you feel, I mean, at the time when you were there, it was really the best friendship of you know.
Keyu Jin: There was.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Collaboration.
Keyu Jin: I really I did.
Keyu Jin: Honestly, I did, because first of all, so many Chinese students went to study in the USI was one of the beneficiaries of a great deal of, you know, American generosity to international students and the idea that there has to be exchange, right? There has to be people to people connections and we have to understand China and so forth. Actually, the high school principal that brought me over to the US wanted to do that because they wanted, he wanted the school to know a different side of China. So that that kind of openness in mind was just was just, you know, really remarkable. I think a lot of a lot of things, great things came out of it honestly, because Americans were doing business in China, the Chinese.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): A lot of American investment.
Keyu Jin: A lot of yeah. And they did very, very well. You know, you search for growth opportunities once your opportunities kind of plateau in, you know, so it actually made a lot of sense to go into an emerging market that was developing very quickly and compared to other emerging markets had really radically different level of macroeconomic and political stability, right.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): And there’s also growth in.
Keyu Jin: Opportunities, Yeah, Stability was really crucial. Exchange rate stability, investment stability and all that. So, But also Chinese scientists came to the US and they worked for universities, they contributed to, to, to, to biotech and, and, and, and the technology companies. But you know, even fast forward, if you think about it today, it’s kind of ironic that from when I I know many of the people on the core research team of Open AI are of Chinese heritage.
Keyu Jin: So you know.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Invented the fingerprint recognitions… Chinese.
Keyu Jin: So it’s, it’s, it’s slightly difficult to fathom how you really can, you know, kind of break that, that link, right? That that is deep. It’s deeply embedded, especially in the innovation Knowledge Network, and has contributed so much to even America’s technological progress. Obviously trying to benefit hugely from trading with the US and working with the US and China rose now, but but just more on a human level, the Chinese really admire the US.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Absoulutely, you can see these big, big supermarkets.
Keyu Jin: Yes, the American dream. It was totally every single Chinese person’s dream. My generation, or at least the generation a little bit older than me, their whole life dream was go to the US, study and get a job there and stay there forever. Now, those who actually stayed there now regret it because they’re compatriots who went back to China, couldn’t stay in the US Actually, many of them ended up doing better. Opportunities in China have grown so tremendously that the Chinese students, even with the best education background, they could have stayed in the US and many of these top companies chose to go back to make it there, right? So that’s voting with their feet, but honestly, the two countries were not direct competitors. I’d even argue that today, apart from some of the core technological areas, there’s a lot more complementarity than we are admitting.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Let’s start from that, OK? Then you saw the China was growing and then you came to London, right? So what makes you stay in London instead of going back to America?
Keyu Jin: This is a personal preference. I wouldn’t speak on behalf of other Chinese of my generation or my background. I just love London for the multicultural background.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I think London is truly multicultural.
Keyu Jin: I think it’s more international, more global than the United States. Many of the cities in the United States, I think that, you know, it’s the thing about being in London, is that you can be yourself from anywhere and you can fit in. I always felt in the US you kind of had to be more American to fit in, but in London you can really just kind of be yourself. And again, I think less judgmental, but.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): London is not judgmental. France is judgmental, London is not judgmental. London, London. I think British are more self-centered.
Keyu Jin: They don’t really care.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Well, exactly.
Keyu Jin: But also, I’m a big fan of culture. My father’s a Shakespearean scholar, I’m a classic pianist, and I obviously appreciate art as well. And so you see the confluence of the art world, the business world, the political world, academia is fantastic. London School of Economics, one of the best economics department in the world was, was fantastic. It was, it was you were in the, in the wider world rather than in a bubble or an ivory tower where you saw only a certain part of the world. And so here it you know, even though London’s a great cosmopolitan city, it did open my eyes again to the realities of a more complex world.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): There is a lot of miscommunication between the West and China. This this miscommunication is really pretty deep because I think each of of the countries should have someone who really understand what they want. And then later on I find out, I mean, the West become intimidated by China. I think it’s about a whole misunderstanding about each of the nations.
Keyu Jin: The misunderstanding or the misgivings is really at the core of the problem. I I honestly fundamentally do not see US and China necessarily at loggerheads with each other because China is not an imperialist country. China is. I think it’s a totally wrong comparison to put China in the bucket of Iran and North Korea and Russia, which is what Washington, DC is doing. This misgiving goes so deep on so many levels. But even culturally, right. You know, I remember the time when I arrived as a high school student, you know, in China, the, the, the thing that you want to do as a student is to be #1.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Of course.
Keyu Jin: You’re proud to be #1 or you strive to be #1 whereas in an American high school, you would never, ever want to say that you want to be #1 that would be a fatal mistake. And, and even though many people wanted to be #1 they won’t say it. They won’t say it, right. So that’s a, a cultural thing. And I also remember, you know, I talk about my parents often. You know, I talk about my parents and what their desires, even I don’t always listen to them. I mentioned my parents once in front of my Harvard thesis advisors, and they kind of dropped their jaws. And like, why are you mentioning your parents? And all my Chinese students in my, in the London School of Economics, they sit in my office. We’re discussing your future plans. Almost 85 to 90% of them start with, well, my parents think that I should blah, blah. And so it’s a very, it’s a very cultural thing. I’m an extremely independent person. I do refer to my parents. I do refer to my family, but I think it’s just the relationship with authority is so different, you know?
Pearl Lam (林明珠): And also it’s very respectful.
Keyu Jin: It’s very respectful.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): And also you always want to mention.
Keyu Jin: This is not blind. Yeah, but this is not blind submission.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): No, no.
Keyu Jin: They could use it in the West as something of patriot, you know.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): You’re not independent.
Keyu Jin: Or they they they can they attribute to authoritarianism. It’s not, it’s not that it’s a respect, Yeah, but it’s not blind submission, right. It’s even, you know, it’s more it’s a more fluid relationship, it’s more balanced and more harmonious relationship. So we do refer to our families quite often and see. So I think that this is just a simple example of how deep this misunderstanding runs. And I think that a lot of the, you know, the travelling helped to convey a different side of China, more humane side of China because a lot of the misgivings lie in the political system, right, And the role of the government. Again, if we come back to this idea of with your relations with authority, it’s not necessarily that we’re submitting to the government or we’re being submissive or, you know, being oppressed by anybody. It’s, it’s a contract. It’s an implicit contract that we’ve had for thousands of years where in exchange for security, the government is held accountable for your welfare and simple things like that. Of course, it’s more complicated. But you see, I think this is at the core of the the US China tension is that they think we have a political system that is oppressive.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I think the big the, the problem with America is that they think the system is the best. Everybody has to follow their system. So it’s like Bush said, either you are what, for me or against me, you know, it’s, it’s a.
Keyu Jin: Complex world.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): It’s not an open minded that you know, you have a different system, you have a different culture. I’m coming. I respect your culture. I respect your system. It’s not.
Keyu Jin: This is not the way that US as a hegemonic power has looked on to the world. I think China’s worldview, you know, against their, their, their, for all of the things that it needs to change. And I think there are to be more, to be in more harmony with the world. Still, China believes in coexistence of differences.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Differences, I think that’s the most important thing, yeah.
Keyu Jin: Well, this is not, this is not looking at using one lens to look at the world. And again, in my book, I tried to show that there’s not just one model that works, right? There’s no just one principle that that has to be, you know, that the only one. And that the multiplicity of religion, of political systems, of economic models, of different forms of, of institutional arrangements can coexist. And until we recognise that, until we acknowledge the coexistence of a beautiful tapestry, a mosaic of, of cultures and and systems, can we then go on to say, how are we going to work together? Right. If you use one lens to look at the world and expect everybody to be the same, that’s not going to work.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I always say that today we have to celebrate differences.
Keyu Jin: Yeah. And and even as we talk about democracy wants it versus non democracy, I think this is a again the wrong framing.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I think so. I think so. I think democracy works in certain ways, but but also democracy, I think so great democracy. You need to have everybody who have this similar education, similar intellectual power before you really can can have true democracy.
Keyu Jin: Yeah, I think that we we should discuss more about what makes a successful society right, rather than put labels because the labels are not working. The GCC countries, China, all these middle powers, big powers rising, doing so well successfully, many of them are not democracies. What makes society successful? I think their principle, their lessons to be drawn there rather than carving the world into different spheres that I think are so blurred in the 1st place and really not helpful.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I mean, America today is is no better than than Britain during the colonialism. It’s exactly.
Keyu Jin: Yeah, it’s being very, are they not?
Pearl Lam (林明珠): They’re not helping themselves. Yeah, with kicking out illegal immigrants, trying to, I mean, arresting judge and all that.
Keyu Jin: It’s so shocking that this happens in America. Telling, telling the universities who is from. Yeah, the last place in the world. You think that this would happen, but you know, telling universities that you can’t take in certain students.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): And then and then they want to control the hiring and and then look at the visa. I mean, come.
Keyu Jin: On and then the imperialist drive as we we we see a glimpse of the end of Russia, Ukraine. Now it’s what, the United States the imperialist right?
Pearl Lam (林明珠): There is deep rooted misunderstanding standing between the West and the East if the West does not understand the position of China they find intimidating.
Keyu Jin: I think this confidence, right? Certainly it’s founded on something which is very successful economic growth. Of course, China is not really a rich country yet, right? So maybe that came a little bit early. Maybe the pronouncement that China’s going to dominate the world in technology didn’t go down so well with Washington, DC.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): You immediately create competitors, right?
Keyu Jin: So I think there’s there’s some of that, but also I think actually even on the business level, if you think about it, American businessmen, European businessmen used to make money in China. And over time they made less and less and less money, OK. And I think that is also a factor because they were the biggest proponents, proponents of keeping engagement with China, keeping China open with with the US and they made less money. Now part of it they blame on the discriminatory policies of the Chinese government. I think there was a bit of, is that true in the past? There was a bit of truth to it, although not completely true because again we’ve looked at the data actually foreign companies got on average more subsidies than domestic companies, domestic private companies and domestic. SO ES state owned enterprises also got more subsidies than domestic private companies because a lot of the the foreign. Yeah, a lot of foreign companies benefited from these export subsidies because they were mainly exporting to the rest of the world. There was maybe not the same level playing field, especially when you had the state owned enterprises involved. So I can totally see that there was definitely, it was definitely there. But the important thing is that you fast forward many years later, you take away these subsidies. And by the way, a lot of these subsidies are not in place anymore. China has become so fiercely competitive, yes, and it’s cutthroat competition of the most ferocious kind in the world. It’s very, very difficult for American, European companies to survive unless you really truly bring something different onto the table, right. So there are many, many successful companies, Apple being one of them, Estee Lauder, etcetera. But a lot of them were just pushed out also by domestic competition. I think it’s, I think the expiration date has long passed when you still blame Chinese subsidies on on things because 95% of the manufacturing sector follow market trends, meaning there’s no over investment, there’s no government intervention. So I think that’s an old conversation. But I just think that if China was able to open up more quickly more sectors for foreign companies to make money, especially in the financial sector where the US can, you know, really benefit in the service industries, I think things would have been a little bit better.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): But having said all that, when I look at the trade imbalance, because that trade imbalance, they did not take into account of the service industry. If you take into account the service industry, would there still be a trade imbalance because you.
Keyu Jin: You mean the trade surplus with China on the services. Yeah, but you see the the it’s all very politicised.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Exactly.
Keyu Jin: It’s all about manufacturing jobs, which is very hard to understand why Trump is so interested in low, low end manufacturing being brought back to the United States.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Because he wants employment. Because he got the the the voters.
Keyu Jin: But every steel job that they saved in Trump 1.0, they lost in the 10s of thousands of other sectors employment. Because when steel prices go up, all the downstream sectors actually were worse off. And so for the 10s of thousands of steel jobs they save, they lost a lot more on net. But again, it’s a political problem, right? We all understand that this is, you know, this brings more efficiency, maybe more distributional consequences. But but China’s manufacturing dominance is not because of the subsidies, right? Yes, maybe subsidy though in the beginning helped, but the level of competition, the level, a level of efficiency in terms of supply.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Efficiency and also I just read now China has all the robots. It’s the. I mean, it’s.
Keyu Jin: 50% of the global robots is, you know, exports is accounted for it by China. So China has a different level on scale of efficiency.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): And I was told that even I read even that America would take back the manufacturing, they would not have the output and the efficiency and the quality of China.
Keyu Jin: Right. So, so, so the dominance lies in so many different factors. And I think it’s just years of experience and scale and supply chain coordination, which China has matched. Think about the company Shein. Unfortunately, it’s now it’s not exempt to the to this tariffs, but so prices have doubled, but they’ve doubled from, I don’t know, $8 per dress to $16.00. But it comes from efficiency of supply chain. Trump in many ways is right about certain things even though the strategy and tactics are wrong. He pointed out some of these problems and it’s a lot of it is a domestic US problem, right. But the China faces some of the challenge in terms of how to take globalisation and how to be part of it. That leads to more balance, right? It’s and then it’s about rebalancing. It’s not about maximising efficiency. Right now China has been maximising efficient and you’re absolutely right, has benefited so many different countries and companies because everybody got things cheaper, right?
Pearl Lam (林明珠): At least it helped them with the inflation.
Keyu Jin: For sure, if you look at, again, I look at the data, US inflation in the last 20 years, all the inflation comes from services, not from manufacturing. And this is because of China. So, but it’s not well recognised and well appreciated because you go to Walmart, yes, now you know that some of this is, is is made in China or you always knew that you always knew that, but you just didn’t really internalise how much it kept the prices down, right? But you focus on the 10s of thousands of steel jobs or manufacturing jobs that were displaced. Now the US consumers are going to feel it because back to school in September, all these schools.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah, and all the toys, all the pencils and everything.
Keyu Jin: Yeah, I think that we, and I’m an economist, and the first thing that we economists have to think about is we need to incorporate some of the more human aspects into the whole efficiency argument, right? And that’s never been featured in the model. So it’s not only about balance within countries, it’s balance across countries. It’s about China figuring out how to be in a harmonious relationship with all else while offering the efficiencies and and the innovations that can. But holding back a bit, right? The new generation really shows a much softer, more human, humane side of China that when we talk about the misgivings, I think we do need to focus on them. If you see it through their lens, their eyes, actually China’s fascinating like for the reasons that you you mentioned the convenience, but also the very tech innovation. Futuristic, very funny, humorous. You know, I, I remember there’s a, there’s an influencer, an American, black American influencer. Speed gathers about 25 million views on his, you know, trips to China’s second tier cities, Chongqing. I mean, they were so amazed by what China’s like. Chongqing looks like. Shanghai looks like any other.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Major I think with the mountain and the sea, it looks like Hong Kong.
Keyu Jin: Well, it looks like many cosmopolitan and I remember there’s, there’s a person who’s selling his goose, right, his delicious goose. And he’s been following this guy four months day in, day out just to get more publicity. I mean, it’s really genuine. And they became the best of friends without speaking the, the common language. But this is, this is the real China, right? This is Chinese people, Chinese people and their, their love of, you know, doing things, their, their, their, their, their, their high spiritedness, all this.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Hard working.
Keyu Jin: Hard working, but you know, with a very interesting view of life in the world. I think all of this is not captured in in any of the state to state discussions. But China does have the softer and more humane side that that doesn’t get appreciated. I think most people who travelled to China, who’ve been there, change their minds about China. Yeah, absolutely. From reading the newspapers.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Right. My next question for you is one child policy.
Keyu Jin: Yes.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I read that you actually did an analysis on the impact of one child policy. Now what we know is India is still with a huge younger generation. The factories, they still using a lot of hands. They, you know, the labour is not a problem. Then you see in Japan the ageing people is more than the younger people. They are having problems. China again you have the ageing population. So now, of course, China, they change the whole policy that you can have.
Keyu Jin: A little too late, yeah.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): A bit too late, right? So how are you going to see this one job policy affecting the public finance and the economy, China economy?
Keyu Jin: I think that ageing demographics is obviously what people believe to be one of the biggest challenges for China’s economy. I actually stand in the other camp of the minority who that don’t believe that this is a first order issue. OK, I believe it’s an issue. I don’t think it’s a first order issue before going to the social issues, which I think there are more interesting consequences than the economic one. In Chinese, you still have hundreds of millions of undereducated, underemployed people living in the countryside.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): And some of them are still illiterate as well.
Keyu Jin: Exactly. And and that’s still part of a potential labour force that can be much more productive and can add to the economy. So China isn’t really in a point where it’s like Japan and Europe in terms of the labour force contribution to the to the economy. I’m much more about productivity than about number of people.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Right.
Keyu Jin: If you look at what AI is doing, even looking at the last 30 years of manufacturing, but labour productivity rising by 10 to 15% per year, labour force potentially shrinking by point 1.5% per year. You know, it’s about how efficient you become. And so the younger generation, at least until this point, are still earning a lot more than the previous generation in the same age. So it’s because of the rising opportunity. I also think that we don’t know what’s going to happen with the arrival of AI, right? Robotics. Yes. True.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Absolutely.
Keyu Jin: We’re worried about not enough jobs for people. And at the same time we’re worried about, you know, kind of too few people in China. And there is a little bit of a paradox, a contradiction there. So I think that with AI, we don’t even really know what it means to work in the future, right? What, how we’re going to spend our, our, our day, our everyday life, you know, doing things. So it’s it’s hard to say economically it’s a clear path because I think that the arrival of AI this time around is so fundamentally transformative, even more so than the industrial revolution of the 19th.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Century, I agree absolutely, because it changed the whole, I mean the whole formula, the whole protocol, everything.
Keyu Jin: Everything the, the, the, the potential is. So the potential is vast. I think it we’re we’re, you know, talking about this Democratic pressure in the next, I don’t know, 20-30 years. Yeah. But, you know, lots of things are, are changing. Oh.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Since you’re talking about AI and technology, the general thing is when I went to China, people will say, oh, America is stopping us from growing and we could have conquered the world. We couldn’t do it. We could have the number one in the world and now we are being controlled. We could not share the best technology, blah blah blah.
Keyu Jin: No, I I think this is a.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Your comments.
Keyu Jin: Yeah, I think this is a a false argument #1I if anything, I think the export controls and the tech restrictions accelerated China’s development, if we look throughout.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Absolutely accelerated DeepSeek.
Keyu Jin: Exactly. DeepSeek came out under pressure. A lot of the biggest technological breakthroughs happened under a crises and pressure, not when times are really good. Actually, if you look at the Chinese semiconductor industry, when the Chinese decide to import semiconductors from Americans, the whole industry stalled for 20 years. Yeah.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah, because I was told told by and by some of the engineers and some of the company they said that they can buy from.
Keyu Jin: America why would you bother? Why, why, why do we still?
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Still have to pay R&D, Yeah, Why do we have to invest in R&D now all of a sudden they have.
Keyu Jin: And in the last few years the the improvement has been so rapid, it’s been so rapid, it would have not been possible without these controls in place. If you look at the Shanghai SEMICON conference, I’m told by the experts the degree of domestic capacity now is enormous with very few gaps really left in between. And I think in a very short amount of time, China would be most mostly able to satisfy domestic, but also with the help of Japan and Korea, which is not only of the US camp. This would have not been possible at that speed were not for these controls. But also it’s also elicited almost a wartime mobilisation and a whole whole of a nation programme. Right, Everyone runs on and Alibaba, all the private companies, they all want to tackle the the biggest choke points to Chinese technology. But again, if we look back throughout history, it’s always under pressure that these kind of breakthroughs happen very often. But even with Europe right now, the Trump and the wake up call, they have to do more. They have to do more investment, defence and technology. But in China, it’s actually really, really happening because there wasn’t a real existential crisis a few years ago that China would be cut out from the critical supply chain. I think it’s much less concerned now. So I don’t agree with that statement. But also it’s still up to China, right? If we look at most of the policies, whether it’s China, the UK or America, the worst policies are always self-inflicted.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): It’s.
Keyu Jin: True, it’s never.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Self-inflicted. That’s never.
Keyu Jin: Coming from abroad, right, They can do a bit. Sometimes they can actually help you against their will. But the most dramatic bad policies are always self-inflicted. So I think only China can stop China’s rise, just like the US, right? the US is its biggest threat to progress, if I may say. So thank you, thank you, thank.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): You. It’s such an interesting conversation. I could have talked. I could have speak with you another hour.
Keyu Jin: Yes, likewise.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I don’t want to keep you here.
Keyu Jin: Thanks for having me Pearl.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Thank you. Thank you.
