I spent 30 years building businesses in China, including scaling Super 8 Hotels China to 1000 hotels. Today I write and speak about U.S.–China economic competition, industrial policy, and global supply chains. Visiting Fellow at Harvard’s Fairbank Center (2023–25). An Owlish perspective. Articles and talks below.

The Economist: “For Its Own Sake, China Should Change its Growth Model.” China: “For Its Own Sake, The Economist Should Stop Giving Advice to China.” economist.com/leaders/2026/0…

The core question has never been whether human rights are important. Of course they are. The more challenging question is how to define and measure human rights in ways that are sufficiently objective, universal, and applicable across societies with different histories, cultures, and political traditions. Reasonable people can disagree on the relative importance of different rights and freedoms. Many in the West place particular emphasis on political and civil liberties. Others, including many people I have known in China and Asia, may place greater emphasis on personal security, economic opportunity, social mobility, public services, or quality-of-life considerations. People around the world care deeply about human rights. What often differs is not whether rights matter, but which rights receive the greatest focus and how people believe those rights are best protected and advanced. Recognizing those differences can contribute to a more nuanced and constructive conversation about how human dignity, individual well-being, and societal flourishing are achieved in different contexts. It can be quite edifying to question one’s cultural biases. More broadly, I have found that excessive subjectivity, social bias, and zero-sum thinking tend to produce poor analytical outcomes, particularly when examining complex countries and societies. Human rights, like many issues related to China, for example, are often better understood through careful observation and comparative analysis than through rigid ideological frameworks. While binary narratives may be intellectually tidy, they rarely capture reality in all its complexity.

The objective is to leverage China’s strengths to help America restore its own competitiveness. Not to apply the same zero-sum thinking that contributed to our current position and simply lose more efficiently. The question is not how to isolate ourselves from China’s capabilities. The question is how to use them strategically to strengthen our own.

Zero sum thinking always backfires when competing with China. China to Japan: “Not only are we going to lead in our preferred energy technologies, we are going to lead in yours too.” asia.nikkei.com/spotlight/po…

“Nissan to cut vehicle development time in half using China playbook” -> CEO Espinosa says China is 'setting the industry standards of the future'. Nissan, you had me at “use China’s playbook”. asia.nikkei.com/business/aut…

Trump has an understanding with Xi. His own administration doesn’t like it US president’s warmer tone towards Beijing has raised hopes in China, but US tariffs, export curbs and lawmakers tell a different story Trump wants deals, not decoupling... sc.mp/9e5qo

China never offered foreign automakers zero-tariff access to its market. Instead, it required them to establish 50/50 joint ventures on Chinese soil and transfer technology to their Chinese partners as a condition of participation. If Chinese EV manufacturers wish to enter the U.S. and European markets, a similar framework seems entirely reasonable. What is difficult to defend is the argument that Chinese automakers should receive more favorable treatment as exporters than foreign automakers received as importers in China. Reciprocity works both ways, and historical context is worth remembering.

Indonesia’s trade deficit with China is not meaningfully correlated with the trade deficits that the United States or Europe run with China. Trade balances are shaped by dozens of factors, including industrial structure, resource endowments, domestic savings rates, exchange rates, consumption patterns, and stages of economic development. More importantly, there is an active debate within China itself about whether global demand can absorb the country’s output in sectors such as infrastructure, clean technology, batteries, and EVs. One view is that Chinese overcapacity is simply exported abroad. Another is that affordable Chinese infrastructure, energy systems, transportation equipment, and manufactured goods help accelerate economic development across the Global South. As those economies grow, they generate additional demand for Chinese products and services, creating a reinforcing cycle of development and trade. Whether one agrees with that thesis or not, it illustrates why simplistic, linear analyses often break down when applied to something as complex as China’s rise. China is not merely an economic actor maximizing exports. It is part of a larger ecosystem (which it has built and is now bolting on other Global South titans such as Brazil, India and Indonesia, in which infrastructure, industrial capacity, development, trade, and demand evolve together. Understanding that system requires an organic rather than purely linear framework.

Whatever you think about Trump’s China policy, one thing is true: Trump is no dove. Doves believed that as China became more prosperous, it would gradually become more like the West—economically, politically, and ideologically. That assumption proved every bit as flawed as the hawks’ conviction that China could be coerced into changing through sanctions, export controls, and other instruments of American pressure. Both sides mistook influence for control. Their judgment was clouded by preconceived notions about what China should become, rather than a clear-eyed assessment of what China actually is. Doves are no less constrained by ideology than hawks. They simply embrace a different ideology. In that sense, doves and hawks are two sides of the same coin. One sought to transform China through engagement. The other seeks to constrain China through pressure. Both begin with assumptions about what China should become. Owls start somewhere else: with what China actually is. What Trump increasingly appears to be is a China owl 🦉—less interested in changing China than in understanding and accepting it, adapting to reality, and advancing American interests accordingly. You can read my @NikkeiAsia Op-Ed on the subject here: x.com/mitchpresnick/status/2…

If Indonesia can suddenly become BYD’s largest export market, imagine the implications when that dynamic is extrapolated across the Global South. This is why it is increasingly unwise to analyze Chinese industry through outdated assumptions about the centrality of the United States and OECD economies as export destinations. The next phase of growth for many Chinese manufacturers is likely to be driven more by Jakarta, Mumbai, São Paulo, Lagos, Johannesburg, and Riyadh than by New York, London, Tokyo or Berlin. The map of global demand is being redrawn—ironically, but not surprisingly, in part by the cumulative effects of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the expanding economic relationships associated with BRICS . Many Western policymakers and analysts continue to evaluate China through a framework developed for a world that no longer exists. The consensus is updating, but the world is changing faster. The Owl View 🦉: The critical question is no longer how much China needs Western markets. Increasingly, the question is whether Western policymakers fully appreciate how important the rest of the world has become.

There was a time when the American Dream was real and broadly accessible. I was born during that time, in Brooklyn in 1966. The American middle class was the pride of the country and one of its greatest sources of prosperity. Then, beginning in the 1980s, both political parties gradually embraced a different vision of the economy. The prevailing view became that prosperity would be maximized by prioritizing capital formation, reducing taxes on top earners, deregulating key sectors, weakening organized labor, and allowing wealth to accumulate more freely at the top. The promise was that the benefits would eventually flow to everyone else. Four decades later, the results are difficult to ignore. The wealthy became dramatically wealthier, corporate profits soared, and financial markets flourished. ****** The Top 10% of American households today account for about 50% of all consumer spending, 67% of total household wealth, and 87% of stock market holdings. ****** Meanwhile, the middle class saw its share of national income decline, economic mobility weaken, and the costs of housing, healthcare, and education rise far faster than wages. Whether one agrees with Reagan’s philosophy or not, it marked a profound turning point. America shifted from an economy built around the strength of its middle class to one increasingly optimized for the interests of its wealthiest citizens and most powerful financial interests. This is not a political statement, nor a criticism of capitalism itself. I remain a believer in markets, entrepreneurship, innovation, and the importance of earning a reasonable return on capital. The Owl View 🦉: History suggests that societies of every kind—capitalist, socialist, monarchic, democratic, or otherwise—tend to be more stable, prosperous, and durable when there is economic growth, and when the benefits of growth are shared across a broad segment of the population. So the question is no longer whether wealth creation matters. It does. Nor is the question what label we attach to an economic system. Even China today operates as a pragmatic hybrid of state direction, market competition, and private enterprise. The real question is whether any system can remain economically dynamic, socially stable, and politically legitimate when an ever-growing share of the gains accrues to an ever-smaller share of the population. A healthy capitalism creates both capital and consumers. It rewards investment without hollowing out the middle class that ultimately sustains the system. That is not a question of ideology. It is a question of long-term competitiveness and sustainability.