The Economist: “China’s four richest cities (with a combined population of 84m) have a GDP per person that exceeds Japan’s. Its poorest four provinces (population 140m), meanwhile, are closer in income to Vietnam.” economist.com/finance-and-ec…

Chinese math Olympiad stars are helping to power America’s AI revolution. But what are their hopes and dreams and fears? Must-read piece by @violazhouyi restofworld.org/2026/chinese…

“Beijing’s government published a ruling that firms could not fire employees replaced by AI. Doing so…was akin to ‘offloading’ risks from technological change onto workers, whom firms ‘enjoying the benefits of AI’ had a duty to protect.” economist.com/china/2026/04/…

China’s youth unemployment rate is roughly double the US youth unemployment rate of 8.5%.

Please join us at 2pm EST tomorrow, 3/6. @r0sielevine will moderate a conversation between @yingyi_ma, @DrEmilyMatson, and myself, “Prioritizing Education in U.S.-China Relations.” Click on the link below to register. upennmeeting-edu.zoom.us/web…

I spent time in Shenzhen last year and when I saw Merz come back from China saying Germans need to work more I immediately knew what broke his brain because I lived the exact same cognitive shock my first week in Huaqiangbei I burned through 4 prototype iterations of a motor controller board for less than a thousand bucks total, back home a friend was working on something similar and spent over 12 thousand for a single revision that took almost two months to arrive when you live that contrast in your own hands with your own project something permanently shifts in how you see the world and it goes way deeper than speed & cost what Shenzhen actually built is a collective learning organism, imagine 20 PCB fabs 15 injection mold shops 30 component distributors and a hundred firmware freelancers all within a 2km radius, looks insanely redundant from the outside until you realize redundancy is actually information density in disguise I watched this firsthand with an injection mold supplier I was working with, this guy had seen a hundred founders iterate similar thermal designs over 6 months so he proactively modified his tooling before I even opened my mouth, he knew what I needed before I knew what I needed, the intelligence lives in the relationships between the nodes and it compounds daily the west thinks about manufacturing as a cost center you optimize by centralizing… China accidentally built a distributed neural network of manufacturing intelligence where knowledge diffuses horizontally across thousands of agents faster than any single western company can process internally so when Merz comes back and says we need to work a bit more I think he saw the problem but COMPLETELY misdiagnosed the solution, telling Germans to work harder is like telling a horse to gallop faster when the other side built a combustion engine the gap is ARCHITECTURAL it’s ecosystem density, you need a custom connector in Shenzhen you walk 200 meters, in Munich you send an email and wait 3 weeks it’s iteration speed, parallel search vs sequential optimization at the system level, it’s risk tolerance, Chinese founders ship something broken on Monday fix it Tuesday ship again Wednesday while European companies are still in the approval phase for the pilot program of the feasibility study… and Merz only saw the surface, what he missed is the tier 2 cities like Hefei Chengdu Wuhan replicating the Shenzhen model at scale right now BYD going from irrelevant to outselling every european automaker combined in roughly 5 years, Huawei building its own 7nm chip under maximum sanctions when every analyst said it was physically impossible & behind all of that a government that treats advanced manufacturing as an existential national priority while europe debates whether AI needs another ethics committee I think what we’re watching is the most asymmetric economic competition in modern history and most western leaders are still framing it as a productivity problem when it’s actually an ontological one Europe & America are optimizing variables that China stopped tracking years ago meanwhile China is compounding on dimensions the west has no framework to even measure Merz at least had the courage to name it out loud and I respect that genuinely but working a bit more inside a broken architecture just means you arrive at the wrong destination slightly faster

🚨 BREAKING: In a bombshell moment, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ABOLISHES H-1B VISAS from being used at state universities "We can do it with Florida RESIDENTS or AMERICANS! If we can't? Then man, we need to REALLY look deeply at what's going on with this situation!" DeSantis exposed that H-1B AUDITS found colleges were bringing in Chinese people on visas to talk to students about "public policy," among other issues. "Why do we need to bring someone from CHINA to talk about public policy?!" "I am directing today the Florida Board of Governors to PULL THE PLUG on the use of these H-1B visas at our universities." HUGE! I LOVE my state! @GovRonDeSantis ☀️

Sharing my interview with prof @YashengHuang of @MIT where we unpack the forces shaping China’s R&D ecosystem. Much of the discussion draws on insights from his book The Rise and Fall of the EAST in which Prof. Huang moves beyond the usual binaries of China being either a copycat or an unstoppable innovator. We explore the cultural, institutional, and policy roots that both enable AND constrain its innovation ecosystem. The conversation starts with the story of the “Chinese MIT,” the new argonauts driving China’s biotech boom, and the question of whether China is on the cusp of a Tang-style renaissance. Watch it here: youtu.be/x06aJRGwtgA?si=P2I6… cc @AsiaSociety

Thanks very much for the kind shout-out, @JChengWSJ.

Today @POTUS & @WHOSTP47 were proud to welcome the 2025 World Champion USA Physics Team to the @WhiteHouse! These incredible geniuses DOMINATED at the International Physics Olympiad in July, bringing home a record FIVE gold medals — the greatest performance in team history. 🇺🇸💪

This new FAQ from the White House makes it clear the $100k fee does apply to cap-exempt organizations. That includes national labs and other government R&D, nonprofit research orgs, and research universities. Big threat to US scientific leadership. whitehouse.gov/articles/2025…

Come see these legends discuss US-China relations at @Jifengbooks in DC next Tuesday Chuffed to be doing the @PennUSChina fellowship with rockstars like @kyleichan @EBKania @yingyi_ma @CarlMinzner Tech, Taiwan, Education, Demography - all the big issues on the table!