An Open Secret: Why China Can’t Innovate

China could innovate, of course. Any nation can, if it truly wishes to. But innovation is a fragile, unpredictable thing—like a wildflower sprouting between the cracks of concrete. And China’s concrete is poured thick by the Party, that omnipresent, omnivorous eye that tolerates nothing beyond its field of vision.

The problem isn’t uniquely Chinese; it’s universal. Cipolla’s bandits, with a sprinkling of fools, run every great organization eventually. It just so happens that in China the bandits sit on the very top of the food chain, gripping every lever, every valve, every spark of potential. Elsewhere, bandits may infest the upper floors, but they rarely monopolize the entire building.

And bandits, you see, fear one thing above all else: other bandits. They know how they clawed their way up, and they cannot imagine any human being accomplishing anything without the same grubby tools—deceit, coercion, theft. The notion that someone could build something of consequence without playing by those rules? Unthinkable. Dangerous. Subversive.

So innovators are recast in their minds as rival warlords, marauders who might threaten their tenuous dominion. They must be corralled, monitored, “corrected” if necessary. Anything not organized, approved, or absorbed by the Party is strangled in its crib. The gifted either suffocate inside the system or leave it altogether.That’s the circle. Not virtuous. Not vicious. Diabolical.

https://alfinnextlevel.wordpress.com/2025/09/05/an-open-secret-why-china-cant-innovate/

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