(Roughly) Daily

In 1957, in the depths of the Cold War, Russia launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite– a success that surprised the U.S., which had rested comfortably on an assumption of technical superiority. Shaken, the nation responded with the Space Program and a broad array of flanking initiatives aimed at reinviograting education and innovation in the U.S.

Now it’s 2025, and America’s rivalry is with China. But in sharp contrast to the U.S. response to “the Sputnik moment,” America seems to be intent on a belligerent nationalism, rooted in a self-satisfied sense of superiority, that is only too happy to sacrifice the very things that could keep us in the global game– e.g., education and science domestically; the soft power that accrues to a good neighbor globally.

Kaiser Kuo, an astute observer of the situation, weighs in with a provocative warning…

The world feels unsettled, as if history itself were changing tempo. The familiar landmarks of the modern age are blurring, slipping away, and the stories we once told ourselves about progress and power no longer map cleanly onto the terrain before us. What we are living through seems, with each new day, less like a passing rearrangement of power, less like a momentary realignment of nations. We sense something deeper and more enduring: a transformation whose outlines we are only beginning to discern. History no longer feels like something unfolding behind us but something rushing toward us, urgent and impossible to ignore.

The economic historian Adam Tooze, reflecting on his recent, intense engagement with China, put it to me in July with characteristic directness: “China isn’t just an analytical problem,” he said. It is “the master key to understanding modernity.” Tooze called China “the biggest laboratory of organized modernizations there has ever been or ever will be at this level [of] organization.” It is a place where the industrial histories of the West now read like prefaces to something larger.

His observation cuts to the heart of what makes this moment so difficult to process. We have witnessed not merely the rise of another great power, but a fundamental challenge to assumptions long embedded in Western thought—about development, political systems, and civilizational achievement itself. We simply haven’t yet found the intellectual courage to face it.

This reckoning touches all of humanity, but it falls especially hard on the developed world and hardest on the United States, where assumptions about exceptionalism and hierarchy are most exposed and most fiercely denied. The familiar framing of China as “rising” or “catching up” no longer holds. China is now shaping the trajectory of development, setting the pace economically, technologically, and institutionally. For Americans especially, the deeper psychic shock lies in the recognition that modernity is no longer something they authored and others merely inherit. That story has outlived its usefulness.

The denial, the deflection, and the anxious overreaction so often seen in Western discourse are symptoms of that dislocation. Yet the reluctance to acknowledge this shift extends beyond governments, media narratives, or expert consensus. It includes people who’ve spent years thinking about these issues. I have been as susceptible as anyone—tempering big claims, second-guessing implications, staying in safer territory even when the evidence has been pointing in this direction for some time. There’s always a “but” when it comes to recognizing China’s accomplishments, a reflex to tick off the costs and enumerate the failings, to pull back just when the scale of transformation becomes clear.

The greater risk, I now believe, lies in saying too little.

This essay doesn’t rehearse the familiar bill of particulars on China—constraints on political pluralism and independent media; expansive security powers and preemptive detention; pressure on religious and ethnic expression; and episodes of extraterritorial coercion—not because those concerns are trivial, but because the task here is different. We’ve all learned to recite that litany, as a way of protecting ourselves from what real comparison might imply. The aim here is to confront, with intellectual honesty, what China’s achievements oblige us to reconsider about modernity, state capacity, forms of political legitimacy, and our own complacencies. Recognizing real costs can coexist with taking the magnitude of transformation seriously. This argument asks us to face squarely what has been accomplished and then measure ourselves against it.

And let me be clear: This reckoning is not a surrender. It is not an argument for abandoning liberal values, declaring authoritarian systems superior, or slavishly imitating features of China’s governance. It is instead a call for the kind of frank, sober assessment that genuine confidence requires—the willingness to acknowledge challenges directly, to learn from others’ successes even when they unsettle our assumptions, and to strengthen our own institutions through clear-eyed recognition of their shortcomings rather than defensive denial of their failures. Liberal democracy is indeed undergoing a profound crisis, but that crisis need not be terminal. The question is whether we will meet it with the rigorous self-examination that has historically enabled democratic renewal, or retreat once more into the comforting myths that have blinded us to both our weaknesses and our rivals’ strengths…

What the West should learn from China: “The Great Reckoning,” @kaiserkuo.bsky.social in The Ideas Letter. Eminently worth reading in full.

Pair with: “China Has Overtaken America,” @pkrugman.bsky.social and “China has copied America’s grab for semiconductor power.,” from @himself.bsky.social.

* Aesop

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As we rethink, we might send birthday greetings to a character in a cautionary tale from history, Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor (The Hongwu Emperor) of the Ming dynasty, who reigned from 1368 to 1398. Under Zhu, China was the world’s largest economy and had it’s leading navy, projecting power and enabling trade beyond Asia.

But in the mid 15th century, all of this changed:

… shifting political priorities, and rising Confucian skepticism toward maritime commerce, the Ming government ordered an end to all foreign voyages. Shipbuilding for large vessels was banned, and Chinese citizens were forbidden from traveling overseas. This self-imposed isolation would have profound consequences. While Europe was entering its Age of Exploration, building colonies and global trade networks, China had turned inward, forfeiting its naval advantage and potential leadership in global affairs… – source (more, here)

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