Opinion | How China’s unique value system underpins its prosperity and innovation
- A new book by MIT professor Yasheng Huang suggests China’s political economy has long operated under a mix of autonomy and control
- The nation’s development strategy has largely reached its limits and Beijing must now harness its innovative potential to spur its ‘animal spirits’ while pursuing greater liberalisation
Before the keju system was introduced, China was producing some of history’s most transformative inventions such as gunpowder, the compass and paper. Huang’s empirical research suggests Chinese creativity peaked between 220 and 581, during the rather chaotic Han-Sui interregnum. “The first wave of technological stagnation in China,” Huang observes, “coincides with the end of China’s political fragmentation.”
The book does seem to overstate some aspects of the historical record to offer a “cleaner” narrative than might be warranted. A data set of prime ministerial resignations forms the basis of Huang’s conclusion that, with the introduction of keju, checks and balances between emperors and their bureaucrats disappeared in favour of a “symbiotic relationship”.