On this episode, I chat with Victor Shih about all things China. We discuss China’s massive local debt crisis, the CCP’s views on AI, what happens after Xi, and more. Victor Shih is an expert on the Chinese political system, as well as their banking and fiscal policies, and he has amassed more biographical data on the Chinese elite than anyone else in the world. He teaches at UC San Diego, where he also directs the 21st Century China Center.

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒
* Transcript: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/victor-shih
* Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/xi-jinpings-paranoid-approach-to-agi-debt-crisis-politburo/id1516093381?i=1000710442426
* Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2HM7l7RDf8yG1KOtE3QY15?si=X_h0cP93S9yNbXvIpaAkrQ

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒
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𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
00:00:00 – Is China more decentralized than the US?
00:04:03 – How the Politburo Standing Committee makes decisions
00:21:54 – Xi’s right hand man in charge of AGI
00:36:24 – DeepSeek was trained to track CCP policy
00:40:13 – Xi versus Stalin
00:46:22 – Local government debt crisis
00:50:47 – BYD, CATL, and financial repression
00:58:59 – How corruption leads to overbuilding
01:11:33 – Probability of Taiwan invasion
01:19:43 – Succession after Xi
01:25:57 – Future growth forecasts