Sinica Podcast – The Rise and Fall of the EAST: MIT’s Yasheng Huang on his New Book
Host: Kaiser Kuo
Guest: Yasheng Huang, International Program Professor in Chinese Economy and Business at MIT Sloan
Date: August 31, 2023
Episode Overview
This episode features a deep dive into Professor Yasheng Huang's new book, The Rise and Fall of the EAST, which examines the broad historical underpinnings shaping contemporary China. The 'EAST' of the title is an acronym for Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology—four historical forces Yasheng argues have formed the political culture and developmental path of China. The conversation explores the causal role of China's historical civil service examination system, the balance between homogeneity ("scale") and heterogeneity ("scope"), how these forces shaped Imperial and modern China, comparisons to the West, and the limitations and risks for China's future under the current leadership.
Key Discussion Points and Insights
1. Purpose and Big Questions of the Book
[05:08] Yasheng Huang:
- Aims to go "beyond current events" and analyze deeper, structural, and historical forces that have shaped China.
- "East" stands for Exams (the civil service exam system), Autocracy, Stability, and Technology.
- Asserts that these are causally intertwined, especially with the exam system (kējǔ) as foundational (06:31).
2. Scale vs. Scope: Central Analytical Framework
[09:04] Yasheng Huang:
- Scale: Refers to homogeneity, standardized policy, and implementation across a vast territory (large, uniform organization).
- Scope: Denotes diversity—of ideas, values, ethnicities, approaches, etc.
- Societies function best when they balance the two, but both extremes cause failure (Excessive scale: China; Excessive scope: India, US).
- "The failure of the United States to provide basic health and…strengthen its basic education…because of lack of scale." [11:58]
3. Business Organization Analogies: M-form vs. U-form
[14:19]
- U-form (Unitary): Specialized, centralized. E.g., Soviet Union.
- M-form (Multidivisional): Duplication across regions/divisions, fostering competition.
- China under reform moved to more of an M-form, which fostered regional economic competition under a politically controlled structure [16:50].
4. Comparison with Fukuyama and the West
[20:30]
- Agrees with Fukuyama about China's early political modernization—"China invented Weberian bureaucracy before Weber."
- Disagrees on equivalency: China's path is not the same as the West's. China achieved scale at a high cost—stifling scope and thus technological/economic innovation.
5. The Civil Service Exam (kējǔ) as a Scaling Tool
[26:05]
- Sui Wendi innovated with a systematic, consistent, and (male) inclusive exam system.
- Wu Zetian further democratized, systematized palace exams, and opened civil service to lower socioeconomic groups.
- Zhu Yuanzhang expanded basic (prep) education, enabling broader access.
- "I think China deserves a lot of credit for coming up with the universal education…let's acknowledge how substantial that achievement was." [33:31]
6. Orthodoxy, Confucianism, and Social Control
[35:01]
- The state chose difficult, wordy Neo-Confucian classics as curriculum—raising the bar for entry and channeling aspirational energy into service of the state, crowding out dissent.
7. State Without Society: Weak Civil Society and Institutional Constraints
[38:41]
- China had households, commerce, and religions, but never organized civil society, religion, or adversarial intellectual classes.
- "China is the most autocratic country…a state prevailing without any society." [41:44]
- Institutionalized constraints (independent guilds, church, etc.) never developed.
8. Metric for Performance: From Exams to GDP
[46:12]
- In modern China, GDP became the standardized performance metric, paralleling the objectivity and legitimizing function of the exam system in imperial times.
- Dismantling the GDP focus has led to "incredible misconduct and really, really just undesirable behavior on the part of the local officials." [49:37]
9. Technocracy and CCP Promotions
[51:40]
- Promotion to top leadership in China (Politburo Standing Committee) rewards regional leaders (provincial performance), not central, ministerial technocrats, aligning incentives with regional performance.
10. Social Mobility, Wealth, and the Examination System
[57:26]
- Data show that candidates from wealthy families (proxy: number of wives/concubines) performed worse in kējǔ; system favored selection of loyal, non-challenging officials, keeping wealthy local elites out of power.
11. Bureaucracy Before Politics: The Japanese Sequence
[63:21]
- In China, bureaucracy matured before robust political competition emerged, resulting in bureaucratic constraints on plurality, whereas in the West, bureaucracy evolved among contending forces, enhancing pluralism.
12. The Limits and Legacy of Literacy
[69:02]
- Cites scholars like Joseph Henrich and Richard Nisbett on how literacy and education "rewire" the brain towards pluralism (the WEIRD effect), but in China, literacy was always in service of the state, not subversive or pluralistic ideals.
- "China actually had decent literacy…And yet you don't really see this liberalizing effect." [69:16]
13. Geography and the Need for Scaling Tools
[77:29]
- While geography—lack of natural barriers on the North China Plain—facilitated a large, unified polity, maintaining homogeneity over such an expanse required powerful scaling mechanisms (exams, standardized curricula, etc.).
14. Pluralism ("Scope") in the Reform Era (1978-2018)
[79:29]
- 1980s saw notable institutional and ideological plurality; Tiananmen ended this plurality, leading to an era dominated by two (and later one) centers of power.
- "If the institutions persisted over time…the five centers of power…I bet China will be very, very different from it is today." [82:34]
15. Succession Problem: Tullock’s Curse
[85:19]
- Autocracies struggle to manage succession due to perverse incentives. Past reforms—term/age limits—helped, but Xi Jinping’s removal of them amplifies future risk.
- "Succession is not something they can learn from history. Because Imperial China had hereditary succession, CCP…so far, they don't have it. This is perilous." [87:16]
16. The Needham Question: Why Science Stalled in China
[91:20]
- A massive data-driven effort digitizing over 10,000 Chinese inventions shows technological innovation correlated with periods of decentralization and plurality (Spring and Autumn, Warring States, Three Kingdoms, Han–Sui interregnum, etc.).
- Argues that decline started after Sui (6th-7th c. CE), far earlier than Needham claimed (16th-17th c.).
- Cautions that warfare correlates with inventiveness, but scope conditions (freedom to develop/supply solutions) are crucial.
17. Reform Era Technological Growth: Role of Scope
[105:53]
- China’s recent technological advances were never about scale alone; international collaboration, openness, and "scope" were essential.
- "China succeeded in the context of globalization…of academic, commercial, and institutional globalization and in the context of government support." [109:55]
- Recent clampdowns and insulation threaten this dynamic.
18. Xi Jinping’s Anti-Corruption Campaign and Scale vs. Scope
[116:10]
- Huang criticizes Xi’s campaign as overkill (“riding the bicycle, you cannot stop”), creating too many enemies and no systemic fix—a more rational approach might have been amnesty and transparency reforms.
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
-
On the kējǔ as a selection tool:
"If you want the people in the pipeline, in the bureaucracy who can memorize and who can commit to one idea only, you want that ideology to be the curriculum, rather than legalism and Taoism and Buddhism." – Yasheng Huang [36:05] -
On China's organizational structures and the business world analogy:
"U-form economy was not very good at encouraging competition. M-form economy is very good at encouraging competition." – Yasheng Huang [17:03] -
On the formal weakness of pluralism in China:
"When you have only the norms of remonstrance without the institutions…you can remonstrate against the emperor who is most tolerant. But you need remonstrance when you really have a bad emperor…" – Yasheng Huang [44:46] -
On literacy’s effect on the mind:
"I suspect that the kējǔ literacy also changed the Chinese brains. But I added a condition to Heinrich’s claim…if you don’t have this W (pluralism), then the changing brains don’t produce these other effects." – Yasheng Huang [71:51] -
On technology and plurality:
"Chinese science and technology were most advanced when China had more plurality…That is a thousand years earlier than what historians commonly believe." – Yasheng Huang [97:09] -
On the future under Xi:
"My fear is that China is moving toward a more militaristic autocracy similar to Latin America. And coupled with succession difficulties, I…don’t really know how to think about that." – Yasheng Huang [90:53]
Important Timestamps (MM:SS)
- 05:08 – The core questions the book tries to answer; methodology
- 09:04 – Overview of scale vs. scope framework
- 14:19 – M-form vs. U-form explanation and relevance to Chinese economy
- 20:30 – Comparison to Fukuyama’s Origins of Political Order
- 26:05 – History and development of the civil service exam system (kējǔ)
- 38:41 – Why China is a state without (organized) society
- 46:12 – The transformation from exams to GDP as a performance metric
- 57:26 – Relationship between wealth and exam performance
- 63:21 – Bureaucracy before politics and its consequences
- 69:02 – The WEIRD hypothesis of literacy, its limits in China
- 79:29 – Scope and political plurality in the 1980s reform era
- 85:19 – Gordon Tullock’s analysis of succession issues in autocracy
- 91:20 – The Needham Question; building a database of inventions
- 105:53 – How reform-era tech growth relied on scope conditions
- 116:10 – Critique of Xi’s anti-corruption approach and alternatives
Additional Highlights and Recommendations
- Needham Database: Huang’s digitized list of 10,000 inventions builds empirical support for his argument, allowing for more data-driven historical analysis than previous speculative treatments.
- Current Project: Huang expresses intent to bring the scale/scope framework to democracies vs. autocracies in future work [09:04].
Recommendations
-
Yasheng Huang:
American Prometheus – Biography of Oppenheimer. Highlights the difference between rebels (innovators) and conformists (replicators). -
Kaiser Kuo:
Drew Durnil’s YouTube Channel – Accessible, engaging channel explaining world geography, history, and stats.
Tone & Takeaways
The tone is critical yet appreciative, blending admiration for China’s achievements in statecraft and education with concern about the limitations these very mechanisms have imposed on innovation, pluralism, and the ability to adapt. Both Kaiser and Yasheng blend humor and candor, frequently referencing Western scholars and joke-fully comparing their own hair and reading habits. The conversation is rich in nuance, historical detail, and data-backed argumentation, encouraging listeners to look past current news cycles to the “deep structures” that inform the present—and possible futures—of China.
For further information and a much deeper dive, pick up Yasheng Huang’s book “The Rise and Fall of the EAST.”