YouSaid · the spoken record

Keyu Jin

lines on the record: 121
first: 2025-08-13
most recent: 2025-08-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“About being radical and radically successful. It's about being safe. So when you shift from basically an entrepreneurial state to a safe state, then the objective function changes and you see it in different economic outcomes.”
2025-08-13 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #477 – Keyu Jin: China’s Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As a contrast to Soviet Union, the Chinese economy, as I mentioned, was extremely decentralized. In Soviet Union, the ministries were in charge of central bureaucracy, but a lot of the power were given to these provincial governors, party secretaries, mayors of different sorts, and they were incentivized. That's the key, is that these mayors were incentivized to do a good job. If I were successful on a radical reform, if I were successful, I'd be a national hero. And then that reform would be rolled out in every single city in the country over time. And I would be promoted to the higher run of the central government. And who knows, I might even become vice premier, premier president one day. That was how the individual was motivated to carry out these really tough reforms. Now China has changed a bit, right?”
2025-08-13 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #477 – Keyu Jin: China’s Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd say that reform pace has slowed in the last fifteen years but are there reforms to be done? Yeah, absolutely. You know, has China reached even close to its potential? Not at all. But again, it comes back to politics, right? Now it's less about economics. It's more about national security. It's more about politics. And I think that is probably the single biggest barrier to continued good economic growth.”
2025-08-13 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #477 – Keyu Jin: China’s Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To turn Shenzhen from a fishing village to an export platform now to a Chinese-style Silicon Valley. And there was the agricultural reforms in the 1980s that meant that farmers could decide what they were going to grow and keep the surplus, whereas it was a collective system before. You know that very well. And then, of course, the ultimate transformation was when China actually joined the WTO in 2001. And the rest was history, right? We're still talking about the aftermath. But reforms was the single biggest impetus to Chinese growth. And every time there was a major reform, it was followed by a good decade-long growth. Every time growth went down, there was a new series of major reforms rolled out, and then, oops, that, you know, led to another wave of good growth.”
2025-08-13 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #477 – Keyu Jin: China’s Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thinking about society, life, and the economy. And it was so transformative. I remember people of that generation told me one time that, you know, society was going to focus on the economy. Really? Why would they do that? Wasn't it politics? Wasn't it everything about politics and struggle and ideology? So for them, that the whole country and the government is going to focus on the economy was just so shocking, even though we take it for granted now that that shows you that breaking that mold was incredibly difficult. But I think opening up was a really momentous thing that China did. And it wasn't just joining the debut. I mean, they were doing a decade of work in preparation leading up to that, what's called special economic zone is really”
2025-08-13 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #477 – Keyu Jin: China’s Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Deng Xiaoping was by far our most pragmatic leader, and I think everybody's grateful to Dung Ziaping, my father's generation, would not have seen That amount of prosperity and peace and opportunity without Deng Xiaoping. It started in the late 1970s when Deng Xiaoping came out with this open up and reform mandate. And it was very tough. Again, coming back to the big misunderstanding of China, it's not as if one leader decides that that's what we're going to do and then everybody follows order and does that. No. There are tons of political barriers, tons of incentive compatibility problems at the local level. In the end, you need the local provincial governors, the mayors to do the job, and how many prefectures are there in China, right? A lot. And they have their own interest. We know this around the world. Politically, it's the most difficult thing to do. But somehow Deng Xiaoping was able to break tradition, break convention, come out with this completely new way of”
2025-08-13 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #477 – Keyu Jin: China’s Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's the right, I would say, the right kind of competition or the efficient kind of competition, I feel that in the Chinese education system, it was not necessarily efficient because it kind of frames you and molds you to be thinking in a certain way what's been taught to you. You don't have the bandwidth or the time or creativity freedom to be more creative and to think outside the box. There it's just the box. You maximize the box, and that's it. You don't actually know what's outside of the box, and you never actually go there. That's the bad part of Chinese competition. And when I got to the US, the high school teachers were asking us to question authority, to question text. I'm like, wow Can do that. I started to ask him why.”
2025-08-13 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #477 – Keyu Jin: China’s Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very nice. Imagine, you know, the majority of people and how they feel. But it does drive ambition in part, and you don't take anything for granted, and you work hard. You keep the spirit up. But going to the US, I finally realized that Americans are totally competitive. It's just that they don't display it. It's not as apparent. I remember I went to a very competitive high school, but everyone's like so chill. Oh, I'm not studying. Oh, you know, they're studying. They are secretly studying. When I was doing my PhD at Harvard, people go, oh, you know, my parents, they don't work so hard. You know, people say, don't say you worked. They're working hard, right? Just you don't show it. In China, it's kind of a noble thing to show that you're working hard and that you're number one or that you're top of the class and you want to display it and want to let everybody know.”
2025-08-13 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #477 – Keyu Jin: China’s Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is a good and bad part of competition. I remember when I was going to middle school, every single midterm exam, final exam, you are ranked from number one to number eight hundred in your entire grade and publicly displayed.”
2025-08-13 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #477 – Keyu Jin: China’s Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I guess what I'm saying is that meritocracy, which was so fundamental to the Chinese ancient Chinese education system, by the way, civil servants were selected based on standardized exams in the past. That's always been throughout Chinese history, and that relates to Confucianism. Now the opportunities, and coming back to the competition point, is that the opportunities getting slimmer and slimmer. And again, this is not a unique Chinese phenomenon. Jobs, where are the jobs going to be? meritocracy has become more of a problem.”
2025-08-13 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #477 – Keyu Jin: China’s Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Room for total corruption if you know what I mean, just connection based and actually the standardized exams as imperfect as it is to select talent is still by and large fair. And that's how that whole generation of entrepreneurs but bureaucrats, government officials were selected. If you look at the Chinese premieres, the presidents of the past They all went to gray schools. A lot of them were engineers. And same thing for civil servants. It has changed somewhat. The meritocracy, I think, is eroding in China. I'm worried about that because it is fine that you get into a good university based on your own merit, but finding a job now becomes much less meritocratic. People with connections get jobs more easily than others. Of course, this is not just a unique Chinese phenomenon. It's actually everywhere.”
2025-08-13 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #477 – Keyu Jin: China’s Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If China were relatively successful economically, a huge part of the reason is by and large it's been meritocratic. That is changing somewhat now, but The only way that you have still that many poor people, especially a couple decades back, still be in harmony with society, seeing all these rich people, you know, make tons of money and you're still belonging to that lower stratum, the only reason is that you believe that your children have a future through meritocracy. And even though it's imperfect, it's highly imperfect, standardized testing, all this competition, all of the hours and the tutorials to studying for a standardized exams, well, that is a very realistic scenario in China because there's that many people. When I was growing up in school, we had 60 people per class and there were 10 classes in one grade. In the American way, how many essays would have been written and need to be scrutinized? But also that gives”
2025-08-13 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #477 – Keyu Jin: China’s Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Confucianism is more of a moral philosophy than, let's say, religion or a belief system. It prioritizes social harmony above anything else. It's not about metaphysics, but more about ethics. And at the individual level, the responsibility, the duties are all meant to preserve that social order. So it's filial piety. It is loyalty. It is how to be a Chinese gentleman. But things like saving, frugality is part of the moral discipline. Education is part of the discipline. The moral cultivation. So there's a very strong emphasis that you as a citizen have a responsibility to contribute to society as a whole.”
2025-08-13 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #477 – Keyu Jin: China’s Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's because it's not easy, right? It's not easy to make money. In education system, there are not enough jobs for the young people. So how do you get ahead? How as, let's say, if you're part of a lower stratum society, how are you going to make sure that your children are going to have a better life than you invest in education? So everything is about competition in a country with 1.3 billion people. That's somewhat to be expected.”
2025-08-13 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #477 – Keyu Jin: China’s Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Competition is ferocious in China, especially when it comes to Chinese companies, but also in education. I should be thankful that I'm not born later than I am because I thought China was pretty competitive already going to the schools and studying for the exams. It is a different level today. Competition is not necessarily in the culture, I'd say. It's driven really by the changing economic and social circumstances of the day. The Chinese companies are all hardworking. They're all going after the market. They all kind of want to do the same thing. It's not quite like in the US where you open a coffee shop next door I'm going to open a bagel shop right in China the coffee shop does well everybody wants to open the same coffee shop and I think again I'm sure we're going to get to this but there's a lot of that kind of competition which really drives the world sometimes crazy of replication but”
2025-08-13 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #477 – Keyu Jin: China’s Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My parents' apartment. You're going to find at least 50 organized social groups on a daily level, singing, dancing, exercising, doing whatever these fantastic, idiosyncratic hobbies they have getting together every single day. And free courses for the elderly and retard. That sense of communalism, that sense of belonging, that strive for harmony at the societal level is there.”
2025-08-13 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #477 – Keyu Jin: China’s Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've rarely seen a more capitalist society than China from the pure economic side. I've rarely seen companies that are as competitive as Chinese companies, people as ambitious and obsessed with making money as Chinese people, kind of ruthless actually. And look, you know, consumers shop firms invest. If you invest well financially, you'll get great returns. What is not capitalistic about the Chinese economy? At the same time, the social fabric is highly socialist. First of all, the state enterprises dominate in many of the sectors, the state banks control the financial system. We often talk about common prosperity, about equal opportunity, just and fair society, but even daily stories. A walk in the park behind my”
2025-08-13 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #477 – Keyu Jin: China’s Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are millions of young kids like that in China. They might not be thinking about changing the world, and this is where the Chinese approach to innovation is very different from the Silicon Valley one, I'd say. But they see opportunity. They see a country with a billion consumers. They see scale. They see speed. They see that with their dreams and the team that you have in China, with engineers and the digital transformation, you can do so many things. And this generation of young people think about transforming their local economy. I think we're going to get into this, but it's no longer going to just be manufacturing. The young kids are entrepreneurs.”
2025-08-13 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #477 – Keyu Jin: China’s Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, absolutely. Without that, how can you have this radical dynamic entrepreneurialism you see in China? If you don't have a sense of self, a sense of the fact that you can find opportunities, you look for opportunities, you drive opportunities. It's all self-motivated.”
2025-08-13 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #477 – Keyu Jin: China’s Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, people think that somehow there's almost blind submission to authority in China. We have a very nuanced relationship with authority, whether it is between kids and parents or students and their teachers or with your bosses and the Chinese government. It's kind of the same thing. There's paternalism. They think that they're responsible for you. But deference, a certain amount of deference to authority is not blind submission. It's been written implicitly in our contract for thousands of years that in exchange for some deference we are given stability, security, and peace and hopefully prosperity.”
2025-08-13 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #477 – Keyu Jin: China’s Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The biggest misunderstanding is somehow that a group of people, or even just one person, runs the entire Chinese economy. It is far from the reality. It is a very complex, large economy, and even if there is an extreme form of political centralization, the economy is totally decentralized. The role that the local mayors, I call this the mayor economy, plays in reforms but also driving the technological innovation that we're seeing right now, it is actually not run by just a handful of people. It's more decentralized than the US's. And I think more broadly, a big misunderstanding is really the relationship between Chinese people and authority.”
2025-08-13 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #477 – Keyu Jin: China’s Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source