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.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) – Is China more decentralized than the US?

(00:03:16) – How the Politburo Standing Committee makes decisions

(00:21:07) – Xi’s right hand man in charge of AGI

(00:35:37) – DeepSeek was trained to track CCP policy

(00:39:26) – Xi versus Stalin

(00:45:35) – Local government debt crisis

(00:50:00) – Financial repression & capital controls

(00:58:12) – How corruption leads to overbuilding

(01:06:58) – How China can solve its debt problem

(01:10:46) – Probability of Taiwan invasion

(01:13:57) – Is Xi getting bad intel?

(01:18:56) – What happens after Xi

(01:25:10) – Future growth forecasts

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Xi Jinping’s paranoid approach to AGI, debt crisis, & Politburo politics — Victor Shih

Dwarkesh Podcast