Industrial Maximalism: Lu Feng on Manufacturing, AI and US-China Rivalry

“An industrial power has never lost when challenged by a financial power — even when that financial power happened to be the reigning global hegemon.”

Today’s edition opens with an introduction by Kyle Chan, a Postdoctoral Researcher at Princeton University whose work focuses on China’s industrial policy. He writes an excellent newsletter on related topics called High Capacity, which I’ve recommended before. — Thomas

Lu Feng (路风) is a renowned professor at Peking University’s School of Government, specialising in industrial policy, technological innovation, and development. Lu’s influential theories of industrialisation and development make him a modern-day Friedrich List or Alexander Hamilton.

In a recent interview (summarised below), Lu Feng presents a theory of what I call “Chinese industrial maximalism”. At a time when China is already the world’s manufacturing superpower and faces accusations of “overcapacity” from the US and EU, Lu Feng argues that what China needs is more industrial development, not less. There are two main reasons for this.