Henrietta Levin

speaker

569 appearances 6 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 6 Aug

Henrietta Levin’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 6 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 2.

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Pekingology · Inside China's Dual Economy · 6 Aug 2026 podcast

So you see the intent of this model of growth as being intended to compete with the United States, achieve what you just called technological hegemony.

I think there's another perspective that would say, well, yes, absolutely.

the Chinese economic model is all about new quality productive forces, as Xi Jinping would like to say, but perhaps because Xi and his government genuinely view that as the best vehicle through which to achieve broader economic outcomes.

And you don't see it that way.

What are the policy methods by which China sustains this model, the supply-side, tech-heavy, self-reliance-oriented approach to running an economy?

And you mentioned that a big part of the intent of this system is achieving self-reliance, especially in technology, but also in a more comprehensive way.

China wants the rest of the world to be more dependent on China, less dependent on the rest of the world.

But then there's this gaping hole in that self-reliance, which is the dependence on global export markets that this whole model relies on, which seems like a pretty meaningful vulnerability and maybe one that's taken on greater salience even in thinking in Beijing in the context of the war in Iran, where even though China's done, I mean, effectively everything right to put itself in a very strong position on energy self-reliance.

Yeah.

What does that mean if the rest of the world can't buy Chinese stuff?

So that seems like an oversight, but one that doesn't seem to cause the kind of discomfort that you see in the party otherwise.

Yeah.

And you mentioned China's dominance of global solar manufacturing.

I mean, if you look at some of the glimmering successes of this economic model, a lot of that is found most clearly in the green tech sector and EVs and new types of battery technology.

And so I thought it was interesting in your piece you highlight that even in this sector that has done so well and been prioritized so highly by the Chinese political economy, fully one third of listed Chinese companies in the green tech sector are now what you call zombie firms.

Yeah.

Or companies that cannot generate enough revenue even to cover their interest payments and they survive on formal or informal subsidies.

So why has this happened and what should we make of it?

So what you're describing is involution, right?

Like a word that we now hear a lot about, this unhealthy, aggressive competition that constrains profitability in very severe ways in the Chinese market.

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