Keyu Jin

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 U.S.

is.

And I think more broadly, a big misunderstanding is really the relationship between Chinese people and authority.

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.

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.

There are millions of young kids like that in China.

They might not be thinking about changing the world.