Victor Shih

So we can talk about him because he's in charge of cybersecurity in China.

He has a technical background.

But in metallurgical forging, graduating at – I wouldn't say – it's not the MIT of China, maybe closer to the IIT of China.

You know, just kind of like the second tier science background.

Institute founded by one of the Soviet experts who wanted to teach China how to do metallurgy.

But does that kind of very specialized technical knowledge make you a better leader?

I think it depends on the person.

And I think what happens in the Chinese Communist Party is that as people rise up, there's certainly – you have to have political acumen.

If you don't have political acumen, you're not going to make it.

And some people on top of their technical expertise, it turns out that they have some political acumen.

But it's not something that you sort of know ex ante except for the princelings, right?

So the princelings, the reason why they're special is not just because of their –

genes, you know, they're children of high-level officials, is that they grew up honing this political acumen because their parents could teach them about it.

So then some people turn out to have political acumen.

They're pretty smart.

They don't necessarily have the best degree, you know, degrees from the best universities in China.

And they end up being very successful.

So it's not necessarily, oh, you know, all the Peking and Tsinghua University graduates, you know, they all get to the very top.

There are certainly disproportionate amount of people like that in the Politburo, but they don't dominate because at the end of the day, it is somewhat random.

So there's a lot of expertise at sort of the lower level that can feed to the higher level.