Victor Shih

And there's some channels for doing that.

I would say a lot of channels for doing that.

So they're not so dysfunctional on that score.

But what time and again leads to suboptimal policy is the parties –

you know, sort of instinct to preserve itself.

But then in a way worse than that, to preserve its power.

Right.

So it's not like, oh, well, you know, we do this kind of thing.

You lead to a better sort of outcome, public health outcome.

And we get to survive, you know, politically.

But if they see it's like, OK, even if we do survive politically, but it leads to a diminution of our power in one respect.

You know, we have less control of the banks or like the scientists become more independent or something like that.

Then they would say, let's not do that.

You know, because it's like, what's the cost?

You know, some people die, you know, whatever.

We have slower growth for a couple of years, but we get to preserve this power.

We will go ahead and preserve power.

Well, so there's a traditional reason and then there's today's reason, which is on top of the traditional reason.

The traditional reason is that, you know, education in China, you get tracked into science as STEM or you get into social science or humanities.

If you get tracked into STEM, you may never learn anything about supply and demand.