If we ever hope to compete with China, we'll have to change our leadership selection process. Their civil service (which also handles politics) will hire 30,000 young graduates this year, none of whose IQs will be below 140.
Trump, 2015: “People say you don’t like China. No, I love them. But their leaders are much smarter than our leaders. And we can’t sustain ourselves like that. It’s like playing the New England Patriots and Tom Brady against your high school football team.”
I am not arguing either way on this point, because I think there IS value in having competent governance, but Cremieux makes some good arguments.
Second, I'm doubtful if China ever catches up. They have a huge smart fraction, significantly larger than the West, but they still fail to innovate (and deliver) on the cutting edge. They couldn't produce one passable COVID vaccine. They're playing second fiddle in the AI race (so far).
Totalitarianism and a culture of collectivism, humility, and conformity isn't exactly a breeding ground for innovation.
Cremieux's argument is nonsense on its face. China innovates and delivers at the cutting edge 3x more than the USA. Their Covid vaccine was 10x more effective than ours. They're far ahead in embedded AI and even with us on LLMs. They're the most democratic country on earth with zero signs of totalitarianism.
I have no idea if your other claims are right but I find it hard to believe that 'They're the most democratic country on earth with zero signs of totalitarianism'. I have taught several Chinese students over the last few years and several of them have told me that on leaving Japan their parents implored them not to say anything negative about Chinese politics as you never know who could be listening. That suggests to me that Chinese people are only honest about such things when among family and close friends, which in turn suggests a degree of totalitarian coersion.
So in what way is China more democratic than, say, Norway?
China is more democratic than Norway in that its government delivers more democratic outcomes and is more responsive to people's desires than Norway. Norway's Gini Coefficient is better than China's, so it's more financially democratic than China–which plans to match Norway's egalitarian ways by 2049.
'China is more democratic than Norway in that its government delivers more democratic outcomes and is more responsive to people's desires than Norway'.
Would you, by any chance, have any evidence for this claim? How have you measured it?
Chinese in Japan are in an odd situation that warrants a parental warning. But there's no doubt about their lead in democracy. By their own admission, and by the statistical results, they are ahead of both Singapore and Switzerland.
The claim about Chinese COVID vaccines is blatantly false. Western vaccines had higher efficacy. Even Chinese LLMs will fact-check you on that.
You are turning the conventional meaning of “democratic/totalitarian” on its head. If you want to say they are ahead on other metrics (e.g., population satisfaction), then name _that_ metric. There's no point in arguing over redefinitions of words.
The Chinese do have high scientific output. However, one is left to wonder how much of it is really innovative, and how much of it is just so-so output to satisfy the (centrally planned) metrics.
The Chinese are great at taking Western inventions, improving them on the edges, perhaps recombining them, and then producing at scale. That's not "cutting edge." Embedded AI is an example of that. That's taking two already invented technologies, combining them, and efficiently delivering.
The West delivered Tesla, SpaceX, Moderna, Starlink, NVIDIA, and the algorithms leading to LLMs. What breakthroughs have the Chinese delivered?
China created Covid in the first place, through sloppy lab safety practices. Nothing about effective Covid vaccine production can offset that terrible stain on their medical engineering record.
Covid was loose in the world long before US Army troops infected folks in Wuhan in September 2019.
Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the US National Institutes of Health, said that the Coronavirus might have been spreading quietly in humans for years, or even decades, without causing a detectable outbreak". "The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2," published in Nature Medicine on March 17, 2020) is his NIH Director's Blog post from March 26, 2020, titled "Genomic Research Points to Natural Origin of COVID-19."Direct link: https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2020/03/26/genomic-research-points-to-natural-origin-of-covid-19/
The claim mixes partial truths (possibility of limited early undetected spread) with inaccuracies, misattributions, and unsubstantiated conspiracy elements.
The strongest version of this argument is not simply that “smart people should govern,” but that state capacity depends on how a system identifies, trains, filters, and disciplines talent over time. Merit matters, but only inside an institutional architecture that rewards competence after selection rather than allowing patronage, ideological conformity, or bureaucratic drift to erode it.
That’s why comparisons with China or Singapore can be revealing but also incomplete. The real issue is not IQ thresholds or exam prestige in isolation; it is whether a governing class is produced through a pipeline that consistently links selection to administrative performance, strategic continuity, and accountability.
So the deeper question may be less whether the West has abandoned merit, and more whether it still possesses institutions capable of converting ability into durable statecraft. In politics, talent selection is only the front end; regime performance depends on what the system does with that talent once it is inside.
We don’t know, but I doubt it. The reason is that we can “bid” for the best talent from the entire population of the world, iff we acknowledge “human diversity” rather than worship at the alter of “equity/equality”. Also, we probably already have enough such people, but they are simply “overlooked” in our present society. But the question is sound and touches upon the theory of the “smart fraction”.
If we ever hope to compete with China, we'll have to change our leadership selection process. Their civil service (which also handles politics) will hire 30,000 young graduates this year, none of whose IQs will be below 140.
Trump, 2015: “People say you don’t like China. No, I love them. But their leaders are much smarter than our leaders. And we can’t sustain ourselves like that. It’s like playing the New England Patriots and Tom Brady against your high school football team.”
W.r.t. China, an argument has been made that their approach results in talent misallocation: https://www.cremieux.xyz/p/chinas-upside-down-meritocracy
I am not arguing either way on this point, because I think there IS value in having competent governance, but Cremieux makes some good arguments.
Second, I'm doubtful if China ever catches up. They have a huge smart fraction, significantly larger than the West, but they still fail to innovate (and deliver) on the cutting edge. They couldn't produce one passable COVID vaccine. They're playing second fiddle in the AI race (so far).
Totalitarianism and a culture of collectivism, humility, and conformity isn't exactly a breeding ground for innovation.
Cremieux's argument is nonsense on its face. China innovates and delivers at the cutting edge 3x more than the USA. Their Covid vaccine was 10x more effective than ours. They're far ahead in embedded AI and even with us on LLMs. They're the most democratic country on earth with zero signs of totalitarianism.
I have no idea if your other claims are right but I find it hard to believe that 'They're the most democratic country on earth with zero signs of totalitarianism'. I have taught several Chinese students over the last few years and several of them have told me that on leaving Japan their parents implored them not to say anything negative about Chinese politics as you never know who could be listening. That suggests to me that Chinese people are only honest about such things when among family and close friends, which in turn suggests a degree of totalitarian coersion.
So in what way is China more democratic than, say, Norway?
China is more democratic than Norway in that its government delivers more democratic outcomes and is more responsive to people's desires than Norway. Norway's Gini Coefficient is better than China's, so it's more financially democratic than China–which plans to match Norway's egalitarian ways by 2049.
'China is more democratic than Norway in that its government delivers more democratic outcomes and is more responsive to people's desires than Norway'.
Would you, by any chance, have any evidence for this claim? How have you measured it?
Pew, Asian Barometer, AOD, Latana have all done national democracy surveys. Edelman does one annually.
More here: https://herecomeschina.substack.com/p/democracy-20-chinas-update-pays-dividends?r=16k
Chinese in Japan are in an odd situation that warrants a parental warning. But there's no doubt about their lead in democracy. By their own admission, and by the statistical results, they are ahead of both Singapore and Switzerland.
Godfrey, let me ask again. Which of the below claims do you subscribe to:
a. By Singapore's and Switzerland's own admission, China is more democratic than them.
b. By China's own admission, China is more democratic than Singapore and Switzerland.
'By their own admission...'
Grammatically 'their' here refers to the Chinese, not the Singaporeans and the Swiss, but you can't possibly mean that...can you?
both.
The claim about Chinese COVID vaccines is blatantly false. Western vaccines had higher efficacy. Even Chinese LLMs will fact-check you on that.
You are turning the conventional meaning of “democratic/totalitarian” on its head. If you want to say they are ahead on other metrics (e.g., population satisfaction), then name _that_ metric. There's no point in arguing over redefinitions of words.
The Chinese do have high scientific output. However, one is left to wonder how much of it is really innovative, and how much of it is just so-so output to satisfy the (centrally planned) metrics.
The Chinese are great at taking Western inventions, improving them on the edges, perhaps recombining them, and then producing at scale. That's not "cutting edge." Embedded AI is an example of that. That's taking two already invented technologies, combining them, and efficiently delivering.
The West delivered Tesla, SpaceX, Moderna, Starlink, NVIDIA, and the algorithms leading to LLMs. What breakthroughs have the Chinese delivered?
US tech market cap: roughly $14–16 trillion
Chinese tech market cap: roughly $1–2 trillion
China created Covid in the first place, through sloppy lab safety practices. Nothing about effective Covid vaccine production can offset that terrible stain on their medical engineering record.
Covid was loose in the world long before US Army troops infected folks in Wuhan in September 2019.
Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the US National Institutes of Health, said that the Coronavirus might have been spreading quietly in humans for years, or even decades, without causing a detectable outbreak". "The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2," published in Nature Medicine on March 17, 2020) is his NIH Director's Blog post from March 26, 2020, titled "Genomic Research Points to Natural Origin of COVID-19."Direct link: https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2020/03/26/genomic-research-points-to-natural-origin-of-covid-19/
The CDC also found 1-4% of U.S. blood donations seropositive for SARS-CoV-2 in 2019. https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa1785/6012472
Are you paid? No one actually believes that anymore unless they are being paid to do so.
This is not a theological matter. Belief is neither required nor appropriate. Facts only suffice–and you have none on your side.
Grok says:
The claim mixes partial truths (possibility of limited early undetected spread) with inaccuracies, misattributions, and unsubstantiated conspiracy elements.
https://x.com/i/grok/share/ae501553d1cb4a6596d053cb2de384ec
ChatGPT disagrees with your claims as well:
https://chatgpt.com/share/699729ae-2330-8007-bb28-746fb176edbe
Read https://herecomeschina.substack.com/p/a-covid-timeline?r=16k
Stop drinking the Kool-Aid!
Kool-Aid? The only Kool-Aid I see being drunk in this thread is made in China.
West=DEI, East Asia=Merit
Stupid is as stupid does.
...and
DEI ≠ Merit
Mutually exclusive.
Fortunately, or unfortunately—depending on what side you dwell in, stupidity is self-limiting. We are currently seeing the results.
Great article. Very clear and not overly long. I like Lipton Matthew's writing.
The strongest version of this argument is not simply that “smart people should govern,” but that state capacity depends on how a system identifies, trains, filters, and disciplines talent over time. Merit matters, but only inside an institutional architecture that rewards competence after selection rather than allowing patronage, ideological conformity, or bureaucratic drift to erode it.
That’s why comparisons with China or Singapore can be revealing but also incomplete. The real issue is not IQ thresholds or exam prestige in isolation; it is whether a governing class is produced through a pipeline that consistently links selection to administrative performance, strategic continuity, and accountability.
So the deeper question may be less whether the West has abandoned merit, and more whether it still possesses institutions capable of converting ability into durable statecraft. In politics, talent selection is only the front end; regime performance depends on what the system does with that talent once it is inside.
Won't capturing the best talents for government jobs starve the private sector? There is so many high-g population to go around...
We don’t know, but I doubt it. The reason is that we can “bid” for the best talent from the entire population of the world, iff we acknowledge “human diversity” rather than worship at the alter of “equity/equality”. Also, we probably already have enough such people, but they are simply “overlooked” in our present society. But the question is sound and touches upon the theory of the “smart fraction”.