We are delighted to share our new article on wage comparisons between Chinese and other firms in Angola and Ethiopia, with a focus on manufacturing and infrastructure construction, product of years of field research and surveys. @FTSchaefer @WeiweiChen16 www-sciencedirect-com.ezprox…

"USAID has been dismantled, Africa’s trade preferences are on a one-year leash, and Washington’s Africa policy has narrowed largely to securing the minerals used for the modern era. China’s approach of building, lending, and staying put has not changed." forbes.com/sites/kensilverst…

One of Guglielmo Carchedi's latest works, coauthored with longtime collaborator Michael Roberts, is an excellent paper on the economics of imperialism—and an antidote to claims that stretch the concept to semiperipheral economies and states. brill.com/view/journals/hima…

Why is China so obsessed with holding on to traditional industries? Aren’t they focused on high-tech growth? Key reasons as laid out by NDRC: 1. They’re the foundation of the “real economy” and enable new high-tech industries. 2. Traditional industries may have started earlier but innovation and progress in them continues. 3. Employment—they can provide high-quality jobs through industrial upgrading. Quote from a Q&A with reporters: Reporter from Singapore’s Lianhe Zaobao: Amid the wave of high-tech development, how can China’s traditional industries transform themselves while continuing to create jobs? Fu Jiuling, Director-General of the Department of Industrial Development, National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC): The Outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan lays out a blueprint for industrial development over the next five years, and it has attracted a great deal of attention. When we talk about technological revolutions and industrial transformation, it is easy to think of emerging industries and industries of the future while overlooking traditional industries. Some even believe that cultivating new growth drivers means traditional industries are no longer important. At the same time, many people are concerned about the impact of industrial upgrading on employment. I would like to make three points. First, the transformation of traditional industries toward newer and higher-quality development has always been underway and has never stopped. We often say that each generation of manufacturing processes, materials, and equipment represents a new stage of technological iteration and industrial upgrading. Experience shows that there are only outdated products, not outdated industries. Although traditional industries have been around for a long time, they should not be equated with low-end or backward industries. Consider people’s everyday needs for clothing, food, housing, and transportation. Today’s clothing fabrics are incomparably better than those of the past. Bicycles are also becoming lighter, with some now incorporating carbon fiber. It is fair to say that the so-called traditional industries we see today are very different from what they were several decades ago, or even just a few years ago. The vitality of traditional industries—like old trees sprouting new shoots—is evident everywhere in our daily lives. Second, traditional industries are the foundation of the real economy, and all three of China’s “new three” industries have emerged from traditional industries. For example, although the three core systems of new energy vehicles—batteries, electric motors, and electronic controls—have replaced the conventional internal combustion engine powertrain, the manufacturing processes used to produce vehicles remain fundamentally continuous with those of traditional gasoline-powered cars. The solar photovoltaic industry originated in polysilicon, which belongs to the nonferrous metals industry. The subsequent production of silicon wafers, solar cells, and modules all relies on mature processes from the electronics industry. Lithium-ion batteries originated in traditional electrochemistry and materials manufacturing. These industries did not emerge out of thin air. They were built on the strong foundations of traditional industries and sustained technological innovation. Third, we must proactively understand and respond to the impact of new technological developments on employment. Looking at manufacturing, during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, employment rose in some industries and fell in others, but overall manufacturing employment remained stable at around 110 million people. Throughout human history, new technologies have continuously affected employment. The replacement of physical labor by machinery and equipment, and of certain forms of cognitive labor by information technology, has been an ongoing process. We can see this in our daily lives. Some jobs are disappearing, while new …

Hello @elonmusk and @tylercowen , You have just decided to publicly attack our research, six days before the vote on the California billionaire wealth tax. Your attempt to discredit our work and that of our numerous academic colleagues is pathetic. Let’s take a look. 🧵

When an oil shock meets a shrinking aid system. Prof Andy Sumner, Programme Leader for the online International Development MSc at @KingsIntDev, explains how the programme equips students to navigate compounding crises: buff.ly/gLDf1yh

A while back, I had a great conversation with @michaeljswalker about China’s development model on his Novara Media show. My former PhD supervisor, Ha-Joon Chang, watched it and had some interesting feedback on capitalist versus communist development models in East Asia. In the conversation with Michael, I made a qualitative distinction between China (more communist-oriented) and the East Asian developmental states that boomed economically before China (more capitalist-oriented). Ha-Joon suggests that the East Asian developmental states were more inspired by communism and Marxism than Michael and I suggested. Here’s part of our conversation, which Ha-Joon has given me permission to share. HA-JOON: Hi Jostein, I’ve listened to your Novara Media podcast. Excellent. Just one thing: the relationship between (state) capitalism and communism in East Asia is rather more complicated than you and Michael suggest. First of all, many of the leaders of state capitalism were either communists when they were young or at least strongly influenced by communist ideas. The Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) were ‘brothers’ with the Chinese Communist Party. The ‘Three Principles of the People’ of Dr Sun Yat-sen (founder of the KMT) clearly state that all the key industries (heavy industry, banking, infrastructure) should be state-owned, which is why Taiwan had such a high proportion of SOEs in GDP. Chiang Ching-kuo, Chiang Kai-shek’s son and the second president of Taiwan, was very left-wing, having been trained at a party school in the Soviet Union, where he was friends with Deng Xiaoping. When he was president, he promoted more progressive policies, pursuing a more planned approach to development and becoming politically more open. Our General Park was a communist when he was younger. His brother was a well-known communist, considered one of the leaders of a major communist uprising in South Korea (then officially under US trusteeship) in 1946. Park Chung-hee himself was sentenced to death for his involvement in a communist mutiny in 1948 but saved himself by handing over a list containing the names of about 200 of his comrades. Kim Jong-pil, his nephew-in-law and for a while Park’s number two, is also said to have been a communist when he was young. Of course, when Park came to power, he and his military junta had to declare that ‘anti-communism is the first principle of our government’ so that the US would accept them, and they violently suppressed left-wing political groups in the name of anti-communism (whether or not those groups were really communist). But many of their policy ideas were strongly influenced by communist practices, if not necessarily by the theories of Karl Marx: five-year plans, the nationalisation of all banks, the New Village Movement (which adopted the Maoist idea of making peasants build local infrastructure during the fallow season), and so on. Many Japanese government officials were communists when they were young. In Japan, unlike in Korea (I don’t know about Taiwan in this respect), communism was NOT illegal, so until the 1990s the majority of economists in Japanese universities were Marxists (although most of them belonged to the Uno School, a rather scholastic version of Marxist economics). ME: So, to synthesise your thoughts here, is your argument that the developmental state paradigm was more communist- or Marxist-inspired than Michael and I acknowledged? HA-JOON: In a nutshell, yes. But the bigger point is that everyone’s policy ideas had very complex origins and interactions. ME: Okay, so how would you then defend communism and Marxism as anti-fascist ideologies, given that many have described both the KMT and General Park as fascists? HA-JOON: It depends on one’s definition of fascism. If you define it as the ideas of Mussolini and Hitler, I would say the KMT and Park were closer to communism than to fascism. If you define fascism as anti-trade-union authoritarianism, then they were more fascist than communist.

🖥 Nada que añadir @SIntxaurrondo

I’ve waited ten years for someone to say this about Donald Trump.

Esta señora, que responde a Vito Quiles, eres tú. Y tu madre. Y tu padre, tu hermano. Y yo. Esta señora, cuya hija trabaja en Iryo, nos representa a todos los que no podemos más, y lo hace con el español más puro y quevediano que existe.

What works in development? Search more than 24,000 impact evaluations and systematic reviews on 3ie’s Development Evidence Portal. Filter by sector or country, spot research gaps, and find the latest evidence. developmentevidence.3ieimpac… #ImpactEvaluation #DevelopmentEvidence

👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

An article titled "Advancing with Full Confidence Toward a Stronger Party and Nation" was published in the English edition of Qiushi Journal, 4th issue of 2026. According to the article, practice has fully demonstrated that Chinese socialism is rooted in the fertile soil of Chinese culture, reflects the will of the Chinese people, and meets the needs of China and the times. It is the only path to national rejuvenation. China's modernization can be achieved only by following the path of Chinese socialism. Read the full text: brnw.ch/21x6GOs

Fiscal responsibility is the right goal, often wrongly defined. Debt measures record what the state owes but not the roads, schools, hospitals and grid that borrowing builds. Our new policy brief from the Global Council on New Economics for the 21st Century, co-chaired with @Carlos_Cuerpo, sets out what fiscal responsibility actually requires [link in replies]. Tonight on @BBCNewsnight discussing #UKBudget2026 at 22:30 (GMT) ➡️ bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0033h2…

"The Serbian Students’ Blueprint for How To Overthrow a Government – And Run a Country" As student-led movements spread across Europe, all eyes are on the incredible success of Serbia’s Student List. How did they topple the president – and how will they now govern? From Zeteo UK: zeteo.uk/p/the-serbian-stude…

People rarely make new mistakes. They repeat the same ones, over and over, without ever truly understanding why. I write a weekly letter about the truths people avoid seeing. Read it here.

Enésimo episodio del votante de izquierdas decepcionado 🤷🏻🗳️El historial es impresionante. #LaRevuelta @IreneMontero @gabrielrufian

The people demanded it and who am I to deny them? My email to the editors of Econometrica:

I know a lot of people in the West are baffled by the Mbappé-Mao storm in China - which in itself shows that Mbappé's ignorance doesn't come out of nowhere... To understand it, here's the best analogy I could think of: imagine the biggest Chinese star in the NBA, with sponsorship deals all over the US. One day he's asked for his favorite meme of himself. He giggles: "the one where they put my face on some guy, I think he was an American slave owner." When the "some guy" in question is George Washington. Whatever you think of the label, you know exactly how that would land in the US: an ungrateful foreigner getting rich off Americans, laughing at the country's founding father in an offensive way - at least to a big share of the population - without even knowing his name. A founding father is the story a nation tells itself about where it comes from. Laugh at him as a foreigner while cashing in on that nation's consumers, and that's not going to go well in any country. The label is also extremely un-nuanced: yes, all important historical figures have their share of darkness and Washington and Mao are no exception. China actually recognizes this: the official line is that he was "70% right and 30% wrong," and the Party's 1981 resolution condemned how his "personal arbitrariness gradually undermined democratic centralism in Party life and the personality cult grew graver and graver" (marxists.org/subject/china/d…) Same for Washington: it's officially acknowledged too. Or at least it was until this year: in January, the National Park Service tore down an exhibit in Philadelphia about the people Washington enslaved there, under a Trump executive order targeting content that "inappropriately disparage[s]" Americans (associationforpublicart.org/…). Which goes to show China isn't uniquely touchy about its founding father...

Estos 5 minutos de la entrevista de Broncano a @gabrielrufian y a @IreneMontero son muy interesantes. Sobre la inmigración y los marcos de la derecha. #RufiánMonteroEnLaRevuelta.

Lula se planta con una dignidad que desborda su propia historia. Millones pueden reconocerse en esa bronca, en el orgullo de haber trabajado y en la decisión de no dejarse pisotear. Que un obrero llegue a presidente todavía les resulta insoportable: "Señor... Yo doy y os doy el tiempo, porque voy a usar la expectativa de ganar mi minuto, porque él dijo una granadera y yo no lo voy a llevar para casa. ​Él me llamó de nueve dedos. ​Y yo quiero que él sepa de una cosa: si hay alguien aquí en este público que sabe lo que es el mundo del trabajo soy yo. ​Si hay alguien que perdió el dedo con 17 años, fui yo. Trabajando de noche cuando no podía trabajar. ​No voy a permitir que un miliciano me llame de nueve dedos. ​No voy a permitirlo. ​¡No voy a permitirlo! ​Silencio en el público, por favor. ​No voy a... Él nunca trabajó en la vida, no sabe lo que es una libreta de trabajo. ​El primer empleo que tuvo fue un empleo falso por parte de su padre. Trabajaba con el padre, pero se quedaba en Brasilia. ​¿Y me llama a mí de nueve dedos? ​Conseguir... usted va a tener que pedir disculpas. ​Usted va a tener que pedir disculpas, porque el pueblo trabajador está viendo. ​Millones de trabajadores se accidentan por la responsabilidad patronal que obliga a la gente a trabajar en turnos que no quiere trabajar. ​Yo era menor de edad y trabajaba de noche porque o trabajaba o no comía. ​Y no puede estar aquí un señorito fino que con una práctica política muy dudosa, venga a llamarme de nueve dedos." Bolsonaro quiso humillarlo por la marca que el trabajo dejó en su cuerpo y terminó engrandeciendo la historia que pretendía despreciar. Lula encarna esa superación de las dificultades que los neoliberales celebran como “mérito”. Es tan despreciable Javier como Jair.