Odd Lots - What Dan Wang Saw on His Last Trip to China

Episode Date: July 2, 2026

There's this weird contradiction that hovers almost all conversations regarding the Chinese economy. On the one hand, the growth and rising material prosperity is undeniable. And of course, Chinese industrial giants are at the frontier in all kinds of things, like batteries. On the other hand, you always hear about a soft domestic market, and a general state of unease among workers who fear that precarity is around the corner. So how is this contradiction explained? And how does it affect day-to-day life? On this episode, we bring back one of our regular guests Dan Wang, who recently returned from a long trip to Shanghai. We discuss his observations, the general ennui he saw, the signs of domestic weakness, and the way in which phone culture is reshaping Chinese society.Read more: It’s Too Soon to Breathe Easy on China’s EconomyOnly Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox, plus unlimited access to the site and app. bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlotsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I'm Tracy Allaway. And I'm Joe Wisenthall. Joe, I heard, I might have heard, you know, just a little bit that you went to China for the first time. I haven't been that obnoxious about it. I haven't like, no, okay, could I just say one thing? I didn't like do a, I've posted about it. I've talked about it. I have, I did not come home and do like a 20 tweet thread about like China's, like,

future in the world, which I consider myself to be a heroic, heroic active restraint. So you're not a China expert after your one day in Shenz. I fully admit that I'm not a China hand after one day. And I'll also say, I can't do that anyway because I got over the border on a tourist visa. So I'm not even, you know. You know the China, the China expert pipeline, right? How does it work? So you got to, first of all, you have to go to China and be an English teacher for a few months.

And then you have to move there and become a China consultant. Yes. And then you have to start a YouTube channel and start calling yourself Joe Y or Lao Wisenthal. Someone said Joe Shandau would be a good signification of my name, which I thought was decent. You know that actually almost happened to me? There's a different version of my life. So when I was in college at University of Texas, I saw a poster on the campus. Now, this was Taiwan, but I would have learned the language.

It said, come be an English speaker in Taiwan. So I was like, I didn't have any plan for my life or anything like that. And I called the number. And I didn't have a cell phone at the time because we just, so we just shared a house phone. And I called the number and I left it. And then the person on the other side called back. But one of my roommates answered the call and ended up getting the job and going to Taiwan. And I always think about that version of my life where I wouldn't be doing odd lots because I was home and answered that call.

And would I be one of those people that, like, you know, helped American businesses source parts in Southern China? What a segue, Joe? Yeah, well, that's just, you know, you show, you reminded me that there is this one of the various versions of my life that that was actually kind of one of them. All right. Well, I'm sure you have your own impressions of China for the first time. I'm based on 24 hours. Based on 24 hours. I know you do because you did tweet about it a lot.

But there's someone else we talk to when we want to get generally. General China impressions, take the temperature on the vibes in China, I guess. And that is the one and only Dan Wong. He's been on the show a number of times before. He is, of course, the author of Breakneck China's quest to engineer the future, also a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. So, Dan, thank you so much for coming back on all thoughts. Tracy, it's great to be back home. Oh, thank you.

So vibes in China. Well, first of all, was this your first time going back in a couple years? sort of been my first time going back. Give us the timeline of when you left. I left at the start of 2023 right after the total collapse of zero COVID. And then I was back in Yunnan, just finishing my book, writing in the mountains in the south of the province. Sounds so nice.

And then this time, I spent about a month in China between Shanghai for two weeks and then Yunnan for two more weeks. I think the big news when I was in China was there were two big things happening in New York. One was that the Knicks won some sort of sports ball. And then Joe Wisenthal. It's a little bit about, just a little. Yeah. And then Joe Wisenthal went to Shenzhen.

That was big news on Twitter that day. I watched the Knicks game from a rooftop bar in Shenzhen. No kidding. The game where they clinched it came five, which is wild. Just to give us your back. I mean, we've talked about your book and stuff like that. You're Canadian, right? Yes.

So that's why the red shirt today you're wearing maple leaf colors to sort of represent your Canadian heritage on the podcast? Absolutely. Okay, I just wanted to establish that. Where did you go? I'm not no expert because I only spent 24 hours in one of the world, the country's most advanced cities, but where were you? Yeah, well, I've lived in the three major big zones of China.

I spent two years living in Hong Kong where I played board games with this new entrant to Hong Kong. namely Tracy Allaway. Remember all of these board games that we used to play? Oh, that was so much fun. We were in all of these cafes. And I spent two years living in Hong Kong, and I thought, well, this really isn't enough real China. And so then I moved to Beijing for two years.

And then I decided that was way too much real China. And then I decided I should move to Shanghai. Can I just ask a quick question? I don't know anything about how, like, Chinese migration policy. or visa policy works. As someone who is ethnically Chinese but a Canadian passport holder, what is required to establish semi-residency either on like a full-time or sort of part-time work or whatever? How do you, are there any restrictions? How easy is that process? If you're of Chinese heritage, it's somewhat easier to visit China. There are these specific

visa categories, namely family visit, which gets you multiple entry probably for 10 years. That makes it really easy for someone like me to visit grandma. But I don't think for any other Chinese heritage people becomes much easier. They're not necessarily favored to actually live in China. And when I was visiting China at this time, what was really striking was how many more Russians and Russian you hear in the streets of Shanghai, you see more Arab folks, walking around, presumably doing business deals, and how few Americans you hear on the streets as well. And so this has been like a really stark shift in the composition of the foreign people

there. And then there's also just been a stunning collapse in immigration to China. And so this Irish guy, Sam Enright, came up with this figure to establish that China and Ireland, China has slightly fewer immigrants than Ireland does. So Ireland, a country of six million people, has about one million immigrants. China, 1.4 billion, has about one million immigrants. And so these are the sort of stunning things where it takes a few more Joe Wisenthals for visiting to drop up the foreign market there. Lau Wisenthal, we're calling him now. Lowe Wisenthal? Yeah, sounds good. Why did you decide to go to Shanghai and not Beijing? And how much should I read into that as like a shift in the center of power within China or like more focus on tech and finance.

Yeah, I love Shanghai. Shanghai is, I think, one of the great cities of the world. And Beijing is not. Beijing is not. I really like Beijing. It has that sort of like northern frontier feel. I really enjoy it. But I've been to Shanghai too and it is very impressive. Well, Beijing is this desert step city with Stalinist characteristics. And, you know, there's kind of this. threat of apocalypse that hangs over there. You don't like the ring roads down? I don't love the ring roads. These streets are way too long, and they're way too wide. And, you know, I was in Beijing when once this dust storm swept through the city where everything turned yellow. I thought I woke up sick that day, but I guess

everything was yellow that day. So there's some charm, definitely to Beijing. But when we were living in Shanghai, we were calling ourselves the Paris of the East, and we were calling Paris the Shanghai of the West. And then we were calling it. Beijing, Western Pyongyang, why would you visit West Korea? So, you know, these are the sort of things where, you know, we are happily dismissive of the Beijing life. There's definitely parts of the Beijing life, which feels much more intellectual. You know, the Communist Party really is much more centered there. The great universities are much more centered there. Shanghai is much, prizes, much more convenience and comfort. And that's in part because

the French literally built a major section of the city, of these leafy people, You have these cafes everywhere. It's super walkable. You're never that far from a subway station. Shanghai is much, much better. And then Beijing was essentially designed by Stalin, so it can't be all that pleasant. I will say Beijing is the only place in the entire world where I ever developed eczema. I had it for like three months just in Beijing, never had it ever again.

I have these odd headaches that come at random times when I was living in Beijing. That was the only city where I actually had to experience that. It's so strange. If we ever do a live episode of the podcast in China, I guess we don't have to do Beijing. I don't know. You kind of. I would prefer Beijing to Shanghai. Shanghai might actually be the smarter choice because our audience is probably bigger there.

Yeah. But I really like Beijing. I don't know. I like the food. In my 24 hours, and you've talked about this, but in my 24 hours, there are many things that stood out. But the one thing that's, and I, you know, here I'm going to commit an act of modest journalism. The one thing that stood out that I can't get out of my head from visiting China that, you know, I saw all kinds of head grade food. I saw the electronics mart, et cetera.

Tell us a little bit more. No, more than anything else, me, like it's, okay, so we're sitting here. The three of us are talking. I'm physically in pain right now, like that I haven't checked my phone five times. Like in this conversation, like, it's very difficult for me to like go. We've been talking for nine minutes so far. So normally I would have checked my phone five minutes. But I could do it.

But like, I have not. never been in a culture, in a city, et cetera, in which there was more just, like, constant phone use. Like, that is the one thing I still just cannot get out of my hand. I'm having to a nice dinner. Everyone with their screen up, you know, which would be very, I think, like, if I did, if you did that in New York, that would be considered really rude, I think, to have your phone. And yet, Joe. No, I said, like, to have your phone face up on the table.

I was, like, really stunned. And you've talked about this, too. And I'm sort of like, kind of want to talk about phone culture. Okay. Let's talk about phone culture. Joe, what is the right number of times to check your phone in 10 minutes? Is it five? Is it a 500?

I don't know. This is right. I'm totally up. You know, because the thing was, and I was like, oh, I don't want to be rude, but I want to take some pictures. Maybe I want to tweet something. But like, you know, I don't want to be rude. And then I would like look around and like, everyone was on their phone.

So I guess it's not rude. I felt great. I loved it. I am much more New York culture. Stop looking at your phone, man. Let's have a debate about this, Joe. So, you know, where do we need to check? What's so important on the phone that we can't talk to each other about face to face right now?

But, no, I mean, look, I'm glad that we have this conversation where the expectation is that we have our phones down. But, like, was my, when you went back to China recently, did you have the same sense that I did? Yeah, totally. I think that a lot of good friends would be around the table. And then they would start pulling their phone. And what are they doing on? their phone. It's actually totally trivial stuff. They're kind of just checking the progress of their JD.com or Alibaba deliveries. They're kind of scrolling through some photos that they just taken

and deleting a few, selecting a few, and it's like, you know, not everyone is able to get together all the time. So, you know, is that the most important thing right now? Definitely phone culture has broken Joe Weisandthal-Lawai's brain. Yeah. But hasn't it broken like hundreds of millions of people's brains across the world. And there's is something, I think, not to be a boomer about this. No, that's fine. It's great. Important about attention. But what do you think? As much as I'm guilty of it, I don't think that the always checking of phones is a healthy part of New York society or American society. Like, I think I am participating in something that is unhelpful and not an anti-prose, not pro-social, every time I check my phone in a group environment, or even when I'm alone. I should be reading a book instead.

And so, like, I was just stunned by the degree of like, and then you walk into a store and every store in the mall has a girl live streaming on whatever the equivalent of TikTok is of like what's happening in the store. Like the degree of like phoneness was wild to me. As someone who is often the victim of Joe's phone addiction, I will say it does make me sad when I'm talking to you. And you literally like leave the conversation mid sentence to go take a phone. of someone's t-shirt and tweet it, which happened last week. Yeah. Tracy, you and I are going to have dinner and Joe can be off on the side, like, tweeting like a toddler, and then you and I can have like a much more serious

conversation. What do you think? This is why I'm actually glad I have this job, because it's an hour at the time throughout various times of the week, in which I don't look at my phone. Let's get back on track. Let's do China. Okay. How much of the Chinese phone obsession, I'm thinking how to phrase this, but how much

of it is just because you're... entire life is basically oriented on your phone now. And I know we could say something similar about the U.S., but I feel like, you know, payment systems, online shopping are even more endemic in China than they are here. Yeah. Well, so this is where we should praise, you know, what enables the phone culture. First of all, let's say you have this amazing mobile infrastructure where 5G is truly everywhere. And, you know, it is kind of odd to me that you head into pockets of New York, namely the subway, as well as many other places, like, you know, kind of remote parts. And you just kind of drop out of cell access.

And I kind of wish that we had mobile access everywhere. And there is kind of this broader phenomenon in East Asia where people have super long commutes on the subway, let's say like an hour to get into Tokyo, you know, an hour to get into central Shanghai or Xinjiang. And, you know, having mobile games and having phones is kind of just a great way to pass the time into a cool, well-connected subway. So there are some good things here. And you have basically a lot more apps that are highly functional. You're able to order absolutely anything you want into your door. You know, 15 minutes, you can get an amazing croissant. And so there are some good parts here.

But let's also get into the bad parts. So the bad parts are when you're on when you're in China, you're kind of kind of, kind of, kind of constantly expected to be on for your boss all the time. And so, you know, if we were in China, we have like three producers sitting behind us. We're going to have Joe Wisenthal-Lauwai texting them all the time about, you know, pick up this or that. And so I think that is less pleasant. It does, sorry, just to jump, it does seem self-reinforcing, which is that if everyone is on their phone, everyone then becomes expected to text back within the minute, which means you can't opt out of always looking at your phone. Anyway, keep going. This is the other thing. So I know you're always

on your phone. And so when I WhatsApp you and you don't immediately reply, I get insulted. Just DM me. Just Twitter DMA. Anyway, keep going. But yes, Tracy is, she's like, I know you're looking at your phone. Why haven't you responded? Yeah. Yeah. He has a very limited, like, bandwidth in which to reply. I know. Go on. Just keep talking about Chinese. I can text Wisenthal, like, in 30 seconds, I know he ought to reply. So why isn't you replying within three minutes? But so, I mean, the good thing is that you can always use your friends. And that's always good, too. But myself, I think I'm much more of an American, whatever, European about this, I just silence all of my notifications, my friends can't really reach me. I think it's better that way. And I think I prefer it not to be reached whenever at anyone else's

pleasure. But, you know, if you need to call someone, you know, you know, that almost always going to pick up. Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, are elected leaders and the world around them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women.

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Subscribe to Bloomberg News Now today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you listen. Talk about influencers because this is like this one. we were in Shenzhen. At one point, the guy who I was going around with was like, oh, this is a really nice new apartment. It's like all the influencers live there. Talked about like influencer culture there. Yeah. Well, this is also one of these things that make China increasingly highly unpleasant to me now, the extent to which everyone is just photographing themselves as kind of as kind of the main thing. So I usually go visit Shanghai and Yunnan, which are, I think, without a doubt, the two most beautiful parts of China. And the good thing about being in beautiful parts is that you have a wonderful city, you have this wonderful province. But what sort of distresses me is how many cafes in Shanghai are just places where young people, overwhelmingly women, park to take photos of themselves. Perhaps a group of seven might order one or two coffees to the disappointment of the cafe owners. And then they park themselves there for like an hour or so taking photographs. And so many of these Shanghai city blocks have been almost re-architected to be photo spots,

whether these are outdoors or whether these are restaurants. And so, you know, that's just a lot of photography. Have you noticed something like this? Oh, yeah. I mean, I would say this describes the West Village in large part, too. For sure, for sure. I still remember the very first time I went to Dominic Ansel in New York. And everyone was taking photos of the food.

And I was like, oh, like food is now performance art, basically. But, okay, so is influencer culture that's standing in the way of Shishenpings drive to increase consumption? Is that what we're saying? I think that must be a part of it. Because at some point, you wonder the extent to which phone culture becomes a substitute for real spending on holiday. So, as I just mentioned, you know, you have cafes, you may have cocktail bars in which a gaggle of people come over. and then buy two drinks, and then they spend the rest of their time photographing themselves. Maybe you can say that the constant photography is a boon for live streaming,

and so that promotes some aspect of consumption. But I think overwhelmingly, people are substituting away real experiences to, let's say have like a super nice, you know, travel experience when they could just photograph themselves. Because the other part of being in Yunnan, which is in the southwest, this is the region where my family is from. This is highly mountainous. It's essentially Tibet in the north. It's part of the Himalayas, literally, in the north.

And then in the south is basically a giant rainforests. And in between, there are basically 25 of China's nearly 60 official ethnic groups. And so what these rich, richer, again, overwhelmingly girls from Shanghai, Beijing, Xinjiang, who do is that they go to Yunnan, dress in this ethnic garb, pretend that they're Tibetan for a day, take some, you know, snow-covered mountains as a backdrop. There are parts of New York, Miami, L.A. that have been architected, but I think phone culture is much more extreme. But Joe, did you consider dressing up as a Tibetan? No, but I know that if Tracy and I ever go to China together, I'm going to have to take a lot of

like Tracy's going to make me do that. For sure. Absolutely for her Instagram. You're a decent photographer. So, you know, it helps. You know, I may be part Tibetan myself. This is part of the family lore. When the Tibetans come up to me, they always say Tasha Dele.

And so, you know, maybe I, you know, just their hello, standard greeting. And, you know, maybe the three of us can do an awesome photo shoot. This is one time I would do a photo shoot. I think this is now, we're going to do a road trip, but we're going to make this happen. I would actually do that trip. You described this as mostly girls, and this is also a phenomenon in the West. But why, like, what is the ultimate goal of taking all these photos and sticking them on social media? Is it, you know, dating?

Is it building a professional brand? Is it just socializing with your online friends? You know, Tracy, I don't look at these photos. So it's only speculation for me. But I think it has to be all the same phenomenon where, you know, women everywhere feel like they have to perform for the gram or in the case of China for the Xiaoheng Shu. And I think the added layer in China is just that it's kind of a cheap way to have fun and to establish that you've been there. And, you know, these are kind of beautiful things and you do spend a lot of effort on makeup. And so I think it is, it could be kind of fun.

But so why not? So when I am sometimes upset by the photoculture, I remind myself, you know, these ladies aren't harming me. So when I'm no skin off my nose. They should have a great time. They're not harming you. No skin off your nose. On the other hand, I don't really know much about like, how are your male relatives doing in China? And the only reason I ask is actually because I'm aware that in Korea, which is totally separate country, people talk about the gender gap in politics here in the U.S. that the gender gap in politics in Korea specifically is extraordinarily large and that the, you know, the sort of. of forechanification of politics in Korea seems like even far more advanced than it is in the West. There's no electoral politics in China. So we don't really get to read articles about how these feelings express themselves at the ballot the same way. But how would, how would, you know,

the Dan Wong's, your cousins or friends, male friends, how are they feeling? Yeah. Well, I think you guys have done this, a remarkable job of keeping this conversation on track. But I think we need to get this back on track and talk about my male pseudo-relative Joe Wisenthal-Lau-Wise, a slight time in China. And I notice, Joe, you know, for those watching on camera, you have a Chinese ethnic garb yourself. You have an anti shirt wear on you. So we're going to ask you to, you know, talk a little bit more about your impressions, 24 hours though they may be. And I'm just going to offer one more proverb, a well-known ancient Chinese proverb here about visiting China. So, you know, the, the, everyone knows that, you know, you visit China for 24 hours,

you feel like you can write a book. Yeah. Visit China for a week. You start, you know, having some doubts. You live six years in China and you realize you know nothing. So, you know, what's the book in you, Joe, that you're going to give to us? Yeah. I, I don't mean to brag. Yeah. But I actually like do not, like, I feel like very viscerally that I only got the tiniest slice. And maybe just because I've been doing media for a while. Like, I really did not feel like I could say anything useful about China from 24 hours. Just tell us what you, how you felt.

How you felt? I mean, I had a great time. It's like all the cars are real, that all the cars that we see on social media, they're all real. The food is all great. I spent a night in the park Hyatt, which was probably one of the top three or four hotels I've ever spent a night in. And it was $250, which would be like the grime is. hotel off of Times Square, like, but there was a 24 hours. Did you see some cool, like, tech stuff as well?

I went to the tech mall, and, like, I bought for $15 this eye massager. I almost bought a suitcase that could double as a scooter for a grown adult person and ride around the airport, but I was worried about, like, the batteries and, like, packing it. I wish you'd gotten that. Like, if I told him, if I showed him a video, he'd be so upset that I didn't get that for him. But, like, you know, all of this, like, basically, you know, basically, you know, In that 24 hours, it was like all the social media stuff that, like, I'm inundated by,

like, I was like, all of it is at least in this one city, incredibly advanced. An entire city is biggest in New York where all the offices are about as feel like the new JPMorgan headquarters. Like, it was extraordinary me. What did you not like about this experience? Walking around. No, I liked it. I actually didn't. Like, I found it to be very pleasant 24 hours, including I, um,

went and bought some cigarettes for friends. I don't know to smoke, but some friends do. And currently in New York, Chinese cigarettes are very highly sought after. Yeah, this is the thing for sure. What's the brand? Well, I got a Chunwa. I don't know. But there's, I bought a bunch of other brands.

I'll show you the box. I mean, they don't have the labels on that. We're going to go out for a smoke after this. Yeah, that's fine. But like when I went to the cigarette and liquor dealer, like, you walk in and the first thing, you just starts pouring tea for everyone and opening packs for you to try. I was like, this is great. I mean, this is a nice, this is a, this is a good life.

Yeah. But you're the guest. So you got to tell, you got to tell us. Like this is, liquor and cigarettes. Yeah. Yeah. No, after this, we're going to, you know, drink some baito. We're going to have a huazza, which is kind of how you refer to a cigarette there.

And then, um, so I mean, my, I, I don't love Xinjin. I really feel like Xinjiang is America's answer to San Jose. You know, we kind of talk about, um, Xinjin is the Silicon Valley of China. And I think, yeah, you know, it's. It's kind of the San Jose. It's kind of big midtown buildings. It's a lot of office parks. I mean, the nice thing about it is really green,

but it's, you know, the parts of the city is really centered between the east and the west. And to get between them, you have to get on this big highway. Oh, yeah, yeah, it's on that highway. Urban design is not great. And so this is why I think, you know, Shanghai is still much, much better. And I think that, you know, when people are in China, I think the, you know, the central contradiction, as the Marxists like to call it now, is that what I feel on this trip is that this is kind of people have a bit of a serene

discontent with their lives. On we, sort of. Sorry. On we, kind of. Maybe everyone does, but I think it is a little bit more extreme in China. So on the one hand, the products are really, really amazing. So you have these amazing, you know, amazing, you know, suitcase rollers that you can sit and roll around, you know.

Now, it's all real. Paul Blart, Mallcup, Cho Weizenthal, Lao Bai, airport, roller, guy. And, you know, when I was in Shanghai this time, I was really struck by the amazing food culture there. I mean, just in terms of, you know, the coffees now all have these infusions that make them look almost like caffeinated cocktails without the alcohol. So, you know, why not have your coffee being infused with some sort of honeydew melon and roast water? Yeah. All these amazing things. and they taste really good.

And I'm thinking, oh, why am I getting a standard Americana when it can have something like this? The croissants are really, really amazing. I love baked goods. And so, you know, the Shanghaiese croissants are, like, approaching Parisian, maybe Copenhagen levels of quality, Tokyo levels of quality. I'm, you know, I spend a lot of time talking about how China builds a ton of electrical power, solar, wind, nuclear, et cetera. And then I learned how much it costs to charge your electric vehicle. to the full range of about 600 kilometers, it's about like $12 to have essentially a full tank of gas. And that's kind of totally amazing. And so people are able to have a really good life. They have

access to cheap noodles. Cities are amazing. And yet and yet, take a look at how people are, especially young people. Youth unemployment, according to the official data, is north of 15%, to train in close to 20%. The main source of wealth for most people is parked in property, something like three quarters of the wealth is in property. Property has fallen by 25 to 30 percent across all these big cities. This was the first time in Shanghai where friends have told us that there are sort of these homeless people wandering through the outskirts of Shanghai because all of these migrant

workers may have nowhere to go. Based on all this macro data, migrants are kind of returning to the countryside because they can't find great jobs. The college-educated young people, mostly men, are doing delivery drivers because they can't find great jobs. Everyone's kind of, all these young people are sort of living with their parents, which is kind of a fine lifestyle. And for me, the most amazing fact about China now is that Shanghai is such an amazing city,

and no one wants to have kids. No one wants to have kids. So the national TFR rate in China, and this is the official data, is 1.0. And Shanghai is 0.6, which is on par with Taipei and Seoul. And there are aspects, the richest parts of Shanghai, the TFR, official TFR, is like 0.4. And so, you know, how can this function when, you know, in a couple of years, in something like, I think, 20 years, half the population will be north of 65? How can the city function when half the people expect to be retired? and how can the country function when there's no young people.

And this is something that I used to be a little bit more sanguine about the demographic cliff. This is where, you know, are we going to see a completely different China in 15 years? That's, I'm much less sanguine about that. Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are at them. And that's why we're thrilled to enjoy them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart.

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Every weekday, we bring you the latest insights on Silicon Valley's top companies and conversations with tech's biggest decision makers. Listen to Bloomberg Tech on your commute home and stay ahead of the news cycle. Subscribe today on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you listen. Seeing these global stats and being at a place where it's like, okay, it's not so expensive and transport, it's very easy with children, et cetera. And yet still, you know, fertility is collapsing like that. Unfortunately, it definitely makes me more skeptical of a lot of the claims that like, if only we had like free child care in the U.S. or whatever, that that would like make people more inclined to have families and stuff like that. Like, it doesn't seem like these physical material affordances actually do much on that front. Well, I was going to ask, Dan, what's your theory for declining birth rates in China? Because you hear all these different things about, you know, like the work culture is too intense. The educational culture is too intense.

Life in general is too intense. What do you think? Yeah. Yes. And, I mean, the first thing to say is that China is not an outlier in East Asia. So. It's not a lot outlier anywhere. It's ahead of the curve.

But there's not a place in the world, including Africa, including Central and South America, et cetera, where we don't see fertility rates basically falling off a cliff. Yeah, but I mean, I think there may even be a qualitative difference between TFR of what is the U.S. now, 1.6, 1.7 and 1.0. And so the exponential math here really starts doing their punishing math. So, you know, in East Asia, you know, Japan is actually now, you know, kind of, is something like 1.2, 1.3. And they have, they're further down the demographic curve, but they have a higher TFR at the moment, and they're much more open to immigrants. And so, you know, should we be more optimistic about Japan or China, you know, Japan is more open to immigrants and has higher TFR? So maybe that's bad. Just on a statistical methodology question, does the national Japanese TFR include the immigrant population, which presumably, which might have a higher TFR than the ethnically Japanese population?

Surely, but I suspect that the immigrants are not that big part of the population really to affect that. And I think the East Asian problem, if I had to boil this down to one thing, and obviously life is complex, but the one thing has to be the educational culture. where people feel like, you know, if their kid can't get into the right university, then their life is over. And therefore, they need to get into the right kindergarten to get into the right university. And if they can't live in this particular section of Shanghai or Xinjiang, then they might as well not have a kid at all. And I think it's also worth acknowledging all of these other pressures that families pile on the kids, that, you know, your life is so oriented towards education. and then, you know, after education, it's so oriented towards getting a great job in finance or tech. And then, you know, once you've checked off that box, you know, the parents are telling you, you know, women face only one question in China.

You know, when are you going to marry to the unmarried? When are you going to have your kids to those without kids? And just, you know, there's all these social pressures that keep reproducing themselves. I think it's like a wonder that anyone has children. This actually gets to something that I wanted to, that I regret not talking about. And it's the last time we had you on the podcast, which was last year and we were talking about your book, Breakneck. And around the same time that I read your book, I also read Eva Doe's book about Huawei and like the culture they had there. And one thing that she really emphasizes in that book and other like about this extraordinary company is like,

They're sort of, yes, of course, they have like plenty of brilliant engineers, et cetera. But they also have like this culture that probably is a sort of silhouette of CCP culture, maybe as a way to put it. And how like the company's founder instilled a certain like willingness to die within the company's cadras. And they would therefore win the contract to build 5G in Iraq or win the contract to build 5G in Afghanistan because they would not leave the country while everyone else would. And there are these certain, like, that strikes me as like a cultural change or a difference in corporate culture that is not simply about, say, the engineers versus lawyer brain that you discuss in your book. And so when you talk about some of these like intense cultural forces about getting into the right school, et cetera, when you read about this sort of like imbueing of the Huawei ideology within the company, et cetera, is there something else going on that drives these companies, to the technological frontier to success beyond just, you know, the sort of engineering mindset that you discuss. They're an ideological component.

Yeah, well, Eva Doe's book is great on Huawei. I blurped it. I think everyone should read it. And, you know, to read these descriptions of the wolf culture, I think, is the term on Huawei. You know, they rush towards Afghanistan. Yeah. And so I think that there is definitely an element here that is very real. And I would say that this is more kind of a developing country's hustle mindset.

Because, you know, who else had this culture? New York City of 100 years ago. Joe, you still live in the Lower East Side? Yeah, still there. I hear there's a lot of people there. Yeah. You know, where there's a lot of people, you know, lower east side 100 years ago when there were like 15 people living in a single room or, you know.

So, you know, and the U.S. definitely had this. And so the U.S., you know, people would, you know, rush forward. And so this is where I think this is. is kind of just capitalism. And my view is that if you want to appreciate capitalism, red and tooth and claw, you go to Shanghai, you go to Chenjin, you go to Beijing, you go to all of these places where people just really work their asses off

because they believe that there is something worth pursuing for. And the U.S. used to have this. And I think that China very, very deliberately picked up as much as it could from the United States. You know, the cities are kind of built more like the U.S. cities, much more of a car culture. You know, my phone charger plugs into the U.S. in China more easily than it plugs into anywhere in Europe. So, you know, they copied the U.S. a lot. And they copied everything from the U.S. aside from the political system.

And so they've decided that they got a hustle. And so maybe, you know, you're a New York hustler, Joe. And, you know, this is what attracts you about China today. in an earlier stage of my life, maybe I was. Now I'm sort of just like I'm fine to. Right. Since you mentioned the wolf thing, what's the nationalist temperature like at the moment in China? I think it is fairly steady.

And I think that they're my sense of, you know, part of what, part of what ails the Chinese economy right now is that Xi Jinping has his wish come. true. And I think that top leader, Xi Jinping's main goal is to militarize and harden the country for great power competition with the United States. And I have a chapter in my book called Fortress China. And I think this is much more of a fortress mentality in which everything has to be about pursuing the semiconductors and pursuing the batteries and making sure that social pressures are not blowing off a lid. And I think that, you know, it seems to me like the top levels of the Communist Party is pretty comfortable with where things are in spite of the collapse and property,

in spite of youth unemployment being almost 20 percent, because they're getting their, they're having their wishes come true on the chips and the batteries and on all of these high technology pursuits. And, you know, when President Trump visited Beijing, you know, the White House social media was, you know, almost treated Trump as a supplicant. You know, there was these photos. Yeah, yeah. Which Xi was pointing the way and Donald Trump is kind of nodding along. And so, you know, there's all of these things where this is much more about great power versus great power.

And in great power, the little people don't really matter all that much. And so this is much more about the elite, you know, 10% of the power. 1% 0.1% of the engineers still being able to achieve everything that they want to achieve. And all of these resources are funneled towards them. And power is made really cheaply to them. And so, you know, they want to pursue it. So one thing we've talked about before is the lack of cultural exports from China. Labubu's notwithstanding.

I thought this was going to be the one. I just thought this was going to be the one. And that lasted about five minutes. Yeah. What do you think is needed to sort of unlock a cultural explosion in China? Because like the impulse must be there, right? Yeah. How about some marijuana?

And I don't think that this is something that... I didn't expect you to say that, but go on. Marijuana and the dropping of censorship. How about that? And I don't think that is going to be real anytime soon. So I was pretty deliberate on my trip to Shanghai, this time. I went to go see a lot of stand-up comedy in Shanghai,

which is something that's really booming. So they have kind of more of these online specials now in which comics are doing shows, and then offline is actually a real phenomenon as well. And I went to shows, one of which was English speaking. I didn't choose that, but it just happened to be there that day.

And it was kind of these, you know, American expats who were English teachers, mostly, who were giving this show. And for the most part, the audiences were amazing. Like, you know, they love to play along. You know, they give amazing joke answers back. I think the Chinese audience is really, really fun. Comics were not as funny as I hoped. I mean, I don't see that much comedy in New York. And so it's not really good comparison, but the Chinese comic that I saw was essentially telling a series of skits.

And it wasn't, it's not stand-up. As I understand it, you know, he was essentially telling these elaborate jokes, which kind of he constructed, which didn't really happen to him. And so it wasn't all that funny to me, but I think like it would be great if there were more Chinese jokes out there. But the fact of Shanghai comedy was that something like three years ago, one of this really big comic in China made a pun off of one of these core military slogans. And what happened? What happened to him?

Well, all of these comic clubs in Shanghai were shot for, I think something like four months. and they all close down in Shanghai. And across these festivals, across all of these public performances, the comics have to submit their scripts to the censors before they can do their routine. And so how can that possibly be excellent for creativity? You know, this actually gets me to one more question. In addition, the other book that I read last year, the other China book that I read last year was the book about She's Dad. Tarigian, Joseph, which is great. And I guess he's like your Hoover Institute colleague.

And one, like my reading of that book, which I thought was very interesting, and it speaks directly to this, is that one way to think about the sort of post-Mao era is how do you keep a hard line while not tipping into true cultural revolution territory? And this fear, like, because what you describe were it's like, and, you know, there was a story in the Wall Street Journal recently about Xi Jinping cracking down on people who are into mysticism. and so forth. And like, but it's easy to see how these things spill over, right? Because if you're my boss and you tell me to stop with the mysticism, then I'm going to bully the 10 people who are like a little bit mystical in my arena. And then they'll, you know, and everyone replicates the bullying and then suddenly you're back in Cultural Revolution territory. Like that seems how the way these things propagates me. And I'm sort of curious, like when we look at the fortress China that you talk about, do you think it's inured from a future cultural revolution at some point?

the future by the way these things propagate? Yeah, I mean, this is quite a chain of dominoes you've constructed, Joe. You know, first you take away everyone's tarot cards and then the cultural revolution erupts a little bit later. Well, everyone, you know, you take away my tarot cards, then I'm like going to prove that I'm even harsher on the people I know who like, you know, look at astrology website. Perhaps, perhaps. Now, I think that, you know, I think that one, and I'm spending more time in Silicon Valley

and, you know, the opening line of my letter this year is, that one thing that Silicon Valley shares with the Communist Party is that both are serious, self-serious, and indeed completely humorless. You know, the Central Committee is not a bunch of yucks. And I think it is our misfortune, our global misfortune, that we are ruled right now by Silicon Valley on the one hand and the Communist Party on the other. And these are completely humorless people that are determining, that are kind of reshaping a lot of what we buy and what we think. And that is kind of nuts to me. And I think. And I think this is also why, you know, how great are Silicon Valley's cultural exports?

I don't know. I don't think it's great products and just like the Chinese. And there are some great products. I think there's going to be, you know, Chinese marketing has not really kept up. You know, we don't really have amazing associations with Chinese brands as such. But I think that will change because the quality is going to improve. But I think if you're looking for any sort of a bottom-up culture, it is still remarkable how stunted. Chinese cultural exports are relative to, let's say, the Koreans with all of this K-pop, squid game, all of that.

You have Americans who are much more eager to study the Korean language at college now. I think that is actually outpacing people studying Chinese in college now. So, you know, China might do much better, but I would say by any measure it is an underperformer relative to its population and its economic growth. All right, Dan Wong, thank you so much for coming back on oddlots and giving us the vibes, the China. A true China ham. Thank you so much, Dan. That was fantastic. Yeah, let's have some photoshoots in China. We'll get on some yaks. We'll look like Tibetans and then we'll have a great time. While drinking lichy flavored coffee, right? And smoking cigarettes. The three of us are

going to do a road trip one day. Absolutely. We're going to make this happen. I can't wait. Thank you so much. That was great. Always fun to catch up with Dan, Joe. I love talking to Dan. And there was a different one. You know, we didn't talk too much like, what is the secret recipe of like batteries? Building giant infrastructure projects. Yeah, I like talking about influencer culture. And then that last anecdote about stand-up comedy was really interesting as well. Yeah.

So stand-up comedy obviously very different in China versus the U.S., although maybe the U.S. is heading in that trajectory in some ways. But what stood out to me in that conversation is actually like there are a lot of similarities, I think, between like some of the cultural or not cultural, social, on we. that we have, we seem to have in the U.S. and the, what did Dan call it, silent discontent or quiet discontent in China? You know, I just, sorry, before going on to that,

I don't follow, I happen to follow a, I think she's Kyrgyzstan-y stand-up comic on Instagram. And it's really funny because she, like, makes these jokes about, like, distinct ethnic pockets within Kyrgyz. You know, it's like, so-and-so men do this and stuff like that. But anyway, I like seeing like these patterns like replicated all around the world. But I do think this is very interesting that there are certainly like, let's say the collapse of fertility. They say that's a pathology in some way or something like that.

Or everyone like these are like these are global phenomena. And maybe the East Asian countries are just sort of like the most further along down this trajectory for one reason or another. The phone stuff, the influence. It doesn't. And then also, you know, and I remember when we. We did that episode earlier this year about like the Chinese internet. And like people to, oh, there's like this more nationalist flavor. Yeah.

That's the same here. I know. So it does. I think to your point like there's convergence. Yeah, there's sort of like cultural, global cultural convergence that everyone is sort regard in I guess what I would say is even in very different economic conditions. There is this sort of cultural convergence happening. And you say it's like, okay, the Chinese economy is like clearly done so well.

from a standpoint of lifting people out of poverty and material abundance. So it's so well over the last 10, 20, 30 years, obviously better than any other country in the world. And the fact that it's still roughly replicating the same moods, et cetera, as anywhere else, I just think it's like, as Claude would say, a point to sit with for a moment. All right. Shall we leave it there? Let's leave it there. This has been another episode of the Odd Thoughts podcast.

I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy. Galloway. And I'm Joe Wisenthall. You can follow me at the stalwart. Follow our guest, Dan Wong. He's at Dan W. Wong. Follow our producers, Carmen Roderigis at Carmen, Dachell-Binnett at Dashel-Brux and Kevin Lazzano at Kevin Lloyd-Lasano. And for more Oddlots content, go to Bloomberg.com slash Odlots or the daily newsletter and all of our episodes. And you can chat about all of these topics 24-7 in our Discord. Discord.g.g. slash odd lots. And if you enjoy Odlots, if you want us to do a road trip through Yunnan with Dan Wong,

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