What does China export? This question may sound dumb. And if it does, that is because it had been intentionally formulated to sound so. Everyone knows that China is producing everything. Everything you buy, everything you wear, everything you stare in, has been imported from China

The thing about industrialisation of China is that China had not one but two separate industrialisations. One was chaotic, unsolicited. It started as a deviation from the industrial policy, and brought in the oceans of cash, from which the second was funded kamilkazani.substack.com/p/on-the-two...

Why read ancient texts? The primary reason would be: things have changed, people have not.

Islam and Pessimism kamilkazani.substack.com/p/islam-and-...

Glad that the Assad's regime has fallen. Not because it was a "dictatorship". In fact, I would say that living under some sort of autocracy has been a normal, default human condition since the dawn of civilisation. Nothing so special about it

Litmus test in politics: Can you imagine a good and reasonable person taking an opposite side of yours? If not, you have a brainrot, because there are plenty and plenty of such people. What you need, is a few weeks of farm labor with no access to the internet.

One peculiar aspect of Russian social structure is that the ruling elite has tons of "Historian Orientalist/Africanist" majors in it, usually with good language fluency. That is because the Oriental Studies departments have been a major recruiting pool for the KGB/FSB.

In his “Clash of Civilizations” Samuel Huntington identified eight civilisations on this planet: Confucian, Japanese, Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, Western, Orthodox, Latin American, and, possibly, African I have always found this list a bit dubious, not to say self-contradictory:

Why did they lose? Because they failed to conform to my preferences. They did stuff I hate. Had they conformed to my preferences, and did everything I like, they would have surely won. The greatest and the most widespread fallacy in the world.

Samuel, Huntington. "The clash of civilizations." Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (1993): 22-49.

We tend to forget how insanely rich was the UK compared to continental Europe just 100 years ago. Now look how did the tables reverse. Honestly, I find it unavoidable. A hegemon is bound to acquire nonsensical notions & practices. Then the hegemony goes, and all there is left is nonsense

Haven’t had such a pleasant reading for a long, long time. Great content, great style, presentation

Revolution and the Jews Literacy rates in European Russia, 1897. Obviously, the data is imperfect. Still, it represents one crucial pattern for understanding the late Russian Empire. That is the wide gap in human capital between the core of empire and its Western borderland.

Great news. Very much restores faith in the international law and the rules-based order.

Who of my mutuals is here?

Why the USSR failed (and China succeeded) Short answer: There are two ways to build the edifice of industrial economy. The logical way is to build it up, from the foundations. The illogical way is to skip the foundations, and get to the roof asap. The USSR made it logically, China - illogically.