Book Event: The Rise and Fall of the East by Yasheng Huang

On Thursday, December 14, 2023 Yasheng Huang, Professor at MIT Sloan School of Management, discussed his book The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to Its Decline with John Yasuda, Assistant Prosessor at Johns Hopkins University and the Munk School's Professor Lynette Ong.

 

  

The long history of China’s relationship between stability, diversity, and prosperity, and how its current leadership threatens this delicate balance

 

Chinese society has been shaped by the interplay of the EAST—exams, autocracy, stability, and technology—from ancient times through the present. Beginning with the Sui dynasty’s introduction of the civil service exam, known as Keju, in 587 CE—and continuing through the personnel management system used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—Chinese autocracies have developed exceptional tools for homogenizing ideas, norms, and practices. But this uniformity came with a huge downside: stifled creativity.

 

Yasheng Huang shows how China transitioned from dynamism to extreme stagnation after the Keju was instituted. China’s most prosperous periods, such as during the Tang dynasty (618–907) and under the reformist CCP, occurred when its emphasis on scale (the size of bureaucracy) was balanced with scope (diversity of ideas).

 

Considering China’s remarkable success over the past half-century, Huang sees signs of danger in the political and economic reversals under Xi Jinping. The CCP has again vaulted conformity above new ideas, reverting to the Keju model that eventually led to technological decline. It is a lesson from China’s own history, Huang argues, that Chinese leaders would be wise to take seriously.  

 

About The Speakers:

 

Yasheng Huang is the Epoch Foundation Professor of Global Economics and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. His books include Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Entrepreneurship and the State.

 

John Yasuda is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University, specializing in regulatory governance, bureaucratic politics, and comparative political economy.  His most recent book is On Feeding the Masses: An Anatomy of Regulatory Failure in China.  

 

Lynette H. Ong is Professor of Political Science, jointly appointed at the department and the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. She is an expert on China, having conducted on-the-ground research in the country since the late 1990s. In addition, she has also published on the broader Indo-Pacific region, including Southeast Asia and India. Her most recent book is Outsourcing epression: Everyday State Power in Contemporary China.