Cogitations

Litigation Nation, Engineering Empire

A review of Dan Wang's new book Breakneck

Aug 27 • 

Jonathon P Sine

210

32

July 2025

Industrial Colossus: China vs 1950s America

China's global manufacturing share to 2035

Jul 18 • 

Jonathon P Sine

54

5

The Stalinist Transformation of Russia

A Thematic Review of Stephen Kotkin’s Stalin: Paradoxes of Power

Jul 15 • 

Jonathon P Sine

27

3

June 2025

The Life and Times of Xi Zhongxun

The Party’s Interests Come First, Joseph Torigian’s magisterial new biography

Jun 16 • 

Jonathon P Sine

62

9

February 2025

From Reform to Ruin in the USSR

The Soviet Collapse: A Tale of Botched Reform or Entrenched Bureaucracy?

Feb 2 • 

Jonathon P Sine

167

12

April 2024

The Rise and Fall of LGFVs

Part 1: How China's local government financing vehicles (LGFVs) became China's most complex economic challenge.

Apr 2, 2024 • 

Jonathon P Sine

125

12

December 2022

The Cold Wind of Historical Nihilism

Lessons from Chinese Communist Party documentaries on the fall of the Soviet Union

Dec 2, 2022 • 

Jonathon P Sine

26

September 2021

Groping the Elephant of Common Prosperity

Common Prosperity is about Common Purpose

Sep 30, 2021 • 

Jonathon P Sine

9

July 2021

The Long Game by Rush Doshi

Hundred-Year Marathon 2.0?

Jul 6, 2021 • 

Jonathon P Sine

11

1

June 2021

The Dialectic of Development

Industrial Policy and the Living Legacy of Internal Colonization

Jun 30, 2021 • 

Jonathon P Sine

12

May 2021

Financialization: Is it Worse in the PRC?

Over at Scholar’s Stage there’s a very good post with the mildly hyperbolic title: ‘Everything Is Worse in China.’ That essay focused on conservative…

May 9, 2021 • 

Jonathon P Sine

11

4

March 2021

Atomization and the Future of the CPC

"Despite four hundred million people gathered in one China, we are, in fact, but a sheet of loose sand [yipan sansha (一盘散沙)].

Mar 24, 2021 • 

Jonathon P Sine

2