Yan Xu

Assistant Professor @cuhksz. Political economy, tech, industrial policy

[Adam Y. Liu @AdamYLiu1]

My first book, Authoritarian Markets: The Politics of China’s Banking Explosion (Cornell University Press), is officially out today!

It explores the political foundations of China’s banking market development—and how that development both drove the rapid growth of the Chinese economy in the past three decades and incubated its deeply intertwined challenges: shadow banking, the housing bubble, and local government debt.

The China story isn’t sui generis—not once you see how contract-intensive markets expand in other autocracies. Authoritarian states produce authoritarian markets: markets with three coherent properties, the three “Rs”—rationed entry, reflective competition, and rigged regulation. I won’t give away details but post the epigraph to each chapter below :)

I hope you find the book readable, rigorous, and refreshing—a different set of three Rs, but ones I hope characterize the book as much as its argument.

Finally—here’s a promo code (40% off!): 09EXP40.

https://t.co/qe0SMQnLlO

p.s. So many teachers and friends to thank---see my acknowledgement :)

[Yan Xu @xupolitics]

@dwarkesh_sp VC but with sectoral focuses. I've written about how this emerged https://t.co/F0B0eGDWon

[Cui Zhiyuan @cuizhiyuan]

Looking forward to meet old and new friends in HK

[Lizhi Liu @lizhiliu.bsky.social @LizhiLiu4]

Thrilled to announce “From Click to Boom: The Political Economy of E-Commerce in China” is released! (amazon: https://t.co/B6QKFNE2yM or 30%off with code P327 at https://t.co/IpLcGkpob8 via @PrincetonUPress)

A decade in the making, my book presents how the world’s largest e-commerce market unveils a digital path to development—and what it means for China’s growth trajectory and institutional evolution worldwide.

Research built on extensive fieldwork across 6 provinces, hundreds of interviews, two original surveys, 27 million data of proprietary transactions, and a rare, large-scale field experiment spanning 3 Chinese provinces…

A thread about the book below: (1/n)

[Yan Xu @xupolitics]

@kyleichan Another recent report from itjuzi actually says the vc/pe market warmed up this year: https://t.co/lDX5SPWCaF

[Glenn @GlennLuk]

There are two important things to unpack here:

▪️ 1st point is that yes, the general mood for VC & PE is very bad. But people are conflating VC & PE with entrepreneurialism.

▪️ 2nd point is related to technical issues & missing context with the numbers from a DB like IT Juzi.

[Yan Xu @xupolitics]

@kyleichan Sectors matter :)

[Yan Xu @xupolitics]

@kyleichan Train and EV are quite different though. There's a lot of competition in EV within China.

[Yan Xu @xupolitics]

@pstAsiatech The title is misleading. He meant AMEC--not the tool industry--can achieve basic self-sufficiency. @SCMPNews

[Adam Tooze @adam_tooze]

What happens if you take a Western newsletter, translate it into Mandarin and make it available on Chinese social media? @qingww and I thought it would be interesting to find out. Thanks to her vision & a great translation team, we launched today. https://t.co/q4puWO0fgg

[Yingyao Wang @yingyao_wang822]

Now available? My book, "Markets with Bureaucratic Characteristics," analyzes the role of technocrats in crafting China's economic policy paradigms. Coupon code below.

[Yan Xu @xupolitics]

@straightedge Part of the objective for harnessing venture capital for IP was "to overcome market failures that result from purely allocating VC through the market." See https://t.co/F0B0eGDWon

[SASE @SASE_Meeting]

Are venture capital and entrepreneurship products of liberal market economies? In this new #SER article, drawing on the Chinese case, Xu shows the emergence of a “policy-guided VC” in addition to more usual return-driven VC. @OxfordJournals https://t.co/JQ1uefQKH3

[Yan Xu @xupolitics]

@kevinsxu defense forum vs cnbc. audience matters.

[Mark Blyth @MkBlyth]

Here's a fun thing @BJMbraun and I are doing this summer. A "what you need to know about finance" workshop for PhDs and early career researchers. Details here: https://t.co/Ipa2tFYdJZ

[Fan Yang 杨帆 @FanfanYang]

My new book is available for pre-order! https://t.co/Ktz6MY0056

[Yan Xu @xupolitics]

@pstAsiatech This should be contextualized with the fact that SMIC was primarily serving US customers up until a few years ago.

[Yan Xu @xupolitics]

@FuDaoge @ANewman_forward Yes, the 2020 rule didn't prevent the progress. On the 2022 rule, how likely is it that tools shipped a few months ago were a key piece of how they solved the puzzle? Anyway the fresh CSIS report seems to suggest the progress had nothing much to do with the 2020/22 controls.