A Tale of Two Chinese Cities — Zhang Jun

By recognizing and investing in the strengths of pioneering cities and regions, China has developed a powerful mechanism for organizing and advancing its economic transformation. Judging by the tremendous success of Shenzhen and Shanghai, it seems clear that China will continue to reap the rewards of this approach for decades to come.

One of the most difficult and challenging areas of economics is development economics. The success have been somewhat rare. However, China has broken the mold and created paths to development that have shown themselves to be successful.

Project Syndicate
A Tale of Two Chinese Cities
Zhang Jun | Dean of the School of Economics at Fudan University and Director of the China Center for Economic Studies, a Shanghai-based think tank


Also of interest a Project Syndicate

Parsing of the vote based on US law that is not based on the majority, as in most democracies, but on the republican nature of the US Constitution, which is based on electoral votes that do not reflect the total population accurately. So it is possible for a candidate that gets the majority of votes to lose the election. Based on this, the election was very close, decided by a few votes in a few counties in the battleground states. And owing to quirks in the US Constitution, political maneuvering, and incompetence in managing elections, the election is still undecided.

A lot of the campaign on both sides involved demonizing the other side, so in the end many people were motivated by what they opposed rather than what they supported. On one hand, the demon was "Russia," and on the hand, it was "socialism."

Does this mean that both sides had unusually attractive candidates? Not exactly. While 80% of Trump voters told pollsters they were specifically voting for the candidate himself, 56% of Biden voters described their decision as a vote against Trump.

A better explanation, then, is that voters turned out in record numbers on both sides because they emphatically did not want the opposing party to win. Moreover, this “negative partisanship” is symmetric. Democrats and a few moderate Republicans and independents did not want another four years of Trump, and most Republican voters appear not to have wanted to pass the baton back to the mistrusted “coastal” elites, globalists, “biased” liberal media, and Washington insiders.

The State of America’s Disunion
Michael Spence, Nobel laureate in economics, Professor of Economics Emeritus and a former dean of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, member on the Academic Committee at Luohan Academy, and co-chair of the Advisory Board of the Asia Global Institute; and David W. Brady | Professor of Political Science and Leadership Values at Stanford University and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

See also

It was a strange narrative that seemed to move away from the provable to the unbelievable. The question is, why?

One possibility: to raise sweeping allegations with insufficient time to resolve them in order to force an Electoral College fight. The idea would be to give license to Republican-controlled legislatures to intervene with their own sets of electors or block the submission of any set of electors. Concern over such a strategy was magnified when Trump called key Republican leaders from Michigan’s legislature to the White House on Friday.

Call it the “Death Star strategy.”

As they say, all's fair in love, war and politics. 

Jonathan Turley
The Death Star Strategy: Is Trump Contemplating The Ultimate Constitutional Trick Shot?
Jonathan Turley | Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University