Designed In Shenzhen, Made In China

Posted on Substack 5/17/2025 

Can China’s surveillance state brand rule the world? 

 It has been was apparent for some time that China’s moment is now. And this moment is staring us in the face in a manner that most emphatically has all of our attention. Partly due to Trump’s tariffs; largely due to the full realization of China’s manufacturing and technical prowess. Recent podcasts and columns by Ezra Klein, Thomas Freidman, Niall Ferguson, and the just released, Apple In China, by Patrick McGee, are solid recent resources to examine the landscape. 

The McGee book about the tricky position Apple is in, had me circle back to another book I often find myself referring to: Why Nations Fail, by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. At the time of publishing Acemoglu was bearish on China, in large part because he sees the country as an extractive state. Today, the term “surveillance state,” would most likely be the term of choice that first comes off the tongue. And that has me thinking of the value of soft power. 

China has a soft power problem. It has done little to allay fears about the role the CCP plays in the nation’s companies. Perhaps it assumes Westerners-Americans in particular-will always buy the lowest cost product? We are now more and more seeing brands not only are manufactured but created in China. But TikTok or Shein are not the same as BYD or Huawei. Your car as a snitch? Ok, hyperbolic but this is a legitimate mental barrier the China needs to get past-truly the great leap forward for Brand China.

It’s interesting to compare China today to the Cold War era USSR. The fear of nuclear holocaust was an incentive for soft power to be used on both sides to whittle away distrust and slowly get to détente with the Soviets. Van Cliburn, track meets, jazz, chess, ballet-you had to have been there, but I can tell you that America’s crush on Olga Korbut was as important to US-Soviet relations as any summit. And China? It’s says quite a lot that the most popular Chinese export to become entrenched in our popular culture is one that the US government has said should be banned. There are no Chinese pop stars, actors, designers, athletes, or artists who have impacted US pop culture in the way that Korbut, Nureyev, Spassky, and others did during the first Cold War. In 1973 there was even talk about trying to get Muhammad Ali to fight the great Cuban, Teofilo Stevenson. Remember Apollo-Soyuz? Well you should because that mix of caginess and cooperation will certainly be needed as China and the US march to a AGI future. 


China does have one big advantage in this new Cold War: they are really good at making stuff; they are the world’s factory. They ain’t making Ladas in Zhengzhou. But it’s going to take a lot more than 430 miles on a single charge and entry level models under $25,000 to change their image-and I haven’t even mentioned what a confrontation over Taiwan will due to China’s relations with the West-is there some form of retaliatory embargo on the horizon? We are going to need a bit more than panda diplomacy to fix this.

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