ChinAI Newsletter

“ChinAI #259: Year 6 of ChinAI (The Rise and Fall of Technological Leadership)” by Jeffrey Ding

Mar 25, 2024

The podcast discusses the impact of technological revolutions on economic power shifts, introducing general purpose technologies and analyzing historical cases. It challenges traditional theories and explores institutional factors driving power shifts, drawing parallels to the US-China tech rivalry.

08:21

Creator website

AI Summary

AI Chapters

Episode notes

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

General Purpose Technologies (GPTs) lead to economic power shifts through broad diffusion across sectors.

Adapting institutions to facilitate GPT diffusion is crucial for countries to attain economic leadership during technological revolutions.

Deep dives

General Purpose Technology Diffusion and Economic Power Transitions

The podcast delves into how technological revolutions lead to shifts in economic power. It challenges the traditional leading sector theory by introducing the concept of General Purpose Technologies (GPTs), which continuously improve and have broad economic applications. Unlike the leading sector theory, GPTs emphasize diffusion across various economic sectors rather than one country monopolizing innovations. The article discusses historical cases to showcase how countries attain economic leadership amidst technological revolutions, emphasizing the importance of adapting institutions to facilitate widespread GPT diffusion.

Introduction

2min

Exploring GPT Diffusion Theory and Economic Power Transitions

2min

Revisiting Historical Technological Advancements and Institutional Factors

4min

Greetings from a world where…

ChinAI is now six years old, which means it should be beginning to speak in simple but complete sentences, tell time, and develop a sense of humor, but let's not put too much pressure on it to hit these milestones. After all, all newsletters develop at their own pace.

…***Thanks folks for getting the paid subscriptions back up a bit in the past few weeks; if you you’ve valued the output from year six, please consider subscribing here to support ChinAI under a Guardian/Wikipedia-style tipping model (everyone gets the same content but those who can pay support access for all AND compensation for awesome ChinAI contributors). As always, the searchable archive of all past issues is here.

The Rise and Fall of Technological Leadership: General-Purpose Technology Diffusion and Economic Power Transitions

How do technological revolutions produce economic power transitions? Last week, I tackled this [...]

---

First published:
March 25th, 2024

Source:
https://chinai.substack.com/p/chinai-259-year-6-of-chinai-the-rise

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.