China is often regarded as a success story of market economics, since it began lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty once the Communist Party began easing economic restrictions and opening its economy to the world. But to this day, even though it has achieved impressive economic growth for decades, China remains a totalitarian country. So here are the key questions going forward: First, how successful will China’s mixed economy be at generating growth and innovation once the low-hanging fruit of industrialization has been picked? And second, how should the United States react to the rise of China as an economic and geopolitical competitor? Today’s episode discusses these questions with David Dollar.

David Dollar is a senior fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution and host of the Brookings trade podcast, Dollar & Sense. He is also the co-editor of China 2049: Economic Challenges of a Rising Global Power, released in June of last year.