Contributor(s): Chris Gilson, Professor Shiping Tang | In the past decade, many commentators have increasingly spoken of growing competition between the United States and China in areas like trade, industrial policy, but also on foreign policy and global influence more generally.

 

To discuss these issues and how the social sciences can learn from evolutionary thinking, in January 2025 the Phelan US Centre spoke to Professor Shiping Tang of Fudan University. The conversation ranged over how Professor Tang’s early career as a biologist has informed his thinking about social science issues, whether we should talk about the US and China being in competition at all, and how democracies promote growth.

 

This episode was produced by Chris Gilson and Luke Digweed.

 

Further reading and resources

The Institutional Foundation of Economic Development by Shiping Tang (Princeton University Press, 2022)

Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research, New Edition by Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba (Princeton University Press, 2021)

Why Nations Fail: the Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. Daron Acemoglu & James A Robinson. Crown Business. March 2012. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2012/08/21/book-review-why-nations-fail-the-origins-of-power-prosperity-and-poverty/

Olson, M. (1996). Distinguished Lecture on Economics in Government: Big Bills Left on the Sidewalk: Why Some Nations are Rich, and Others Poor. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 10(2), 3–24. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2138479