Xi Jinping’s paranoid approach to AGI, debt crisis, & Politburo politics — Victor Shih

On this episode, I chat with Victor Shih about all things China. We discuss China’s massive local debt crisis, the CCP’s views on AI, what happens after Xi, and more. Victor Shih is an expert on the Chinese political system, as well as their banking and fiscal policies, and he has amassed more biographical data on the Chinese elite than anyone else in the world. He teaches at UC San Diego, where he also directs the 21st Century China Center. 𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒 * Transcript: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/victor-shih * Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/xi-jinpings-paranoid-approach-to-agi-debt-crisis-politburo/id1516093381?i=1000710442426 * Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2HM7l7RDf8yG1KOtE3QY15?si=X_h0cP93S9yNbXvIpaAkrQ 𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒 * Scale is building the infrastructure for smarter, safer AI. In addition to their Data Foundry, they just released Scale Evaluation, a tool that diagnoses model limitations. Learn how Scale can help you push the frontier at https://scale.com/dwarkesh * WorkOS is how top AI companies ship critical enterprise features without burning months of engineering time. If you need features like SSO, audit logs, or user provisioning, head to https://workos.com/ To sponsor a future episode, visit https://dwarkesh.com/advertise 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 00:00:00 – Is China more decentralized than the US? 00:04:03 – How the Politburo Standing Committee makes decisions 00:21:54 – Xi’s right hand man in charge of AGI 00:36:24 – DeepSeek was trained to track CCP policy 00:40:13 – Xi versus Stalin 00:46:22 – Local government debt crisis 00:50:47 – BYD, CATL, and financial repression 00:58:59 – How corruption leads to overbuilding 01:11:33 – Probability of Taiwan invasion 01:19:43 – Succession after Xi 01:25:57 – Future growth forecasts