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What kind of economy leads to national power?

It's time to start asking this question again.

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Noah Smith
Jul 29, 2021
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"Stars over Berlin and Tokyo will soon replace these factory lights" by Marion Doss is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

In a well-read post earlier this week, I put forward the hypothesis that China is trying to shape its economy so as to maximize its national power. But I glossed over the all-important question of what kind of economy actually does maximize national power. So here I want to think a little about that.

National power has always been important to economic p…

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