The Swedish Central Bank, the oldest in the Western world, has awarded 57 Nobel Prizes in economics to 81 academics since 1969. Of these, six prizes were awarded to economists dedicated to the study of economic growth. The first, in 1971, to Simon Kuznets. Then came Theodore Schultz and Arthur Lewis (1979), Bob Solow (1987), Paul Romer (2018) and in 2024 it was the turn of AJR: Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson. This year it was Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt. There can be no better time to give it to you: while the world is confused by tariffs, bubbles and various coercions, the reality is that global growth is slowing: so far this millennium, global GDP growth has gone from around 3.7% growth to 2.8%. It seems like a good idea that clear, rigorous minds are rewarded for their work on how economic growth is generated.
Solow taught us that it depends on productivity, Romer expanded the analysis to endogenous sources, the AJR showed us the key role of institutions and this year Aghion and Howitt reminded us of the role of innovation and productivity. Schumpeterian creative destruction. But it is perhaps Mokyr, the other winner, who offers us the perspective that best complements our understanding of the phenomenon: sustained growth is not just a question of capital or technology, but of a culture that values useful knowledge, connects science and practice, protects experimentation and tolerates failure. Read his Culture of Growth or The Gift of Athena. You won’t regret it, because although your analysis focuses on how the conditions for the take-off of the Industrial Revolution were created between the 16th and 18th centuries and this may seem like entertainment for intense minds, it is the best intellectual framework to answer the question that haunts you: will China really be the hegemonic empire in which our grandchildren will live?
At the dawn of the Modern Age, Europe made skepticism a method and freedom the engine of knowledge. China, with its Confucianism and imperial centralization, was unable to tolerate that culture and sealed its failure. Until now. Today the world looks at China with admiration for its evident power and with the fear produced by its value system, which is not different from ours but simply orthogonal: either to theirs or to ours. This is why we live immersed in a fatalistic fascination: they will beat us; History has already decided for us.
Mokyr, Solow and Romer bring relief. China was already there and wasted it. It may not be successful this time either. It is indisputable that China dominates global production – 30% – 80% of solar panels, or 75% of lithium batteries… but its total factor productivity – the true measure of economic efficiency – has been stagnant since 2008. This contradiction reveals an inconvenient truth: China is gaining technological dominance at the expense of massive economic efficiency. To generate the same unit of growth, more and more capital is needed. And more investment means less private consumption. If these diminishing returns are combined with frightening demographics – the United Nations predicts a loss of 740 million inhabitants by 2100 – the only way out is technology. But how to combine innovation and growing political and social control? How to maintain industrial policies in a real estate crisis? How can you continue to export your immense overcapacity to a world that no longer believes in globalization?
China in the past opted for internal control and stability, and in the 19th century it encountered the century of humiliation. It won’t happen again. Mao, the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping and now Xi Jinping have demonstrated that culture matters, but that cultures can be transformed more rapidly and through more paths than European historical analysis suggests. China has created its own “Republic of Letters,” but not of intellectuals exchanging ideas, but of entrepreneurs, engineers and scientists competing within a nationalist framework to build the “Chinese dream.” It is a culture of growth, but it is certainly not the European one. And it is precisely this difference that generates fascination and fatalism in us. Because, despite everything, this time it worked? I don’t believe it, but I admit that what fascinates me is the Enlightenment, skepticism as a method and freedom of thought.
