Autocracy 2.0: How China’s Rise Reinvented Tyranny

In a provocative and important study, Lind challenges the familiar notion that authoritarianism hampers innovation. She offers ample evidence of China’s technological dynamism, including its world-leading electric vehicle sector and the host of science and engineering Ph.D.’s it graduates. But she goes further to argue that great powers do not need to be rich to innovate. Instead of high GDP per capita, they need economic capacity—human capital, infrastructure, and industrial policy that can promote sustained growth—and the ability to deploy cutting-edge technology in society and the military. Authoritarian states that have these can practice “smart authoritarianism,” in which they selectively relax political control to encourage growth and innovation. China’s success as a smart authoritarian power, Lind argues, has transformed it into a genuine competitor of the United States that boasts both growing global influence and an attractive development model. Scholars of Chinese politics may take issue with her claim that China’s leaders “silence critics not with bullets but with lawsuits and red tape” and her downplaying of the country’s economic challenges. But she usefully interrogates common assumptions about China’s rise.