Gurley explains that unlike US state rivalry, Chinese provincial competition is centrally adjudicated career competition, which drives hyper-fast buildout but also overinvestment and ghost cities. ✦ AI generated
Bill Gurley · BG2 Pod · 2025-08-28 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 9:34
because there's a singular government that's going to make choices, like in the US if you do well as a governor you might get elected. But in this case, it's more like divisions of a company and if you run one well, you might get the CEO job and so that competition, you know, leads to overbuild in certain cases.
verbatim transcript · starts at 9:34
9:34move up in the federal government. But wouldn't you say that's a I mean that seems to me like Gavin Newsome competing you know with Dantis in Florida on you know who is more business friendly who is tougher on immigration. It seems a little bit the same way. >> I think it's a little bit the same way but the difference is that because there's a singular government that's
9:54going to make choices like like in the US if you do well as a governor you might get elected. But in this case, it's more like divisions of a company and if you run one well, you might get the CEO job and and so that competition, you know, leads to overbuild in certain cases. So there's several ghost cities um that that are buildings that are empty, you know, where they've built too
10:21fast, are now facing problems even though they're the world leader in EVs and the world leader in solar panels where some of these companies need to go bankrupt and a province may not want them to because of employment issues, right? And so those are th those are flip, you know, two sides of a coin. You get one benefit, you get hyper competition. We talked about the thousand flowers bloom. So this the the
10:48federal government publishes every five years this this mandate of the things these are the things that are important and you need to go work on and then the provinces you know go go at it like they go right against those initiatives and that's that's how they've got taken a lead in those things we mentioned and energy production right you wonder we talk about all the number of nuclear
11:10plants that they have new nuclear starts solar farms wind farms >> I want to dig into that I think there's this general view that China's good at building things, building iPhones, but perhaps not at innovating, right? And then, you know, Jensen Hang reminded us recently that 50% of the world's AI researchers are in China and they're indeed innovating and not copying. You know, on the ground, when you look at the things happening in