My Take | China is capitalist and the US socialist? You must be joking

Some pundits are full of conventional wisdom, others try to be contrarian. Weijian Shan is a good mix. One reason is that though he writes the occasional highly provocative commentaries, including for this newspaper, he is more of a scholar and a big-time investor. He has to put his money – millions and millions – where his mouth is.

Recently, he rounded on me for making an erroneous claim about China’s nine-dash line in the South China Sea. I thought he misunderstood but he proved to be far more knowledgeable than me.

His latest take on China and the United States, from an interview with the chief editor of the Harvard Business Review, makes many intriguing observations.

Some points are hardly contentious. For example, “China has been shifting away from an investment-driven growth model to one led by private consumption”, but it’s not doing it fast enough.

“The state-owned sector remains too big and inefficient.” They need to be privatised, alongside expanding private consumption, to maintain future growth.

But some of his claims are counterintuitive and probably controversial to many people. Nevertheless, I think he is right on the money.