[Bread-Baking Typewriter] The Real China We Never Knew

Insights into Chinese Society, Economy, and Politics from a Capital Market Expert

"Forget everything you thought you knew about China."

This single sentence encapsulates the essence of this book. is not just a guide to investment strategies, but a call to fundamentally change the way we perceive China. The author, Shin Hyungkwan, head of the China Capital Market Research Institute, has distilled a lifetime of observations on Chinese society, politics, and economy into this work.

Shin previously served as the head of the China division at Samsung Life Asset Management and as a China regional expert for Samsung Group, and until last year, he was the head of Mirae Asset Global Investments Shanghai. Over more than 15 years, he oversaw Mirae Asset Global Investments' China operations and became the first Korean fund manager registered with both the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) and the Asset Management Association of China (AMAC). In 2020, he became the first foreign national in finance to receive China's "Bai Yulan Award." These achievements have earned him recognition as one of the foreign experts with the deepest understanding and longest experience in China's capital markets.

Drawing on these experiences, the author immediately challenges the "superficial interpretations" that domestic China experts often fall into. He emphasizes that China's social, political, and economic systems cannot be judged by a single standard, and that perspectives and timing can lead to entirely different readings. Through a variety of examples, he demonstrates just how narrow it is to simply label China's institutions and markets as "one-party dictatorship" or "planned economy."

For example, while China's unique government-led planned economy may appear to be driven solely by top-down directives, fierce competition and extreme incentive systems have operated within it. The competition among local governments for businesses and land, and the power struggles between local and central governments, make it difficult to dismiss China as a mere command-and-control one-party dictatorship or a communist-style planned economy.

The "tax-sharing reform" of the 1980s and 1990s, which changed the ratio of tax revenue allocated between central and local governments, featured surprisingly democratic decision-making processes. Local governments did not simply comply with central demands, and the central government engaged in countless negotiations, persuasion, coordination, and mediation. Then-Premier Zhu Rongji personally traveled to more than a dozen provinces over two months to explain the necessity of the reform. In some respects, the decision-making process was even more democratic than in present-day China.

The early chapters, which cover politics and history, may feel somewhat scattered, but as the book shifts to the economic and financial sectors, the author's expertise truly shines. He looks beyond simple statistics to identify underlying structural problems. For example, while news spread domestically this year that the average per capita deposit in China surpassed 110,000 yuan in the first half, there is severe polarization hidden behind these statistics.

According to data from China Merchants Bank, a major Chinese bank with 300 million individual customers, the top 2.35% of VIP clients hold 81.3% of all personal deposits. The gap between regions such as Beijing and Shanghai and the inland provinces is also widening. The author explains, "The deposits of the wealthy are already combined with investment and asset transfer tools, while those of the lower classes are frozen as emergency funds. While savings serve as insurance against future uncertainty, when an entire society shortens its life for the sake of insurance, the economy contracts."

The author then examines the policy support and regulatory trends in major Chinese industries such as semiconductors, electric vehicles, and artificial intelligence, diagnosing both the strengths and limitations of the Chinese economy. He analyzes how the Chinese government is strongly supporting the private sector and nurturing key industries, but also points out structural issues such as regional imbalances, declining livelihoods, and the limits of large-scale stimulus measures.

may be uncomfortable for readers who wish to judge China in black-and-white terms. However, this discomfort is precisely what gives the book its value. The author argues that only by seeing China "differently" can we change the future. This is not just an investment guide, but a work of insight from an expert who has learned the operating principles of the world's oldest society firsthand.

China Different | Written by Shin Hyungkwan | Gyeongiro Um | 336 pages | 25,000 won