What Could Biologist Charlese Darwin Have to Say About China’s Economic Growth Miracle?

Introduction

This entry is part of a series that explores China’s economic rise through the prism of Yuen Yuen Ang’s opus “How China Escaped the Poverty Trap”. This entry will explain Darwinian coevolution. An understanding of the concept of Darwinian coevolution is invaluable in understanding the core of Yuen Yuen Ang’s ‘start where you are argument. Her argument is that poor nations should set aside worries about the quality of public and private institutions they have and instead assume that they are a valuable starting point for economic growth and development. She dispels despair about lackluster institutions as an insurmountable obstacle to economic growth and development.

Why is the Darwinian Coevolution Model used as a Framework for Economic Development?

As I have understood it, a central premise of the book is that the Darwinian model of coevolution is useful in understanding how China’s development policies spurred economic growth. One method by which evolutionary theorists have tested the Darwinian presuppositions is to track the existence of a coevolutionary ‘arms race’ between species. The term arms race is apt in that the competition between species can be as fierce as an arms race between two nation-states. The predator-prey relationship comes to mind. Darwinians propose that if one observes two competing species over millions of years, a biological competition to develop the tools to survive can be discerned. Living in the trees, mans ancestors, for example, had the serpent as a principle competitor. Snakes wanted to eat these proto-people. And these proto-people, on their part, did not want to be eaten by snakes. Roughly speaking, snakes slither into position and then strike their prey.

What do Proto-Man and the Serpent Have to Do With Economic Development?

In order to approach surreptitiously, the snake needs stealthy characteristics. In addition to slow, deliberate movements that do not rustle leaves or catch the eyes of their prey, the snake developed camouflage. The humans, on their part, want to see the snake before it is too late. Whether they respond by striking the snake or by leaping away, they first must see the snake. This is the idea that was proposed by Lynne Isbell, an anthropologist at the University of California, Davis. From the low-resolution position “bird’s eye view” of an evolutionary biologist, nature’s constituent parts are engaged in a competition to produce the best systems and discard those that do not work. Each family of species, you might say, experiments with variations in DNA. Each family submits these variations to the greater tribunal of nature. Nature then selects the variations that are fit and destroys those that are unfit. The snakes whose camouflage was an inadequate ‘stealth suit’ died off. Similarly, those proto-humans whose eyesight was not sharp enough to catch the snakes also died off.

Coevolution at Work in Economic Development

In Yuen Yuen Angs discussion of China’s development policies, the two parties involved in a coevolutionary race are public and private sector institutions. One might say that as a constituent whole, China is interested in selecting the public and private sector institutions that give it the best chance at sustained economic growth over time. It is not in China’s interest that the state or the private sector remain stagnant. The state is not the ‘nature’ that selects the private sector. The private sector is not the ‘nature’ that selects the state. Competition at the level of the global economy is the nature that judges the competitiveness of the private sector and the state. If either one holds the other back, China as a whole stands to lose. Losing in this game constitutes low economic productivity which results in stagnant or declining wages. The consequence of this would be that China fails to escape the poverty trap. In actual fact, China’s effort to select fit attributes in public and private sector institutions over time was a success.

Conclusion

In rough terms, China did not transplant high-quality public and private institutions from advanced economies. China used what its institutions had and grew organically. Similarly, Proto-man did not transplant the exemplary vision that he enjoys in the present day. Man started with what he had and evolved his vision over time. Yuen Yuen Ang’s book, the export of Chinese goods of ever-increasing quality across the world market and the rise in income of Chinese citizens bears testament to the fact that China successfully did finally escape the poverty trap. If one accepts the precepts of the coevolutionary biologists, Yuen Yuen Ang’s observations have implications of great import.