Why China lets charisma-free nerds reach the top: the Liang Wenfeng effect
teortaxesTex · x · 2026-09-21
The author argues China's industrial productivity boom may partly stem from how it treats nerds: unlike the US, where autistic engineers can earn well but CEOs still need charisma and hustle, in China you can reach the top of your field on willpower, math, and grind alone. Examples: DeepSeek's Liang Wenfeng shows big-picture thinking but near-zero public speaking ability; Unitree's Wang Xingxing struggles with Chinese but is obsessed with optimizing electromagnetic machines and their supply chains.
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