What Can We Learn from Liu Yandong About Good Leadership?

10/31/2026

Yesterday, I wrote about two stories of Liu Yandong. This is a follow-up piece on that one.

According to the tribute, one of her most important contributions was acting as a buffer for capable people: identifying talented scientist-administrators, shielding them from political, bureaucratic, and interest-group pressures, and maintaining long-term strategic direction even when their work faced criticism or opposition.

In the author's view, her legacy is reflected in two lasting achievements: the widespread use of artemisinin-based treatments, which have saved millions of lives, particularly in Africa, and the development of China's electric-vehicle industry, which has reshaped the global auto market.

Today I'd focus on what we can learn from these stories about good leadership.

1. Understand expertise before making judgments

Liu studied engineering and had experience working in a factory. This background helped her understand the technical reasoning behind scientists' proposals rather than judging them solely on political considerations or public opinion.

The lesson is simple: Don't rush to judgment on complex professional or technical matters. Take time to understand the underlying issues, listen to specialists, and remain open to ideas that challenge conventional thinking.

2. Have the courage to support talented people

The tribute describes Liu as providing protection for people such as Chen Zhu and Wan Gang, allowing them to concentrate on their work rather than become overwhelmed by resistance.

Good leadership is not about taking all the credit or avoiding criticism. It is about creating an environment in which capable people can do meaningful work—and being willing to stand with them when their ideas face opposition.

3. Think long-term rather than chase quick results

Both the development and international recognition of artemisinin-based treatments and China's electric-vehicle industry required years of effort. Neither could have succeeded without sustained commitment through periods of uncertainty and criticism.

Transformative work rarely produces immediate results. A good leader must distinguish temporary setbacks from fundamental flaws and resist abandoning a promising long-term strategy at the first sign of trouble.

4. Exercise sound judgment in a crisis

During the EV subsidy fraud scandal, public anger and criticism put the entire policy under pressure. Rather than abandoning the overall strategy, the response described in the tribute was to punish fraudulent practices, tighten subsidy rules, and improve technical standards.

The broader lesson is to distinguish failures in implementation from weaknesses in the underlying strategy. Correct what is wrong without automatically discarding what is worth preserving.

5. Build trust through human connection

The story of Liu's old photograph with Hillary Clinton illustrates her ability to connect with people on a personal level, rather than relying only on formal diplomatic language. Finding common ground can help build trust and open doors to cooperation.

Facts, reason, and data are important, but relationships matter too. Persuasion is not always about winning an argument; sometimes it is about helping people recognize shared interests.

6. Be humble and let others shine

The tribute portrays Liu as gentle and unassuming, like water—quiet but powerful. Her name may not be attached to the scientific discoveries or industrial breakthroughs themselves, but her contribution, as the author sees it, was to help create the conditions in which others could succeed.

A leader's impact should not be measured only by personal recognition, but also by what continues to work after that leader steps aside.

This brings me back to an idea from Walter Lippmann that I discussed in an earlier essay: good leaders should build institutions and arrangements that can function well without depending on them personally.

Perhaps that is one of the highest forms of leadership: helping others succeed and creating something that outlasts your own involvement.

The Woman Who Stood Up for Scientists: Two Stories About Liu Yandong

10/30/2026

Yesterday, I read a moving tribute to Liu Yandong (刘延东, 1945–2026), titled “The Person Who Shielded Scientists from the Wind Is Gone: Two Stories in Memory of Liu Yandong” (那个替科学家“挡风”的人走了——追忆刘延东的两件小事, Nàge tì kēxuéjiā “dǎng fēng” de rén zǒu le — zhuīyì Liú Yándōng de liǎng jiàn xiǎoshì).

I would like to share her story with my children. They are unlikely to encounter many stories of people like Liu in American media. I hope they will understand that China's reform and modernization were made possible not only by its most prominent leaders, but also by many people working within the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the government, often behind the scenes.

To many people, Liu was known by her senior official positions: head of the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee, State Councilor, and Vice Premier of the State Council. But among some veteran scientists, she was remembered differently—as a warm-hearted “学姐” (senior alumna) who understood their concerns and was willing to stand up for them when political pressures mounted.

The tribute recounts two stories about her.

The first concerns artemisinin and Tu Youyou's Nobel Prize.

According to the article, Liu used the China–U.S. high-level people-to-people exchange mechanism to build trust and strengthen connections with Western academic circles. These exchanges helped create a more favorable environment for international scholarly recognition of Tu Youyou's contribution to the discovery of artemisinin.

The article also describes Liu's support for the wider adoption of artemisinin-based combination therapies through the World Health Organization (WHO) and China–Africa health cooperation. Their extensive use in Africa helped demonstrate their effectiveness in treating malaria and saving lives.

Scientific discoveries do not always receive international recognition simply because of their scientific merit. International academic exchange, institutional cooperation, and evidence of practical impact can also matter. The article portrays Liu as someone who helped build these connections and create opportunities for Chinese scientific achievements to gain global recognition.

The second story concerns China's strategy for developing new-energy vehicles, championed by Wan Gang.

At the time, there were competing views about which direction China should take. Some influential voices favored following Japan's lead in hybrid technology rather than making a major commitment to battery-powered electric vehicles. Wan Gang's strategy faced considerable skepticism and criticism.

When a subsidy fraud scandal emerged in 2015–2016, critics called for the government to abandon the EV subsidy program altogether. Such a retreat could have seriously undermined an industry that was still in its early stages, including the development of its battery supply chain.

The tribute describes Liu Yandong as supporting Wan Gang's strategic direction: fraudulent practices should be punished, but the country's long-term commitment to electric vehicles should continue. What is needed is, subsidy rules needed to be tightened and technological standards improved.

This was an important turning point in China's industrial development. By continuing to invest in battery-powered electric vehicles rather than abandoning it, China helped build a domestic EV industry and a broad supply chain. Today, Chinese manufacturers have become major players in the global electric-vehicle market.

What strikes me about these two stories is not simply Liu Yandong's official rank, but the kind of support she reportedly offered: helping scientists gain recognition, protecting promising initiatives from being derailed, and giving people with expertise room to pursue their ideas.

These contributions may not always make headlines, but they can have lasting consequences.

The Power of Belief and Learning to Cross the River by Feeling the Stones

10/29/2026

On October 27, I wrote about belief while reflecting on Cai Zheng’s ambitious effort to build MUST, a telescope designed to advance China's spectroscopic survey to the front rank in the world.

As I wrote, I was reminded of a conversation I once had with my sister.

Her son also lives in the United States. When we decided to move from Kansas to the East Coast to be closer to our children, my sister asked whether I worried about the possibility of not getting along with my daughter-in-law. Perhaps it's better to keep a safe distance. She herself was concerned that she might have difficulty maintaining a good relationship with her son’s girlfriend.

I told her something along these lines: You have to trust your son’s judgment. You also have to believe in your own ability to get along with the people you meet in life. You have to believe that if you treat people with kindness and respect, they will most likely treat you in kind.

Of course, I had no way of knowing in advance how well I would get along with my daughter-in-law. But I could not let that uncertainty stop me from making a decision I believed was right for our family. I had to trust myself to build the relationship and to deal with whatever challenges might arise.

Looking back, I realize that this, too, was a kind of leap of faith—not blind faith that everything would go smoothly, but confidence that I could face the unknown.

Life is full of uncertainties. If we always wait until we know exactly how everything will turn out, we may never take the first step. Some things can only be understood through experience. We venture forward, learn as we go, adjust ourselves when necessary, and gradually discover what works.

As I reflected on this, a Chinese expression came to mind: 摸着石头过河 (Mō zhe shí tou guò hé)—literally, “crossing the river by feeling for the stones.” It describes moving forward step by step when the road ahead is not clear.

Perhaps this is what belief really means: not knowing for certain that we will succeed, but trusting ourselves enough to begin.

When we cannot always see the other side of the river, we have to take the first step and feel for the stones along the way. That is also how China opened its doors and embarked on reform.

Extremely Low Birth Rates: Who Should Take Care of the Children?

10/28/2026

Yesterday, I came across an article titled “超低生育率的另一个解释：谁该带孩子？” (Chāo dī shēng yù lǜ de lìng yí gè jiě shì: Shéi gāi dài háizi? “Another Explanation for Extremely Low Birth Rates: Who Should Take Care of the Children?”). It caught my attention for two reasons.

Just last weekend, my sister in Beijing told me that her son’s girlfriend had made it clear that she did not want to have children. At the same time, I am helping my own son care for his newborn baby. These two experiences made the question in the article feel especially relevant to me.

The article discusses research seeking to explain why fertility rates have fallen so dramatically in South Korea and several other countries.

In 2006, David Coleman, a professor of demography at the University of Oxford, warned that if South Korea’s low fertility rate persisted, the country could eventually become the first to face the prospect of disappearing through natural population decline.

The warning may sound dramatic, but the underlying demographic problem is real. The total fertility rate estimates the average number of children a woman would have over her lifetime if current age-specific birth rates continued. A rate of about 2.1 children per woman is generally needed to maintain a stable population over the long term without immigration.

South Korea’s rate fell below 1.0 in 2018 and reached just 0.72 in 2023. It rose slightly to 0.75 in 2024, but remained far below the replacement level.

South Korea is not alone. Japan, Italy, Spain, and other countries have also experienced persistently low fertility, although the causes differ from one society to another.

The research discussed in the article offers an intriguing explanation: the problem may not be rising wages for women themselves, but the gap between women’s changing economic roles and society’s slower-changing expectations about childcare.

As women earn more and take on greater professional responsibilities, the opportunity cost of leaving work or reducing working hours to care for children increases. Yet in societies where traditional gender roles remain strong, mothers may still be expected to shoulder most of the childcare burden.

When fathers are discouraged from taking on a larger share of childcare, mothers bear a disproportionate cost in time, career opportunities, and personal freedom. For some women, the prospect of having children under these conditions becomes much less cheerful.

The researchers analyzed data from 62 economies between 1990 and 2019. They found that fertility tended to decline more rapidly where women’s share of labor income was rising quickly, particularly in societies with more rigid social norms. Their model, calibrated using South Korea’s historical experience, suggests that the mismatch between economic change and traditional childcare expectations can deepen the decline.

The researchers are not arguing that women’s economic progress is the problem. Rather, social expectations about who should care for children have not kept pace with that progress.

This raises an important question for families and policymakers alike: if both parents work, why should childcare remain primarily the mother’s responsibility? More equitable sharing of childcare, along with social policies that support working parents, could help reduce the conflict between career and family life.

Reading this article while helping care for my grandson has made me think about how much our expectations of parents need to change. Raising a child is not simply a woman’s responsibility. Perhaps it should not be a burden that families must manage alone.

If societies want more people to feel that having children is possible, they must do more than encourage births. They must make sharing the responsibility of childcare a realistic option.

The Power of Belief: Cai Zheng’s Ambitious Journey to Build a Telescope

10/27/2026

Yesterday, I read about the remarkable journey of Cai Zheng (蔡峥), a 40-year-old associate professor and vice chair of the Department of Astronomy at Tsinghua University. He is leading an ambitious project to build a powerful new telescope in western China.

The project is called MUST, short for the MUltiplexed Survey Telescope. I do not understand all the technical details, but what impressed me was the scale of the undertaking and the determination of the scientist behind it.

MUST is designed to do something special: observe a large area of the sky and collect detailed information about thousands of celestial objects at the same time. Unlike an ordinary camera, which mainly records how an object looks, a spectroscopic telescope also analyzes the light coming from it. This light can reveal information about an object's composition, movement, and distance.

In simple terms, MUST will help astronomers map the universe in much greater detail and investigate some of its biggest mysteries, including dark matter, dark energy, and how galaxies form and evolve. With a 6.5-meter primary mirror and thousands of optical fibers to collect light from different objects simultaneously, it is designed to survey the sky far more efficiently than existing facilities of its kind. Its first light—the moment it begins making astronomical observations—is planned for around 2029.

Once built, MUST marks China’s leap into leading large spectroscopic survey in the world. It will bring China into the front rank for this kind of cosmic mapping.

The telescope is being built at Lenghu, in Qinghai Province, on Saishiteng Mountain, at an elevation of about 4,576 meters. The site offers exceptionally dry, dark skies and stable atmospheric conditions, which are important for observing distant objects. But the same remote, high-altitude environment also makes construction and testing difficult.

The engineering challenges are beyond imagination. The project requires a giant, precisely shaped mirror, a sophisticated optical system, thousands of light-collecting fibers, and machinery capable of tracking celestial objects with extraordinary accuracy. Astronomers, engineers, and specialists from different fields must work together to make all these components function as one system.

The financial and professional risks are equally daunting. Cai has said that the project would cost more than one billion yuan and that, at the beginning, some experts doubted it could succeed. For a young academic, leading such a complex, long-term project is very different from conducting research and publishing papers. It requires not only scientific knowledge but also the ability to raise funds, build a team, coordinate different disciplines, and keep going when the outcome remains uncertain.

What touched me most was Cai's reflection on belief. He said, in essence, that from very beginning we must believe it can be done, work hard toward it, and persist in doing what is difficult but worthwhile.

“ 你必须相信这件事能办成.” (Nǐ bìxū xiāngxìn zhè jiàn shì néng bàn chéng.) You have to believe that you can make it happen.

I find this meaningful and inspiring far beyond science. Whether we are pursuing a career, raising children, learning a new skill, or working toward a long-term goal, we often face doubts—from others and from ourselves. Belief means believing that the goal is worth pursuing and that, through effort and persistence, success will become possible.