How the party line functions, it's a measure of loyalty to the system.

And so the fact that it changes only helps do that,

because if you just happen to be saying the right thing ideologically one day,

and the next day it's completely opposite,

if you stick with what you said before, because you're a true believer in whatever that is,

you're no longer loyal to the system.

Nathan Lyons is a writer and commentator, his substack written under his pen name, N.S. Lyons, is titled The Apeval.

In his essay, The China Convergence, he argues that in certain ways, China and the United States, despite

being vastly different, are slowly converging with technocratic managerialism playing an increasingly

important role in each society. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Yankee Kallik.

Nathan Lyons, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

It's wonderful to be here.

For some time since you wrote your essay, the China Convergence, this has, I don't know,

troubled, inspired, give me lots of pause to think.

There's a lot more centralization in society that we're seeing in the West.

And we also hear these narratives that, you know, the West wanted to change China, but

really China changed the West.

And in the China conversion, you touch on these, all these elements. Maybe tell

me a little bit about it.

So what I argue in the essay is that both China and the United States are changing,

and they're changing in their own way at their own pace and from different directions,

but they're headed in the same, towards the same point.

...