Assertion Supported
Osnos: Trump hired actors for his 2016 campaign announcement crowd
“He hired actors to flesh out the crowd at his announcement speech. He really did, meaning he didn't think that people were actually even going to come to his announcement”
Opinion
Osnos: Ultra-fast construction in China frequently yields structurally unsound buildings
“When they build a building in a week, It's often not a great building, and you can adapt that metaphor, meaning it's structurally unsound, or it doesn't wear well, or it's not creative, or it's not architecturally significant, or any of those things”
Insight
Osnos: Underestimating Chinese process innovation will catch the West flat-footed
“I think we will be caught flat-footed if we under-appreciate what China is able to accomplish, because you can actually change the nature of a product by changing the way that it's produced, by making it available to a larger number of people, by sort of makin…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Osnos: China's education system fails to foster disruptive innovation
“The education system as it's constituted today is not encouraging kids to be disruptive and wildly innovative. It just is not.”
Insight
Osnos: Chinese tech startups rise and fall faster than US counterparts
“And it, that evolution, it just happened faster even than we would see in the U.S. So you can go from being, you know, a non-existent company to being the leader to being gone in the course of a couple of years.”
Opinion
Osnos: Foreign tech firms struggle to compete against local Chinese startups
“And what you find over and over again in the cases that I've looked at is that the people who know the most, in the most subtle terms about what Chinese consumer habits are, about what it is that they're looking for, they really do succeed. And I hate to say, …”
Opinion
Osnos: Alibaba is unlikely to successfully expand directly into the US
“This is a little bit unfashionable to say, but I'm actually a little bit skeptical about the possibility for a company like Alibaba, for instance, to come in and change things in the United States. There may be places where they can do it, but I think at the m…”
Insight
Osnos: Memories of past hardship hedge against rapid political instability in China
“I think that the, it will take time for the following reason. Like there are a lot of people in China today who still remember just how bad things were, how recently. I mean, there was, we forget that during the Cultural Revolution and during the famine that p…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Osnos: Trump is a product of a 30-year US sociological trend
“Trump is the tiny outgrowth of a vast sociological phenomenon that's been going on and will go on over the course of the next 30 years.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Osnos: Smart guns will eventually become part of the US future
“I think smart guns will probably end up being a part of our future in the United States, and that'll prevent a kid, for instance, from picking up their parents, you know, even if that parent has a legitimate use for it, let's say it's a cop, you know, keep tha…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Osnos: China achieved 30 years of US infrastructure progress in a decade
“China achieved in human development progress and in physical infrastructure development in the span of 10 years what We did in 30 years or 50 years and a whole variety of measures, whether you're talking about, you know, concrete usage, for instance or how muc…”
Opinion
Osnos: China's hukou system is a major obstacle to innovation
“This set of restrictions, which is generally described as the HUCO system, which is the household registration system, is one of the biggest, I think everybody agrees, obstacles towards a more organic, innovative system that drives talent From around the count…”
Insight
Osnos: Chinese state decisions are driven by fear of losing control
“When in doubt, trying to understand what's going on in a Chinese decision-making process, if you revert to that idea, which is, if we take our hands off the tiller, we lose control, that explains a whole lot of the decisions that are made, and good or bad.”
Assertion Supported
Osnos: China blocked access to several news sources between 2013 and 2016
“So in practical terms, if you're sitting in Beijing or Shanghai right now, you're not able to get on a half a dozen information sources, news sources, data sources that you could have three years ago.”
Prediction Held up
Osnos: Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign is not going anywhere
“This anti-corruption campaign, which has been a big story for the last couple of years is going to be around. It's not going anywhere.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Osnos: Paying with cash in China carries a negative social stigma
“And in fact, this is the part that I find really interesting is that if I pay with cash, It's now a little bit of a negative social stigma.”
Insight
Osnos: Environmental awareness drives shifts in Chinese political consciousness
“So the biggest change over the last five years in some ways among that gets to where is the political system going is that five or 10 years ago. It was the foreigners who were complaining about the air quality in Beijing and Shanghai and other big cities, and …”
Insight
Osnos: Huawei hiring lawyers signaled China's shift toward IP protection
“One of the clearest signs that China was beginning to take IP more seriously and regard it differently was when a company like Huawei, for instance, was hiring a lot of lawyers, because that meant they were suing other people to defend their own IP.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Osnos: China's state authority enables rapid nationwide policy implementation
“It is a country where you can get rid of plastic bags, like, in a week, and you can actually make a big headway on stuff like smoking.”
Insight
Osnos: Investors systematically choose non-firearm ventures over firearm technologies
“In the end, you're still asking investors to put money behind a firearm, and if you're choosing between putting money behind a firearm or something else, it's easy to choose the something else.”
Evan Osnos