ne frequent debate amongst western scholars and economists is the distribution of talent in the public and private arenas, as ludicrous bank bonuses are justified as being required to ‘retain talent.’A frequent lament is the question why our mot talented college graduates do not heed any kind of call to public service, leading to an unfortunate imbalance in the intellectual arsenals of government and corporations, to the advantage of corporations. One cannot blame each individual for the decision to go private, certainly, but the result is not one which leads to either good or well-run government.

In China, there is a deep and persistent confidence amongst the people I’ve talked with that the most talented people in the country are carefully and wilfully shepherded into public service. This may be for several reasons.

The first is that mainland China does not have an extensive corporate history. While Rockefeller and Carnegie were making their modern equivalent of billions, the Chinese were still grappling with Imperial institution. Because of this, political power and financial success (or at least financial stability, considered more important during the turmoils of the first seven decades of the last century) were almost indistinguishable. For this reason, going private does not hold a culturally ingrained place of superiority for the young person looking for maximum personal financial gain.

Second, the top schools in China serve as recruiting hubs for a well-oiled promotional ladder for communist party leaders. While in the US political success can be derived from economic success, it is impossible for a business leader to insert himself into the political process, requiring all politicians to have always been politicians. Indeed, it has been proposed that trying to become involved in Chinese politics can be very risky, even when a successful businessman. Political power creates protection from political and economic enemies, while economic power has limited protection, especially in a legal environment in which wealth can be seized by the state at will.

For these and other reasons, talent gravitates toward public service. It is into this situation that a friend of mine’s observation applies: he believes that while public service attracts talent, it atrophies and dies there. the private sector, on the other hand, gets the second-rate talents, but competition forces them to improve. The implications of this simply point out an inefficiency: there should be a mechanism by which competent persons in private companies can join and leave government if they should choose to do so, something, according to my current understanding, is not possible at present.