Last year I had dinner with the owner of a components company. Halfway through the conversation, he suddenly asked me, very seriously: “Do you think we should shut down our production lines in mainland China?”
I asked back: “What’s your gross margin in the mainland?” He named a figure. “And where are your main customers?” He named a few. “Has your core technology been subject to forced technology transfer?” He fell silent for a moment.
“It’s not a question of whether to shut down,” I said. “It’s whether, in that environment, order is increasing or decreasing.”
He looked at me, puzzled: “What do you mean?”
Entropy: The Inevitability of Chaos
In 1944, the physicist Erwin Schrödinger published What Is Life? This book contains a core concept that I’ve pondered for many years: life exists because it can take in “negentropy.”
Entropy is a concept in physics describing the degree of disorder. The second law of thermodynamics tells us: in a closed system, entropy only increases, never decreases. In other words, any system without an input of external energy will naturally move toward chaos and disintegration.
A room not cleaned becomes messy. Code not maintained rots. Relationships not tended drift apart, and companies that don’t innovate decline.
All of this is rising entropy.
And life — including enterprises — can persist precisely because it continuously takes in order (negentropy) from the outside to counter its internal tendency toward chaos. When you eat food, you’re taking in negentropy. When you learn something new, you’re taking in negentropy. When your company innovates, builds processes, and develops talent, it’s all taking in negentropy.
Every decision an enterprise makes is essentially answering one question: is this decision creating order, or producing chaos?
Viewing the US-China Rivalry Through an Anti-Entropy Historical Lens
Apply this framework to geopolitics and a very clear picture emerges.
The essence of the US-China rivalry is not merely economic competition or political confrontation. Viewed through an anti-entropy historical lens, it is two systems engaging in different forms of “entropy-reduction engineering” — which one can create more order, whose system is more stable, who can attract more external participants to join its network of order.
What characterizes the US system? Institutional transparency, predictable laws, mature mechanisms for intellectual property protection, a clear division of labor in supply chains, and clear rules in capital markets. Together, these constitute a relatively stable “field of order.” That’s not to say it has no problems — it has many. But on a global comparative benchmark, it currently remains a “center of negentropy.”
And the Chinese system? It is trying to build its own order — its own technical standards, its own payment systems, its own supply-chain ecosystem. The ambition is enormous. But in the process of transformation, it simultaneously bears immense “rising-entropy pressure”: high policy uncertainty, frequent regulatory changes, opaque rules for the inflow and outflow of foreign capital, and the adaptation costs brought by technology blockades.
I’m not making a value judgment — about which system is “good” or “bad.” What I’m doing is an assessment of order: which system is currently creating order, and which system is currently bearing chaos?
Pick the Side of Order, Not a Political Side
Back to the components owner’s question.
My advice is not “withdraw from China” or “stay in China.” That binary choice is too crude. My advice is to use a more precise framework to judge:
Core technology — your key technologies and intellectual property should be placed where institutions are most stable. At present, this means aligning with the US-Japan-Europe systems. Not because they are “better,” but because their legal protections and institutional predictability are the best insurance for your core assets.
The Chinese market — you can participate, but you must not over-expose yourself. Retain the ability to exit at any time. Don’t stake more than a certain proportion of your revenue on a single market, especially one where regulations change frequently.
Production layout — the dual-base principle. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Supply-chain de-concentration is not a political slogan; it’s a fundamental of risk management. As I discussed in “The Overlooked Civilization Metric,” risk reduction, like wealth growth, is an indicator of civilizational progress. The same logic applies to an enterprise’s layout.
Capital compliance — take the rules of international capital markets as your primary reference. Because while the rules of international capital markets are complex, they are relatively stable and predictable.
In short: stay close to the side of order, and away from the end of chaos. Not because of a political stance, but because order is risk management.
Be a Force of Anti-Entropy
Finally, I want to bring this framework back from the enterprise to the individual.
Every decision you make each day — how you choose your partners, how you allocate your time, where you invest your energy — is essentially answering the same question: is this creating order, or consuming energy?
Some partnerships leave you feeling more directed after every interaction. Others leave you feeling more chaotic after every interaction. The former is negentropy; the latter is rising entropy.
Some ways of working make you feel more systematic the more you do them. Others make you feel like you’re playing whack-a-mole the more you do them. The former builds order; the latter consumes order.
People who are anti-entropy share one trait: wherever they go, things become more stable. Not because they’re brilliant, but because every choice they make asks: “Does this make things more orderly, or more chaotic?”
In this turbulent era, choosing to draw closer to a world of negentropy is not just business strategy — it is a posture for survival.
Chaos drags people into decline; order lets people endure — and the ability to choose between chaos and order is the single most important faculty of judgment you can have in this era.
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