Interview with James Liang on Demography and Innovation

An interview with James Liang on Demography

0. Introduction

Johnathan Bi: Not only is my guest James Liang, the co-founder of Trip.com, now with $50 billion, he was also a prodigy academic who started college at 15, got a PhD at Stanford and then became a professor at China’s top university, PKU. James straddles not just the active and contemplative life, but elite circles across US and China. Now, sitting at this unique intersection, helps James articulate his most important idea, that demography is one of the most overlooked factors that impacts innovation. The problem with an aging population is not just the financial strain on pensions, but a cultural technological stagnation that will suffocate any creative act. James believes the technological race between US and China will be in large part decided by which population ages first. In this interview, you will learn about the coming population collapse from one of the world’s foremost demography experts and what to do about it from one of the world’s foremost entrepreneurs. I’m Johnathan Bi, a founding member of Cosmos. We deliver educational programs, fund research, invest in AI startups and believe that philosophy is critical to building better technology. If you wanna join our ecosystem of philosopher builders, you can find roles we’re hiring for, events we’re hosting and other ways to get involved on johnathanbi.com/cosmos. Without further ado, James Liang.

Johnathan Bi: Most employers view their employees having children as a drag on their business. Yet you pay your employees 50,000 for every baby they make. You are starting a one billion fund to pay PhD students to have babies. Why is that?

James Liang: Well, I believe profitable companies should provide better benefit. But on top of that, I believe increasingly low fertility problem is becoming a more serious social and economic problem for many countries, especially for China. So in general, I believe young people need a lot of support, financial support, give them more money and time to have more children. That’s a small step to help them.

Johnathan Bi: Yeah. So in the middle of your career, while you were building Trip.com, and it was very successful, you decided to leave and pursue a PhD at Stanford to study demography. But back in the day, demography wasn’t this... And low fertility wasn’t this issue that everyone is talking about. So what initially attracted you to demography?