One thing that the Chinese do quite well — and that the U.S. could learn from — is to test policy proposals before rolling them out nationally. A new approach is often tried out first in several cities or provinces to make sure it has the intended effect, and to check for unintended consequences. Independent observers, such as academic professionals from other countries, monitor what happens. When problems surface, the policy can be fine-tuned, modified, and re-tested before it is tried out on a wider scale. When I was teaching at Peking University, for example, one of my fellow professors monitored an experiment in which the Chinese government gave local villagers the rights to manage a forest. Many expected them to cut down all the trees for a quick profit but, as it turned out, the villagers realized that they could make a bigger profit selling the pine nuts in perpetuity, so they protected the forest. The constant and real-time feedback from mini economic experiments like this one has helped China’s policymakers make informed decisions that have propelled their economy forward.