What people recommend, in their own words, with the receipt.
by Leon Liao
1 person
One of the very few Substacks that indeed deals with China "as a system". Not what you might find elsewhere.
Branko Milanovic's own recommendation blurb for the newsletter China as a System @leonliao, on their Substack's recommendations page.
branko2f7.substack.com ↗·2026-09-01
Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.
The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.
A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.
The small bar beside a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.
The bar shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Full and green is recent. It drains, and turns amber and then grey, as the post gets older.
What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The bar is empty after about:
A striped bar means the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no bar.