How a country's policies shape the potential of its people

Praju Panta 

Recently, I read two news Reporting, same newspaper. The first news is about the terrible situation of afghani https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/13/world/asia/afghan-women-taliban-rule.html  women and the second news is about talented Chinese https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/17/business/china-scientific-talent-competition.html  men and women. Literally I think the country's policy is what matters for the population. In China there is no discrimination between men and women. They get equal opportunity and become experts in any subject while in Afghanistan there is discrimination between men and women. Afghani women restriction for education, opportunity and others. It means huge meaning what country adopt policy. 

How does the policy taken by the government make a difference in the lives of citizens?

The same geography, the same climate, yet the fate of the people living there can be completely different. Even the rights of women living on opposite sides of a border can be different. While women in China are making remarkable advances in science and technology, Afghan women are not even allowed to receive more than a fifth-grade education. Although China has strict policies in political matters, it is challenging global powers in education and other areas of development. Meanwhile, neighboring Afghanistan is pushing the future of around 20 million women into darkness.

How so?

Afghanistan and China share a 92-kilometer border. On the Afghan side, Badakhshan Province borders China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. For a long time, U.S. troops were stationed in Afghanistan in an effort to defeat the Taliban. After the Taliban returned to power five years ago, following the withdrawal and defeat of U.S. forces, Afghanistan has changed significantly. At the time, China faced criticism for welcoming the Taliban after they came to power.

But the story does not end there. Two articles published in the Asian edition of The New York Times on August 19, 2026, compel us to think more deeply: one about Afghan women who have been deprived of basic rights, and another about how Chinese female and male students have excelled in science and technology. What difference can state policies make in the future of citizens living in the same geographical region? Political borders have separated these people, yet politics itself has both deprived and uplifted their citizens. These two reports provide a strong illustration of how the policies adopted by a country can shape people’s lives.

First, let us look at the painful situation of Afghan women.

According to the report, severe restrictions targeting women and girls were first imposed by the Taliban in the late 1990s.

More than 160 orders and directives targeting women and girls have been issued in Afghanistan. These orders have prevented them from pursuing secondary and higher education and have also imposed restrictions on employment, movement, clothing, freedom of expression, and decision-making rights.

A United Nations agency surveyed around 5,000 Afghans from rural and urban communities last year and again this spring. Both women and men were asked about life under Taliban rule. Although some similarities appeared in their responses, the survey also revealed significant gender-based differences.

Many Afghans expressed disappointment with the direction their lives had taken in recent years. However, the level of isolation and psychological distress reported by women indicated a growing mental-health crisis, according to a United Nations report.

Around 55 percent of men said that their lives were worse than they had expected them to be before August 2021. Among women, the figure was 65 percent. But the reasons for their disappointment were different.

Men were primarily disappointed by the lack of economic opportunities. Women, on the other hand, identified declining access to education for themselves and their children, as well as restrictions on women’s employment and lives, as major reasons.

UNESCO stated that “as a new generation of girls grows up without education, their future is becoming increasingly bleak.” It has called for the full restoration of the right to education for Afghan girls and women.

Ahmadi writes in her analysis that behind every Taliban order lies a human story. A university student may be putting away her books; a teacher may have been dismissed from a profession she loved; a female judge may have been forced into hiding; a doctor may have been prevented from treating patients; a woman entrepreneur may have been forced to close her business; or a young girl may be asking her parents, “Why can’t I go to school anymore when my brother can go freely?”

Ahmadi writes, “The greatest danger facing Afghanistan today is not only that 20 million women and girls are systematically disappearing from public life. The danger is also that the world is gradually becoming accustomed to this situation.”

But the situation is different in China!

Until recently, the United States was considered the leading country in scientific and technological excellence. But China’s investments in recent years have raised the question of whether the United States will always remain at the top.

Although the United States remains the world’s leading destination for scientific research and innovation, cuts to research budgets, stricter immigration policies, and suspicion toward scientists of Chinese origin are weakening its advantage. At the same time, despite its own serious shortcomings, China is increasingly emerging as a credible alternative.

According to the report, the attractiveness of the two countries can be seen through two events that occurred in recent months. Two of the four recipients of this year’s Fields Medal, one of the highest honors in mathematics, were scientists born in China who had traveled to the United States for higher education. They excelled in the Western academic environment and continue to work there.

But the story of Zhilin Yang is different. Like many Chinese students, he came to the United States for graduate studies. Instead of staying there, however, he returned to China and founded Moonshot AI. In July, his company released an impressive open-source AI model called Kimi K3, which reportedly performs at a level that can almost compete with leading American models.

When Yang completed his PhD at Carnegie Mellon University in 2019, he had ample opportunities to remain in the United States. However, he told his PhD supervisor and computer science professor Ruslan Salakhutdinov that he was determined to establish a company in China.

China has also become more successful at attracting academic scientists from abroad. Omar Yaghi, who jointly won last year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry, left the University of California, Berkeley, and chose Tsinghua University in Beijing. There, he will lead an institute that will use AI to accelerate the discovery of new materials.

Since last year, universities in mainland China and Hong Kong have attracted at least eight prominent mathematicians who had been working at Western institutions. Joshua Zahl, who collaborated with this year’s Fields Medal winner Hong Wang, has taken up a full-time professorship at Nankai University.

Outstanding Women!

Although China has limited political freedom, women and men do not receive different educational opportunities in academic and scientific research.

According to the report, for a long time, the number of scientists from mainland China who received Nobel Prizes in scientific fields was extremely low. Tu Youyou, who worked in China, was the only scientist there to receive a Nobel Prize in a scientific field. Against this background, China’s growing ability to attract world-class scientists is being viewed as a significant achievement.

Dong Jielin, a researcher of Chinese science and technology policy, says the biggest change in China’s ability to attract scientific talent is money.

According to her, two decades ago, scientists returning from abroad were expected to make financial sacrifices in the name of serving their country. Today, Chinese universities can offer salaries competitive with European universities, along with attractive relocation packages.

However, after this year’s Fields Medal winners were announced, an important question began circulating in Chinese media and social media: Can China’s academic system provide young and not-yet-proven researchers with the freedom, time, and environment tolerant of failure that they need to develop into extraordinary talents?

Thirty-five-year-old Hong Wang enrolled at Peking University at the age of 16 to study Earth and space sciences. A year later, she switched to mathematics. She went to École Polytechnique in France and then pursued further graduate studies at MIT. In a video, she said that her research supervisor at MIT patiently listened to her even when she disagreed with other people.

She said, “It helped me gain confidence.” She is now a professor at New York University and in France.

In a video released by the Simons Foundation after the announcement of the Fields Medal, she said that although she felt somewhat discouraged, she had encountered professors in France and the United States who helped her develop confidence.

Wang did not criticize Peking University. But her use of the word “discouraged” became widely discussed in China. Many people who had experienced a culture of punishment and shame within China’s highly competitive education system related it to their own experiences.

China can now compete with the United States in terms of the money and infrastructure needed to attract prestigious scientists. But according to the report, it is still struggling to recreate the freedom, trust, and institutional stability required for young talent to flourish.

In 2023, foreign students received approximately 44 percent of the STEM PhDs awarded by U.S. universities. Of those, 17 percent were Chinese students.

Can State Policies Make a Country Fail?

While reading about the contrasting conditions in neighboring countries, one book that immediately comes to mind is Why Nations Fail, published in 2012 by economist Daron Acemoglu and political scientist and economist James A. Robinson.

At the very beginning of the book, using the example of the two Nogales cities located on either side of the U.S.-Mexico border, the authors demonstrate how the policies and institutions of a state can affect citizens’ lives.

The book explains that the city of Nogales is divided into two parts by a fence. If you look north from the fence, you see Nogales, Arizona, located in Santa Cruz County. The average annual household income there is around $30,000. Most teenagers attend school, and most adults have completed secondary education.

Although the U.S. healthcare system has many weaknesses, people there are relatively healthy and have a high life expectancy by global standards. Many residents are over 65 and receive Medicare benefits.

This is just one of the many services provided by the government that most people take for granted—such as electricity, telephone services, sewage systems, public health services, roads connecting the city to other cities and the rest of the United States, and, most importantly, law and order.

People in Nogales, Arizona, can go about their daily lives without constantly worrying about their lives or safety. They do not have to live in constant fear of theft, losing their property, or having their businesses and homes exposed to serious risks.

More importantly, despite the weaknesses of government and occasional corruption, residents of Nogales, Arizona, view their government as a representative institution and a provider of public services. They can remove their mayor, members of Congress, and senators through elections. By voting in presidential elections, they can choose the person who will lead the country. Democracy is a natural part of their lives.

Life on the southern side of the fence is very different.

Nogales, Sonora, on the southern side, is located in a relatively prosperous part of Mexico. Yet the average household income there is only about one-third that of Nogales, Arizona.

Most adults in Nogales, Sonora, have not completed secondary education, and many teenagers do not attend school. Mothers have to worry about high infant mortality. Given the poor state of public health, it is hardly surprising that residents of Nogales, Sonora, do not live as long as their northern neighbors. They also have access to far fewer public services.

The roads on the southern side of the fence are in poor condition. Law and order are even worse. Crime is high, and starting a business is risky. When opening a business, there is not only the risk of theft but also the difficulty of obtaining necessary permits and having to pay bribes at various offices.

Residents of Nogales, Sonora, have to deal with the corruption and incompetence of politicians on a daily basis.

Compared with their northern neighbors, democracy is also a relatively new experience for them. Before the political reforms of 2000, not only Nogales, Sonora, but much of Mexico was under corrupt political control.

Why Are the Two Parts of the Same City So Different?

The authors write that geography is not different. The climate is not different. Even the types of diseases found in the region are not different. Although there is a border between the United States and Mexico, disease-causing organisms do not recognize borders.

Health conditions are very different on the two sides. But the reason is not the disease environment. The reason is that people on the southern side of the border live with inadequate sanitation and limited access to quality healthcare.

The people on both sides of the border have largely similar backgrounds.

After Mexico became independent from Spain in 1821, the area around “Los dos Nogales,” meaning “the two Nogales,” was part of the Mexican state of Vieja California. Even after the Mexican-American War of 1846–1848, the area remained under Mexican control.

The residents of Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Sonora, share common ancestors. They eat the same food, enjoy the same music, and, in many respects, share the same culture.

Yet there is one extremely simple and clear explanation for the difference between the two sides: the border that separates them.

Nogales, Arizona, is in the United States. Its residents have access to American economic institutions. These institutions encourage people to freely choose their professions, acquire education and skills, and encourage employers to invest in better technologies. As a result, workers receive higher wages.

They also have access to political institutions that give them the right to participate in democratic processes, elect their representatives, and remove them from office if they do something wrong.

As a result, politicians are required to provide the basic services demanded by citizens—from public healthcare to roads and law and order.

But the residents of Nogales, Sonora, do not have the same kind of political power. They live in a different world shaped by different institutions.

These different institutions create completely different incentives and opportunities for the residents, entrepreneurs, and businesses seeking to invest in the two Nogales.

The incentives created by these different institutional structures are the main reason for the huge differences in economic prosperity between the two Nogales and the two countries in which they are located.

Why Did the United States Move Ahead?

Another important question now arises: Why were the institutions of the United States more conducive to economic success than those of Mexico or Latin America as a whole?

Because it is one city, two countries, and two different ways of life.

The distance between Nogales in Arizona, United States, and Nogales in Sonora, Mexico, is only a few feet. People on both sides have similar languages, cultures, food, and historical backgrounds. Yet there is a huge difference in living standards. The main reason is not geography or the capabilities of the people, but the different political and economic institutions that developed in the two countries.

In the United States, citizens have relatively strong institutional arrangements that allow them to own property, conduct businesses, pursue education and employment opportunities, and hold governments accountable through elections. In contrast, Mexico remained influenced for a long time by colonial and political structures that concentrated power and resources in the hands of a limited group. Weak law enforcement, corruption, and limited political competition also affected economic opportunities and public services.

Therefore, the example of Nogales raises an important question: Does a country’s prosperity depend only on its people and natural resources, or is it also determined by the nature of its institutions?

The example demonstrates that institutions that provide citizens with opportunities, rights, security, and accountable governance can accelerate economic development. In contrast, institutions that concentrate resources and power in the hands of a limited group can restrict a country’s development potential.

As the authors argue, the policies adopted by a country affect the living standards of its citizens.

The same thing can be seen in neighboring Afghanistan and China. While Afghan girls are being denied the opportunity to attend school, Chinese women have gone on to win Nobel Prizes.