Genes of Political System?

This writeup is to clarify a term: institutional genes (制度基因 — genes of the political system). Prof. Xu (许成钢) of Stanford and Hoover has recently published a book in which 制度基因 is the key concept. I have not read this book but watched his related talk. I did not agree with this term. (Besides Xu, a few other papers also use this term.) Although I regard Xu as the most knowledgeable economist on China, political science is not his research area.  

I have now changed my opinion. I just saw Prof. Xu’s talk on the recent South Korea political turmoil (carried on VOA) [1]. This talk is very good. It gives a concise overview on Korea’s history, politics, and democratic transition. Because Korea had almost exactly the same political system and history as China, many might find it very interesting. Hoping this term does not cause confusion, I here explain why institutional genes is not a good term. 

The key is that genes come with birth. Genes in general cannot easily vary after birth. 

My understanding is that Xu used the term gene to express that deep in an economic system there are some political ‘genes’ that are hard to change. The problem is that no one can identify such political genes. I strongly suspect that such genes do not exist (I may explain this later). 

It is extremely difficult to change a political system. Putting this differently, how to democratize a political system? This topic is so big and difficult, most scholars would have little idea how to proceed. 

References: 

1. 《许成钢谈经论政》：韩式宫斗给中国的启示制度基因可以改变？