China Builds, The US Regulates - EP 35 Dan Wang

In this episode, Dan Wang comes on the show to discuss his new book Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future.

I’ll start by noting that the book is fantastic, and you should read it. It’s a well-researched, vibrant account of how China became dominated by its engineering culture. The country has displayed an unmatched ability to build over the past forty years, and Wang traces the scale of these accomplishments in detail. He also documents how pervasive this engineering mindset is by diving into the one-child and zero-Covid policies, and the brutally efficient ways they were carried out.

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Wang contrasts China’s engineering-first culture with the US’s regulation-first culture. China’s top politicians are mostly engineers. The US’s top politicians are mostly lawyers. Wang argues that the US once built like China until the 1960s came, and the US began regulating itself into a collective torpor.

As you’ll find in the book and hear in our discussion, Wang is not a China propagandist. Far from it. He offers a sober look at the pros and cons of both China and the US and points out that the two cultures have remarkable similarities.

In this episode, we explore the book and much beyond it, discussing what hope, if any, the US has of competing against China in the coming century.

Enjoy!

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