Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future by Dan Wang

Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future

by Dan Wang

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History & Foreign AffairsTech & Future

China is an engineering state that builds relentlessly, and the United States is a lawyerly society that's good at stopping things. Dan Wang lived in China from 2017 to 2023, and his argument is that each could learn from the other, though China's lack of pluralism is its deepest weakness.

Core ideas
  • Same start: Around 2008 China and California each planned roughly 800 miles of high-speed rail. China finished Beijing–Shanghai by 2011, and California still hasn't.
  • Engineering people: The same sledgehammer gets used on society, and the book counts the one-child policy, with its forced sterilizations, among the state's biggest indictments.
  • Overbuilding: A Guizhou county now makes one in seven of the world's guitars, and a Liupanshui ski resort project added about $21 billion of debt.
Published2025
Pages288
ISBN9781324106036
ReadJan 2026

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