China has been designed as an engineering state that can competently and quickly build physical infrastructure. The Chinese government can build high-speed rail that connects major cities, construct bridges, develop housing, and execute massive public works projects at scale. Alongside this, China’s private sector has achieved manufacturing excellence, producing an enormous share of the world’s goods. Everything from guitars, furniture, and toys to higher-tech products like drones, electric vehicles, and even munitions.
Contrast this with American society. The U.S. government, along with its state and local subsidiaries, has an extremely hard time building physical infrastructure. California has been trying to build high-speed rail for over 15 years with little to show for it. New York City’s subway system is old and decrepit. Many American cities face severe housing shortages. On top of that, a huge portion of U.S. manufacturing has been offshored to countries like China.
Dan Wang characterizes China as an engineering society and the United States as a lawyerly society. It’s hard to build in the U.S. because there are so many laws, regulations, and layers of bureaucracy that inhibit new projects. Government leaders often do far too little, and sometimes actively get in the way, when it comes to green-lighting and speeding up infrastructure that would materially improve Americans’ lives.
The engineering society of China has severe downsides. It is methodical and effective, but often lacks empathy once it locks onto a specific goal. Wang uses the COVID years as a primary example. Initially, China did very well at halting the spread of COVID. But when the virus returned in 2021, the government enacted extremely harsh lockdowns. People were confined to their apartment buildings for weeks at a time, and food shortages became common. COVID was treated as a pure engineering problem with a single target: Zero COVID. The state was willing to do almost anything to achieve it.
China has its own serious problems. It faces a looming demographic crisis that could lead to population collapse, due in large part to another failed social-engineering experiment from the 1960s: the one-child policy. Still, China has been remarkably effective at building infrastructure and sustaining powerful manufacturing industries.
If the United States wants to compete with China and raise the standard of living for Americans, it needs to radically change course. That means cutting regulations, slashing bureaucracy, reducing endless environmental reviews, and allowing both companies and government to actually build housing, infrastructure, and transportation, and to bring manufacturing jobs back home.
I really liked Breakneck by Dan Wang. It’s an insightful book that goes deep into modern Chinese government, society, and culture. It helped me better understand what’s actually going on in China, what motivates its leadership, and how they think about the future, the economy, and national power. The core premise is that since the 1960s, China has deliberately become an engineering culture, an engineering state. Much of its government is run by engineers. Xi Jinping himself is a chemical engineer, as are many members of the Politburo and provincial leaders.
Since taking power, Xi has worked to reshape China with the explicit goal of turning it into a global superpower capable of competing with the United States. The primary vehicle for this ambition has been engineering and manufacturing. Everything revolves around technological and industrial capacity, the ability to produce physical goods at scale. China has an extraordinary density of factories across the country. At the same time, massive investments in physical infrastructure, bridges, high-speed rail, and public works, have transformed daily life. Rural citizens can now reach major cities quickly. Travel within regions is faster and easier. According to Wang, much of this effort exists for one core reason: to keep the population satisfied.