Breakneck, written by Dan Wang, a researcher at the Hoover Institution at Stanford and a Chinese Canadian, drew major attention even before publication. Dan Wang defined China as a nation of engineers and the United States as a nation of lawyers. China ruled by engineers and the United States ruled by lawyers—the polar-opposite landscapes of the world's superpowers that Wang sketches in the book are frighteningly vivid.
Once the most dynamic country, the United States is now gridlocked by procedure and litigation across politics, the economy and society, stalling constructive acts of making and building. Today, even the rich in the United States cannot get electricity from State Governments on time and are running private generators to maintain their expensive homes. From crumbling subways and shelved power plants to idle factories, Americans' sense of helplessness has peaked, and their anger was exploited to bring about the Trump administration.
By contrast, China, a nation of engineering students, is obsessed with making things. From iPhone parts in Shenzhen to the improbably massive bridges in rural Guizhou, the government led the development of social infrastructure such as railways, airports and ports, as well as industrial parks and advanced technology, catching up with the United States in just a few decades. But the Beijing government, which runs the state by technology and control, approaches social problems with an engineering model, leading to more than 300 million abortions during the one-child policy. Its crackdown on the virtual economy and Fintech corporations is also severe on the grounds that they are intangible.
How did the superpowers end up on such different paths?
In the United States, five out of 10 presidents went to law school, and to rise, you must graduate from law school. In China, more than 90% of the leadership is composed of engineers in an engineer state. Today, America's innovation happens in Silicon Valley's virtual economy, while China's innovation happens in the factory shop-floor community. The U.S. government sees its people's identity as consumers, while the Chinese government sees its people's identity as producers.
Looking at what is happening under state direction in Beijing and Washington, Shenzhen and Silicon Valley, Tianjin and Wall Street gives a sense of which path Korea should take next.
We interviewed Dan Wang, author of Breakneck, regarded as a technology expert well-versed in China and Silicon Valley. Wang noted that at root, the real contest between the United States and China is not about bigger factories or higher corporate valuations but about who thinks most about the people. He added, pointedly, that the only way for America to become great is "more engineers, fewer lawyers."
-Seeing China as a nation of engineers and the United States as a nation of lawyers felt truly fresh. It's the most accurate view to understand the current dynamism of the two countries. What prompted these keywords?
"I gained this perspective over six years working as a technology analyst in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai. It was when China was achieving astonishing growth while suffering under zero-COVID. After I moved to Yale Law School in 2023, I finally saw America's essence. The United States was a government 'of lawyers, by lawyers, for lawyers.'
America's social elites, mostly from legal backgrounds, are adept mainly at blocking and defending, while China's senior leadership, largely from engineering or technical backgrounds, is adept at creating new things. As a result, America of the past was great, but America today obsesses over 'procedure' rather than 'outcome.' Civil servants scramble to prove regulatory compliance rather than deliver results.
By contrast, from Deng Xiaoping to Hu Jintao (a hydroelectric engineer) and Xi Jinping (a chemical engineering major), many in the leadership are engineers who underwent rigorous engineering training.
An engineer's instinct is 'to build.' That is why so many homes, dams and bridges rise in China. But they also tend to treat society like a math problem. If the population is large, they suppress births with the number called the 'one-child policy,' and if a virus spreads, they lock down entire cities."
-A world polarized into gearheads and lawheads… Lately I'm often struck, like with you, by Chinese American intellectuals' meta-cognition and creative lens on the world.
"To confess, my insight came squarely from the experience of being an 'outsider.' I was born in the mountainous region of Yunnan, on China's periphery. I was always an outsider in China's big cities. I spent my boyhood in Canada and my young adult years in the United States, so I'm still an outsider in America. This in-between position became a privilege. I gained a 'third eye' to see the blind spots that each country's elites miss."
-I was impressed by your contrasting depictions of the urban scenes in China and the United States as observed with your third eye. What was Guizhou, which opens the narrative, like?
"It is a place with 45 of the world's 100 highest bridges and bungee jumps hung at surreal heights. Household income in Guizhou is only one-fifteenth that of New York state, but the length of its expressways is three times that of New York. Its social infrastructure is remarkably strong, with even its high-speed rail network running well.
In some cases, bridges were built first without a specific destination to connect, but after a few years, people ultimately gathered around them. Guizhou residents said they were glad to have new bridges and railways. Similar public projects are being pushed relentlessly across China."
-What was Tianjin like?
"Tianjin is a city built with the goal of becoming 'China's Manhattan.' But one day when I visited in 2020, there were hardly any people in the shopping arcades. China's Manhattan was empty. Even so, the 97-story skyscraper, the third tallest in China, and a stunning library were impressive. But up close, the beautiful shelves were filled with fake books with only covers. The area was packed only with people taking proof photos.
To my eye, the Tianjin library looked like a kind of metaphor for China's economy as a whole. Despite the splendid exterior, the inside is hollow. In the end, what remains is only unmanageable debt. According to rating agency Moody's, the debt-to-GDP ratios of Tianjin and Guizhou are approaching Italy's level."
-What signs did you sense after returning to Silicon Valley?
"Early last year I left Yale for Stanford. The Bay Area had become far stranger than when I lived there 10 years ago. In 2015, people were building consumer apps, cryptocurrencies and enterprise software. It was much calmer than now. Today, everything in San Francisco is dominated by AI, and the tech industry is playing a much larger political role in the United States.
Eccentrics are struggling to build 'God in a Box.' Tech moguls obsess pathologically over a few ideas—say, Elon Musk's electric cars and space launches—instead of developing a balanced model of the world. Under the banner of inventing the future, San Francisco is indifferent to the rest of the world's concerns.
In my view, the two most powerful axes shaping the world now are the Communist Party and Silicon Valley, and the two have much in common. One reason they succeed is that they are ruthless."
-What are Silicon Valley people saying about AI?
"AI critics worry about rising power bills and the spread of garbage information, but AI designers focus mainly on the potential to destroy white-collar jobs and drive unemployment up to 20%. The most-read essay in Silicon Valley this year was 'AI 2027.' It sketches a scenario in which superintelligence awakens in 2027 and, 10 years later, wipes out humanity with biological weapons. Because superintelligence will change everything, no one cares about issues five or 10 years out.
Even at parties, AI sucks up every topic. The only corporations Silicon Valley now fears and respects are Chinese corporations. They believe Beijing seeks to seize Taiwan solely to produce 'AI chips.' They won't believe that Beijing wanted Taiwan long before AI."
-Don't American elites tend to downplay China's achievements?
"It's half and half. East Coast elites in Washington, D.C., mainly ask, 'Won't China ultimately collapse?' In contrast, people in Silicon Valley on the West Coast ask, 'What if China succeeds?' I think the latter question is far more important.
Many dismiss China's innovation as merely 'copy and scale,' but Chinese factory workers create innovation on the production line every day. The first solar cell was invented at Bell Labs in the United States, but it was China that ultimately swallowed the entire industry. The United States keeps making the mistake of inventing but abandoning 'commercial mass production.'"
-You said that to write the book you read nearly all of Xi Jinping's speeches and traced the evolution of the thinking of a Chinese autocrat making enormous strides. In your view, what is his ambition?
"Xi's ambition is to build a 'fortified China' that can survive cut off from the world, regardless of economic stagnation or youth unemployment. China's goal is not to become a global empire copying the United States. It is to monopolize the production of nearly all products essential to the world, neutralize enemies and 'survive to the end.'
From the perspective of great-power hegemonic rivalry, Europe looks very bleak right now. Europe is losing on both fronts, to China in manufacturing and to the United States in services. I remain very optimistic about the United States in terms of dynamism. Both the U.S. and China at least maintain a hunger for 'growth.'"
-Wasn't it inevitable that China, once an empire, would become an engineer's nation focused on 'technology and control,' and that the United States, founded as a nation of immigrants, would end up a nation of lawyers?
"There is no such thing as inevitability—especially regarding the United States! America was originally an 'engineering nation.' Railroads, dams, highways, the Manhattan Project and the moon landing. The United States was a grand builder. The difference lies in the 'type of lawyer.' The previous generation of lawyers cared about growing the country and were dealmakers who got things done through negotiation. But the lawyers who emerged after the 1960s focused on binding the government's hands and feet with regulation and litigation.
Since the '60s, the United States has repeatedly failed to build even basics like homes or roads properly. I hope America will once again build houses for its citizens and regain the wild spirit of the past when technological marvels like the moon landing astonished the world."
-In a nation of lawyers like today's United States, which population group is hurt the most?
"America works very well for the wealthy. There's no better place to become rich. Entrepreneurs can start businesses with confidence, influence the political process and find many opportunities to spend money. Those who suffer most when public infrastructure is not properly built are the poor. That's because a lawyer-centric society blocks construction through procedures and regulations.
For example, in Los Angeles, even after major fires, the government has not sufficiently permitted the construction of homes. Few cities are serious about expanding mass transit. The damage ultimately falls squarely on low-income people."
-In that context, your side-by-side comparison of how fast urban infrastructure gets built in China and the United States was shocking. The Beijing–Shanghai high-speed rail and the San Francisco–Los Angeles high-speed rail started around 2007, but China opened its line in 2011 and is near completing a second, while the United States has not opened even its first section and the outlook is even darker. Seeing such dreadful public transit cases, I'm struck by Americans' patience.
"To be frank, Americans feel frustrated yet feel they lack the ability to change things. But the United States has compensated for those limits in other ways. It has maintained stronger economic growth than other advanced countries in Europe and Asia, and has steadily created competitive corporations. It also continues to lead scientific advances in many fields. Not everything is broken. The infrastructure is a mess, but living standards remain among the world's highest."
-Trump cleverly exploited workers' anger, but isn't Wall Street largely to blame for the collapse of U.S. manufacturers? Since around 2015, critics have consistently raised the 'financialization of corporations,' in which investors get richer and factory workers get poorer.
"I completely agree. U.S. corporations are excessively steeped in a 'financialized mindset' compared with Asian corporations. They prioritize 'financial ratios' and 'short-term profits' over 'good products.' As a result, U.S. corporations have become the most efficiently managed organizations in the world, but at a fatal cost.
To cut costs immediately, they destroyed the manufacturing ecosystem, shifted production bases to China and threatened national security. The biggest problem is that they give up too easily. In contrast, Chinese corporations do not give up. Trusting government support, they endure years of losses and fight to the end to seize 'market share' rather than profits. This difference in grit decided victory and defeat."
-Tell us what you saw in Shenzhen.
"Among the places I visited in China, the most orderly were the factories in Shenzhen that produce Apple products. According to Apple's former engineering staff, four months after striking a deal with a region, they returned to find vacant land turned into a six-story building preparing for production.
Walmart in the United States also invested massive capital in the area to procure nearly every product consumers wanted and gradually began producing all sorts of electronic components, from electric vehicles to batteries. Leveraging the Apple-trained workforce in Shenzhen, China began to lead the world in other industrial fields as well."
-But I understand that finance and big-tech unicorns face heavy regulation in China. That's the opposite atmosphere of Silicon Valley, isn't it?
"That's right. China approaches advanced technology in a way completely different from Silicon Valley in the United States. Xi Jinping condemns virtual industries and economies like social media and e-commerce as capital's 'barbaric growth.' As a result, regulations that began in late 2020 wiped out 1 trillion won in market value. Jack Ma's Fintech corporations, and Alibaba as well, saw their corporate value cut to a quarter."
Dan Wang also said he felt the Chinese government seemed to be avoiding the modern U.S. economic structure.
"For the past 20 years, America's growth engines have been Silicon Valley on the Pacific and Wall Street on the Atlantic. But as time passed, manufacturing collapsed while advanced technology and finance gave rise to social ills. The era of American-style innovation that Beijing watches is the Silicon Valley of the 1960s and 1970s, when advanced technology corporations like Intel made products, supplied the Ministry of National Defense and provided large-scale jobs."
He went on to add that the Beijing central government may even be hoping the United States collapses under the double burden of social media and artificial intelligence. Wang's aside—that "while Americans escape into the digital virtual world, Xi Jinping will lead the Chinese people into the real world to have children and produce steel products and semiconductors"—was chilling.
-The two countries also show different views on how to use AI: the United States aims for superintelligence surpassing humans and the expansion of services, while China seeks control of manufacturing technology. How do you expect these differing goals for AI development to diverge outcomes?
"Above all, a significant share of the world's AI talent is Chinese. Chinese corporations see AI not as an unpredictable, capricious force that threatens humanity but as a 'deployable tool (controlled technology)' to be embedded in factory lines and robots. If the United States is making a 'high-risk bet on Deep Learning,' China is focusing thoroughly on combining AI with its strength of 'manufacturing excellence.'"
-You voiced deep concern about the 'fate of a control state.' What memories did the one-child policy and zero-COVID leave with Chinese people?
"I was born in China in 1992. To give birth to me, my mother had to fill out countless forms, including a pledge to undergo sterilization after I was born. If a pregnant woman did not consent to an abortion, officials could enforce it. The policy resulted in over 300 million abortions, 25 million men undergoing sterilization and 40 million girls missing.
Ironically, as China fell into a low-birthrate crisis, it again sought to redesign women's bodies in an engineer's way. Local committees now ask married women about their menstrual cycles and pressure them on how many children they will have. The zero-COVID policy is of the same logic. In 2022, Shanghai's lockdown was the largest mass confinement experiment in human history, and with a digital surveillance system, the Chinese government made it possible to control citizens down to bathroom use.
These two events are clear examples of what tragedies can occur when engineering thinking meets social control."
-Isn't American society following that kind of social control? Trump tries to break through immigration and trade issues with mathematical control and the brute force of social engineering. The United States is even more serious now than when you published your book. Where can resilience begin?
"The most urgent task is to stop Trump-style destruction. We must halt cruelty toward the weak, attacks on allies and the erosion of institutions. Then the U.S. government must tangibly improve its citizens' lives. Recovery begins when the government functions so people do not feel despair about their lives."
-Peter Thiel's quip—"We wanted flying cars; instead we got social media that limits us to 140 characters"—hits hard. I also felt the severity in the point that building 1 kilometer of subway line in New York costs five times what it costs in Paris. What, specifically, can the United States do to regain skilled workers with practical knowledge and true social infrastructure?
"More engineers, fewer lawyers! I think there should be more engineers and fewer lawyers."
-The backlash from lawyers won't be small.
"I doubt law schools will welcome my message. But I do think there is a clear, broad current in the United States that the government should play a better role. That current is well captured in the Abundance Agenda proposed by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. Many people in California and New York recognize that the Democratic Party is failing to provide basic public services properly. There is a growing consensus that change is urgent."
-Will the U.S.-China race for superpower hegemony continue?
"Fundamentally, the real competition between the United States and China will not be decided by who has a bigger factory or who has a higher corporate valuation. The core is who thinks most about the people. If the United States has pluralism, China has physical dynamism. That gives China superior manufacturing capability, more sophisticated infrastructure and a greater stock of housing.
The only path for America to become great again is to build more housing and provide better social infrastructure. If the United States restores a genuine building climate and adds manufacturing capability, it can become strong again. In that sense, the United States should declare itself a 'developing country.'"
-It's been 40 years since America's manufacturing ecosystem collapsed. Can it be restored?
"Ironically, America's rebuilding is beginning with foreign help. TSMC in Arizona (Taiwan), Hyundai Motor in Georgia (Korea) and a battery plant in Michigan (China) are proof. To rebuild its manufacturing base, the United States will have to rely heavily on Asia's help. The most ideal would be to accept help from Chinese manufacturers.
Even if U.S. manufacturers acknowledge they are far behind Chinese competitors, I think there is nothing to lose. Rather, they should study what Chinese corporations are doing, learn from their innovations and even try to recruit their talent. True learning will begin when the United States can humble itself."
-Despite many problems, do Beijing and Shenzhen, Silicon Valley and Wall Street still wield overwhelming influence over how people worldwide think and live?
"For the time being, yes. A large share of the future is still being created in Silicon Valley and Shenzhen. Beijing and Wall Street are funding this innovation, and Beijing and Washington, D.C., are exerting outsized sway over the geopolitical fate of many regions around the world."
-Lastly, please offer practical advice to Korean readers, who face the paradox of a buoyant stock market on a semiconductor boom and a very difficult real economy, so they can see this world from a distance and move forward with clear understanding.
"Korea is a country that has shown exemplary results in industrial policy. It still maintains strong competitiveness across many industries, including semiconductors—particularly the recently spotlighted High Bandwidth Memory (HBM)—shipbuilding, automobiles and chemicals. It's remarkable that Korea has accumulated far superior technological capability than Canada despite not having a vastly different population size.
Keep building great technology. Overwhelming technological prowess is the only weapon that can command respect from both American and Chinese empires, and it is the path to Korea's prosperity."