About the author
Dan Wang is a Canadian technology analyst and writer specializing in contemporary China. His work compares industrial capacity, political institutions, and the practical consequences of societies that are better at building or at constraining action.
Dan Wang begins with a blunt contrast. China behaves like an engineering state, confident that problems can be solved by building, reorganizing, and acting at scale. The United States has become a lawyerly society, skilled at argument and restraint but often unable to turn an agreed goal into a railway, a power line, or enough homes.
Where to start
Start with Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future. An engineer's-eye comparison of China and the United States asks what each country builds — and what each has forgotten how to do.
