speaking with John Kitch at the University of Texas at Austin in the Civitas Institute, writing about a new book by Dan Wong,

Breakneck. I have not read the book I have it to interview him later on this year, or early next year.

John Kitch, reading it, makes the general point

that Wong sees the two countries, China and the U.S., divided bio,

the Chinese are engineers and the Russians are lawyers.

Here, John Kitch gives the explanation to what the engineers can do in China and what the limitations are.

The book is Breakneck.

Dan Wang is the author, born in China, living in America.

It's doing very well.

In fact, Martin Wolf, the chief commentator for the markets at the Financial

Times, makes it one of his 10 best economic books of the year. John Kitch on Dan Wong's

breakneck. Much more of this later. They do it in Wong's telling by making plans and executing on them very quickly.

They are, in his view, the engineers that run China good at directing large amounts of resources

into particular sectors. And this can sometimes dramatically increase economic output.

I think it's helped China rise up the value chain. The downside, sometimes dramatically increase economic output.

I think it's helped China rise up the value chain.

The downside is bigger, though, in Wong's view and I agree with that,

which is that treating political problems, which are human problems,

with a kind of purely technocratic mindset, is not going to get you the right answers. You cannot over-determine solutions for complex human problems. And so Wong feels, and I agree,

that this causes China's leadership to be too wrote, to not have enough of an imagination,

and to be brittle in their decision making.