From New York Times opinion, I'm Ross Douthat. And this is interesting times.

A lot of people think that we are already living in a Chinese century, that the American

Empire is retreating and Chinese power could dominate the future, through technological

mastery, military prowess, a great leap forward in AI.

I tend to be pretty skeptical of this scenario.

America has outlasted challengers before, and China seems to me to have remarkable strengths,

yes, but also serious weaknesses.

My guest today makes a compelling case that Chinese power could really be poised to

surpass our own.

Dan Wong is a keen observer of contemporary China, and his new book, Breakneck, China's

quest to engineer the future, argues that the Trump administration's current trade war is wrongheaded

or too late, and that American preeminence can only be preserved if we imitate the things that

China is getting right.

Dan Wong, welcome to interesting times.

Thank you for having me, Russ.

So, we're going to talk about the Chinese model, and how it compares to the American model,

strengths, weaknesses, conflict, coexistence.

But I want to start by talking about your own experience.

You were in China from about 2017 through

about 2023, and you were a technology analyst, you were a writer, you wrote an annual letter

about what you saw in China, and you traveled a lot. So I want you to start by telling us a story or giving us an image or a place that you visited or saw or experienced that you looked at and it made you think the 21st century is going to belong to China.

Here's a vision from 2021. In the summer of 2021, China had closed off its borders to COVID when I was living

...