The Engineering State and the Lawyerly Society: Dan Wang on his new book "Breakneck"

Sinica Podcast

Kaiser Kuo

Currentaffairs, Business, News, China Politics, Shenzhen, Chinese, Chongqing, China News, Politics, China, Culture, Sichuan, Hangzhou, Beijing, International Relations, China Economy, Chengdu, Film, Shanghai, Guangzhou

4.7 • 710 Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2025

⏱️ 93 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week on Sinica, I'm delighted to be joined by Dan Wang, formerly of Gavekal Dragonomics and the Paul Tsai Law Center at Yale University, now with the Hoover Institute's History Lab. Dan's new book is Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future, and it's already one of the year's most talked-about books. In this conversation, we go beyond what's actually in the book to discuss the origins and implications of the Chinese "engineering state" — the world's biggest technocratic polity — and what the United States should and should not learn from China. We discuss how Dan's ideas sit with Abundance by Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein, and much more. Don't miss this episode!

03:51 – Guitar industry in Guizhou

09:49 – Engineering state vs. lawyerly society

23:13 – Downsides of the engineering state

34:24 – Process knowledge: U.S. vs. China

43:01 – Attitudes toward technology: U.S. vs China

52:32 – Historical roots of the engineering state in China

59:48 – Building institutions that bind outcomes to rights

01:04:15 – What can be learned from the COVID lockdowns

01:07:51 – The tradeoff between resilience and efficiency

01:10:52 – Dan's view on Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein's "Abundance" argument

01:13:41 – Legitimacy in China and the U.S.

01:21:13 – Building toward cultural pluralism

Paying it Forward: Afra Wang, He Liu.

Recommendations:

Dan: Mozart's Italian operas, written with Lorenzo Da Ponte; The Red and the Black by Stendhal; In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust; Moby Dick by Herman Melville; Bleak House by Charles Dickens.

Kaiser: China is enjoying Trump 2.0 by Yun Sun (article), books: Revolutionary Spring, The Sleepwalkers by Christopher Clark

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the Cynica podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China.
0:13.4	In this program, we'll look at books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents, and cultural trends that can help us better understand what's happening in China's
0:21.4	politics, foreign relations, economics, and society.
0:25.2	Join me each week for in-depth conversations that shed more light and bring less heat to how we think and talk about China.
0:32.9	I'm Kaiser Guo coming to you this week from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
0:37.3	Cynica is supported this year by the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of
0:40.9	Wisconsin-Madison, a National Resource Center for the Study of East Asia.
0:45.3	The Cynica podcast will remain free, but if you work for an organization that believes in what I'm doing with the show,
0:51.5	please consider lending your support.
0:53.5	You can get me at Cinecapod at gmail.com.
0:57.0	And listeners, please support my work by becoming a paying subscriber at Cynicca Podcast.com.
1:04.5	The semester is starting two big tuition checks to write.
1:08.6	So help a guy educate his kids.
1:10.5	You will enjoy, in addition to the
1:11.9	podcast, the complete transcript of the show, essays from me, as well as writings and podcasts
1:16.7	from some of your very favorite China-focused columnists and commentators. And, of course,
1:21.8	you will have the knowledge that you are helping me to do what I honestly believe is important
1:25.5	work. So do check out the page to see all that's on offer. And please do consider helping me to do what I honestly believe is important work. So do check out the page to see all that's on offer.
1:29.5	And please do consider helping me out.
1:33.0	Dan Wong has been on the Cynica podcast a couple of times before, and I am delighted to
1:38.2	have him back today.
1:39.2	He is one of the sharpest and most original observers of China's technology sector and
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Kaiser Kuo, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Kaiser Kuo and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.