So today I'm really excited to have Dan Wong on the show. Many of you will be familiar with his

work on technology, in particular the angle from China. I've been reading his essays on his

beautifully designed blog for a number of years. And Dan has just published a new book,

Breakneck, over here, which I strongly recommend. It's just been shortlisted as one of the

best books in the year for the FT Business Book of the year. So much, much deserved, Dan,

and it's great to have you here. Thank you very much, Hazi. The core idea in your book is that

China is an engineering state, led by and the US is led by lawyers.

What in practice does it mean to say that China is an engineering state?

In practice, what it means is that China is very intent on engineering the environment.

I spent a lot of time living through some of the successes

and the not-so-great successes of the engineering state.

Some of the successes can be represented through the city of Shanghai,

which has beautiful subway systems,

very well-functioning, excellent infrastructure of all sorts.

And you can debate whether this is also a success, but I've also cycled through China's fourth

porous province, far in the southwest and mountainous Guaucho, which has high-speed rail, which

has 11 airports, which has 45 of the world's tallest bridges. And so this is where

this province is really saddled by all sorts of debt. It is pouring a lot of cement into the

ground. And I think this is giving people a sense of some degree of optimism for the future,

even if it creates some problems. Engineers also are very intent to engineer the economy.

So as I was living in China between 2017 to 2023,

one of the centerpieces of my time there was

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