Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future

WHY WE HAVE THIS BOOK ON SHELFIE?

Breakneck offers a rare comparison of two systems usually discussed only as rivals: China’s engineering-driven state and America’s lawyer-dominated institutions. Dan Wang shows the strengths and failures of both without reducing the book to a simple geopolitical scorecard. It belongs on Shelfie because it connects technology, infrastructure, governance and individual freedom in one clear argument.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

*New York Times Bestseller*

A Book of the Year According to Financial Times and Sunday Times

Shortlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year

From an indispensable voice on China comes a riveting, first-hand account of China's seismic progress

For close to a decade, Dan Wang has been observing China’s tumultuous and astounding growth. The state has constructed towering bridges, gleaming railways and sprawling factories to improve economic outcomes in record time. But rapid change has also sent ripples of pain throughout society.

China has grown so quickly in part by beating America at its own game: capitalism and harnessing the restless energy of a vast population. Here Wang blends political and economic analysis with reportage into a provocative new framework for understanding China – one that helps us see America more clearly, too. Whereas China is an engineering state, relentlessly building big, the United States has transformed into a lawyerly society, stalling every attempt to make change, both good and bad.

As relations between the US and China are tense and uncertain and the potential for dreadful conflict looms, Wang offers an inventive new way of thinking about the two superpowers. Breakneck reveals that each country points towards a better path for the other. How much better the world would be, he argues, if Americans could live in a society not only governed by lawyers, and Chinese citizens could live with a state that values their individual liberties.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dan Wang is a research fellow at the Hoover History Lab at Stanford University. He previously worked at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center and as a technology analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics. His essays have appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, New York Magazine and The Atlantic.

Issue from the year: 2025