★★★★☆ Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future, by Dan Wang
Engineers vs lawyers
Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future
Dan Wang
Engineers vs lawyers
Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future is what I call a "New Hammer" book. The name of course comes from the saying "When you have a new hammer, everything looks like a nail."
New Hammer books begin when the author has an idea that, they think, explains everything. Now, when the author really thinks the new idea explains absolutely everything in the whole damn universe, you get a new religion. Those books are not great. But sometimes an author has an idea that explains everything within some specific domain. Those can be very good books. One of my favorites is Plagues and Peoples, in which William H. McNeill explained that infectious disease explains all of human history. A more obscure one is Timur Kuran's Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification explains that "preference falsification" explains everything about political science. The big problem with New Hammer books, of course, is that the authors are apt to overstate their claims.
Dan Wang's Breakneck is about US/China relations. Here is his New Hammer:
The starkest contrast between the two countries is the competition that will define the twenty-first century: an American elite, made up of mostly lawyers, excelling at obstruction, versus a Chinese technocratic class, made up of mostly engineers, that excels at construction.
Surprisingly, he makes a pretty good case -- overstated in places, but generally sound, I think. I definitely come away from it better informed about China and the challenges of US/China relations than when I began it.
Breakneck is not pro-China or anti-China or pro-USA or anti-USA. It is refreshing that Wang's views don't map onto any familiar political position. In fact, in his acknowledgements he humblebrags
Breakneck is written from a perspective that makes most political scientists tart and many historians grumpy.
But, as Walt Whitman wrote, “If you done it, it ain't bragging.”, and Wang done it.
My main problem with Wang's New Hammer is that he overstates the insight it gives into China's leadership, by ascribing to engineers in general tendencies that don't apply to all or even most engineers. For instance, he states, "Engineers don’t know how to persuade." As it happens, I know a lot of scientists and engineers, and I can tell you that some of them are very persuasive people. Strangely enough, none of the engineers I am acquainted with is the authoritarian leader of his or her nation. I would tend to ascribe unpersuasiveness more to authoritarianism than to engineering, but maybe that's just me.
This is a good book that taught me things I didn't know, and more important, helped me understand some things I did know. Recommended.