Sinica Podcast21 Elo 2025

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

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

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China Shock 2.0: This Time It's Europe, with Adam Tooze

Last week in Brussels, EU leaders held their first sustained debate on China policy in three years, and were so wary of Beijing’s reaction they wouldn’t print the word “China” on the agenda. The trigg...

24 Kesä 46min

"But China!": Robert Wright on the AI Race and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning

This week on Sinica I'm joined by Robert Wright, author of The Moral Animal, Nonzero, and The Evolution of God, for a conversation that runs a little outside our usual beat, though China sits closer t...

17 Kesä 1h 53min

The Texas Paradox: How the Most Anti-China State Is Building America's China Capacity

The summit in Beijing produced a "constructive strategic stability" framework and a warming of tone between the two presidents. But heads of state can announce a multi-year horizon; somebody else has ...

3 Kesä 1h 41min

The View from Everywhere Else: Eric Olander on how the Global South is reading the Beijing summits

Eric Olander on how the Global South is reading the Beijing summitsThis week I'm joined again by Eric Olander, founder of the China Global South Project, which runs the most indispensable English-lang...

26 Touko 1h 20min

To Rule All Under Heaven: Andrew Meyer on His New Popular History of the Warring States

This week on Sinica, I speak with Andrew Seth Meyer, professor of history at CUNY Brooklyn College and the author of a remarkable new book from Oxford University Press, To Rule All Under Heaven: A His...

21 Touko 1h 20min

"Constructive Strategic Stability": Ali Wyne of the International Crisis Group on the Trump-Xi Summit

This week on Sinica, I chat with Ali Wyne, Senior Research and Advocacy Adviser for U.S.-China at the International Crisis Group, just hours after President Trump's plane left Chinese airspace at the ...

17 Touko 1h 6min

"The China Debate We're Not Having" | Part 4: The AI Race Reconsidered

This week I’m sharing the fourth and final installment from the day-long conference convened by the Institute for America, China, and the Future of Global Affairs (ACF) at Johns Hopkins SAIS on April ...

17 Touko 36min

The Poetry of Zheng Xiaoqiong: A Conversation with Translator Eleanor Goodman

This week on Sinica, in a special episode recorded as a live joint webcast with NYRB/Poets and Equator Magazine, I sit down with Eleanor Goodman — poet, scholar, research associate at Harvard's Fairba...

6 Touko 1h 11min