Azeem Azhar's Exponential View
Oct 1, 2025 · 50 min · 12 segments
In this episode, I spoke with Dan Wang, author of “Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future”, shortlisted for the FT & Schroders Business Book of the Year. Dan is one of the most astute…
Dan WangGuest
Azeem AzharHost
The core idea in your book is that China is an engineering state led by engineers and the US is led by lawyers.
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 I think this is giving people a sense of some degree of optimism for the future, even if it creates some problems.
So as I was living in China between 2017 to 2023, one of the centerpieces of my time there was Xi Jinping's effort to smash a lot of consumer internet companies, a lot of cryptocurrency companies to say, we need young people to work on strategic technologies instead.
And one final thing to say is that the engineering state also treats society as if it were just another engineering exercise, as if people were just another building material not to be torn down and remolded as they wish.
And so I spent a lot of time also thinking through another big centerpiece of my time in China, which was zero COVID.
I was in China throughout all three years of zero COVID, really felt like the state was simply moving people around as if we were a series of chess pieces.
I mean, it's a remarkable thread that you've drawn between those different dynamics.
I think one of the really helpful things is it gives us a frame to try to make sense of things that may feel a little bit disconnected, but in a sense, there is something that pulls it all together.
I suppose one of my questions around all of this is why does it work in China? I mean, people have tried technocratic engineering in the past.
Of course, the Soviet Union was a good example, you know, the five-year plans, Gauss plan, all these other things.
The core idea in your book is that China is an engineering state led by engineers and the US is led by lawyers.
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 I think this is giving people a sense of some degree of optimism for the future, even if it creates some problems.
So as I was living in China between 2017 to 2023, one of the centerpieces of my time there was Xi Jinping's effort to smash a lot of consumer internet companies, a lot of cryptocurrency companies to say, we need young people to work on strategic technologies instead.
And one final thing to say is that the engineering state also treats society as if it were just another engineering exercise, as if people were just another building material not to be torn down and remolded as they wish.
And so I spent a lot of time also thinking through another big centerpiece of my time in China, which was zero COVID.
I was in China throughout all three years of zero COVID, really felt like the state was simply moving people around as if we were a series of chess pieces.
I mean, it's a remarkable thread that you've drawn between those different dynamics.
I think one of the really helpful things is it gives us a frame to try to make sense of things that may feel a little bit disconnected, but in a sense, there is something that pulls it all together.
I suppose one of my questions around all of this is why does it work in China? I mean, people have tried technocratic engineering in the past.
Of course, the Soviet Union was a good example, you know, the five-year plans, Gauss plan, all these other things.
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