Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future, by Dan Wang

 

China expert Dan Wang explains why China needs to slow its pace of building, while America needs to to do the opposite. 

Dan Wang was born in Yunnan, China. Aged seven, his family moved to Canada, hoping to build a better life. As an adult, Wang has lived in both China and the United States, these experiences informing his work as a technology writer. 

Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future benefits from an easy to understand premise. China is an engineering culture, capable of producing enormous infrastructure projects on budget and on time, but often of dubious quality and utility. America, on the other hand, is a lawyerly society. Once a great engineering nation, the US now is mired in a thicket of laws, rules and regulations, stopping much needed building. Wang argues that China needs be more lawyerly and adopt some breaks on their engineering zeal, while the US, with its crumbling infrastructure, could learn from China’s can-do approach.

One wouldn’t expect a book on comparative economics and engineering to be such a fun read. Breakneck is just that. Wang brings first hand experience and a gift for organising complex ideas into a rollicking narrative that humanises China - authoritarian on the surface, but messy and complex underneath. 

A brilliant explainer from a generous guide. 

Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future, by Dan Wang. Published by Allen Lane. $55

APRIL2026