Breakneck: Why China needs to learn to build less and America to build more

Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future

by  Dan Wang

Published by  Penguin Random House

260 pages ₹1,499

 

 

Cheap, capricious, unreliable. Reading the words “Made in China” on a product brought these words to mind not so long ago. But no more. With China now a hub of production and manufacturing for major companies across the globe, things today are different. Dan Wang’s Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future shows how far China has come in the fields of manufacturing and infrastructure and the price paid by its people to reach this point. It also compares China and America as they race towards embracing (in the case of China) and maintaining (in the case of the US) their role as global leaders and superpowers.

 

Wang is a Canadian citizen who migrated from China at a young age with his parents, and later went on to work in the Silicon Valley. This, coupled with the fact that he has also lived and worked in China in the recent past, gives him a unique vantage point. He uses his first-hand knowledge of China and America to talk about both nations, and provides his readers with a glimpse of where these countries stand today and where they might go from here.

 

The central thesis of Breakneck is the analysis of the competition that (according to Wang) will define the 21st century: China’s engineering state, which “can’t stop itself from building” versus the lawyerly society of America, which “blocks everything it can.” In support of this argument, Wang cites irrefutable facts. China today can boast of “an expanse of highways equal to twice the length of the US systems... and almost as much as solar and wind power capacity as the rest of the world put together.” This world class infrastructure available even to its poorest provinces stands in sharp contrast to the major American cities like San Francisco where “even many wealthy people have to keep a generator...because the state can’t keep the lights on.”

 

But the race doesn’t end here. China’s engineering state also gives America stiff competition in technology since it has now become a centre of global manufacturing. Places like Shenzhen have turned into international hubs owing to the quality and variety of electronic components available there. Wang compares this with America where the percentage of population engaged in manufacturing has seen a steady decline as manufacturing jobs are constantly outsourced and claims that this is what has led to the country losing “process knowledge”, an important component which has contributed to China’s growing technical superiority.

 

Wang, however, is not blind to the drawbacks of the engineering state. This becomes clear in his chapters on China’s One Child and Zero-Covid policies. These chapters reveal what happens when an engineering state adopts drastic measures in the service of mathematical outcomes without taking the human element into consideration. This excessive and brutal application of blind social engineering at the cost of people can never happen in a lawyerly state, he suggests. America’s lawyerly society was a necessary measure which came into being after the problems America faced in the 1960s — a time when the country underwent rapid development and industrialisation. But almost half a century later, lawyerly society has become the cause of its problems as excessive proceduralism, which lawyers love, has paralysed the country.

 

And while it’s still a superpower, America needs to hold on to its pluralism and even encourage it — something that China doesn’t — along with going back to manufacturing and building on a grand scale once again to maintain its position in an ever-changing world. He ends the book with the idea of embracing the word “developing” rather than “developed”, because while developed has a sense of finality and immobility, developing leaves scope for going further and achieving more.

 

Breakneck is both engaging and appealing. Even a curious, casual reader can read the book without feeling overwhelmed as its style ensures that it never lapses into a dry tome regurgitating facts and figures. Wang’s personal association with both countries allows him to bring a human touch to all his arguments. Anecdotes, personal stories such as the bicycle ride with his friends from which the idea of Breakneck germinated along with the story of his family’s migration, facts, and data all fuse well together in Breakneck  making it a persuasive and timely read for everyone, including readers with a casual interest in China.

 

Wang’s argument about bringing manufacturing back is persuasive, more so when coupled with his illustration of how this has enabled China to grow from manufacturing for other countries to developing its own industry. So is his suggestion to strike a balance between the engineering state and the lawyerly society. His assertion for a better future is simple: It can be achieved if China learns to build less and America learns to build more. But for two nations doing the opposite, this is easier said than done.

 

The reviewer is an independent writer and translator