Breakneck

1. The Engineering State vs. The Lawyerly Society: A Defining Contrast

China is an engineering state, building big at breakneck speed, in contrast to the United States’ lawyerly society, blocking everything it can, good and bad.

Core thesis. The author posits that the fundamental difference between China and the United States lies in their governing elites and their approach to societal challenges. China's leadership, historically dominated by engineers, prioritizes rapid, large-scale construction and social engineering. This "engineering state" is characterized by a "get-it-done" attitude, often at immense human and environmental cost.

Obstruction vs. Construction. In stark contrast, the United States is a "lawyerly society," where legal professionals dominate political leadership and public discourse. This leads to a system excelling at obstruction, proceduralism, and litigation, often delaying or preventing essential projects. The author highlights this by comparing:

• China's Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail (built in 3 years for $36 billion)
• California's San Francisco-Los Angeles high-speed rail (17 years, $128 billion, still incomplete)

Consequences of approaches. While China's engineering state can achieve monumental physical improvements, it often disregards individual rights and well-being. The lawyerly society, though valuing individual protections, struggles with physical dynamism, leading to decaying infrastructure and a sense of societal stagnation. This fundamental difference shapes their economic, technological, and social trajectories.

2. China's Unstoppable Drive to Build: Infrastructure at Breakneck Speed

When Chinese point to new cities that shimmer at night with drone displays, or metropolises connected to each other by a glistening high-speed rail network, their pride is real.

Monumental achievements. China's engineering state has transformed its physical landscape with unparalleled speed and scale. Using Guizhou, one of China's poorest provinces, as an example, the author illustrates how even remote regions boast infrastructure superior to many wealthy Western nations. This building spree, fueled by state-led investment, has compressed over a century of Western development into mere decades.

Scale of construction:

• Highways: Twice the length of US systems since 1980.
• High-speed rail: Twenty times Japan's network, longer than the rest of the world combined.
• Ports: Shanghai alone moved more containers in 2022 than all US ports combined.
• Housing: Built new cities the size of New York + Boston every year for 35 years.
• Clean energy: Builds 1/3 to 1/2 of global solar and wind capacity annually.

Benefits and costs. This relentless construction has driven economic growth, facilitated urbanization, and significantly improved living standards for millions, forming a core plank of the Communist Party's legitimacy. However, it comes with massive debt burdens, environmental devastation, and a focus on monumentalism over livability. Projects like Liupanshui's "vanity projects" highlight the risks of growth-at-all-costs.

3. Process Knowledge: The Engine of China's Tech Power

At the heart of China’s ascendancy in advanced technology is its spectacular capacity for learning by doing and consistently improving things.

Beyond invention. The author argues that China's technological prowess stems not from groundbreaking invention, but from "process knowledge"—the proficiency gained from practical, hands-on experience. Shenzhen, the "Silicon Valley of hardware," exemplifies this, evolving from toy manufacturing to producing the world's most sophisticated electronics, like the iPhone. This ecosystem thrives on a dense network of factories, skilled engineers, and a massive, adaptable workforce.

Shenzhen's ecosystem:

• Rapid prototyping: Ability to quickly find suppliers for new components.
• Skilled labor: Hundreds of thousands of workers trained in sophisticated electronics assembly.
• Iterative improvement: Constant learning by doing on the factory floor.
• Peace dividends: Leveraging smartphone component advancements for other products (drones, EVs).

Industrial Party ideology. This focus on manufacturing and industrial technology is deeply embedded in China's political and intellectual landscape, championed by the "Industrial Party." This loosely affiliated group advocates for total mobilization of the economy towards science and technology, viewing it as the decisive force in national competition. Their vision, often bleak and technocratic, prioritizes survival and strength through industrial might.

4. The One-Child Policy: Social Engineering's Traumatic Legacy

The engineering state’s pursuit of the one-child policy produced more social pain than any of its other policies over the last half century.

Misguided scientism. The one-child policy, implemented in 1980, stands as a chilling example of the engineering state's social control. Driven by missile scientist Song Jian's cybernetics-based projections of demographic catastrophe, the policy aimed to reduce China's population to an "optimal" 700 million. This mechanistic thinking, detached from social realities and human emotions, was embraced by leaders like Deng Xiaoping who sought to control population to facilitate economic planning.

Brutal enforcement:

• Mass campaigns: 321 million abortions and 108 million female sterilizations over 35 years.
• Coercive tactics: Browbeating, fines, detention, property seizure, forced abortions (often late-term).
• Human cost: Female infanticide, sex-selective abortions (leading to 40 million "missing" women), child abandonment, and state-sanctioned kidnappings for adoption.
• Psychological scars: Deep anguish and rage among rural families, a sense of precarity.

Unnecessary and counterproductive. The policy was implemented despite fertility rates already declining due to earlier, less coercive family planning and economic development. Its true legacies are profound gender inequity, a rapidly aging population, and deep psychological trauma. Today, the state, facing demographic decline, is attempting to reverse course with pro-natalist policies, but finds women resistant to being lectured by old men to have more children.

5. Zero-Covid: A Microcosm of the Engineering State's Strengths and Flaws

The engineering state tried as hard as it could to hold on to earlier triumphs, until it was forced to let everything go.

Initial success, then catastrophe. China's zero-Covid strategy initially showcased the engineering state's capacity for rapid, decisive action, containing the virus in 2020 while the West struggled. However, as the virus evolved, the policy's literal-minded enforcement led to immense human suffering and economic disruption, culminating in the traumatic Shanghai lockdown of 2022.

Shanghai's ordeal:

• Sudden, unplanned lockdown: 25 million people confined for two months with no prior preparation.
• Food insecurity: Supply chains collapsed, leading to widespread hunger and reliance on community self-organization.
• Medical neglect: Hospitals prioritized Covid over all other conditions, leading to preventable deaths.
• Digital surveillance: Health codes, contact tracing, and drones enforced movement restrictions and suppressed dissent.

Abrupt reversal and aftermath. Despite escalating controls and suppression of dissent (e.g., "Voices of April," "white paper protests"), the highly transmissible Omicron variant proved uncontrollable, especially in Beijing. The policy was abruptly abandoned in late 2022, leading to a massive wave of infections, deaths, and a severe lack of fever medication. The experience left deep psychological wounds, particularly among urban elites, and exposed the state's disregard for individual well-being and its inability to admit error.

6. The "Rùn" Phenomenon: People Fleeing Fortress China

“China feels like a space in which the ceiling keeps getting lower,” Yiju told me one day. “To stay means that we have to walk around with our heads lowered and our backs hunched.”

Alienation and emigration. The "rùn" phenomenon, a Chinese slang word for fleeing, reflects a growing disillusionment among various segments of Chinese society. Young, creative professionals, wealthy families, and even desperate migrants are seeking lives abroad, driven by political repression, economic uncertainty, and the feeling of being "whipsawed by the engineering state’s violent mood swings."

Reasons for "rùn":

• Political controls: Censorship, surveillance, lack of free expression.
• Economic uncertainty: Property collapse, high youth unemployment, regulatory crackdowns on dynamic sectors.
• Trauma of zero-Covid: Indefinite confinement, food insecurity, state disregard for individual suffering.
• Desire for freedom: A yearning for personal agency and a less suffocating environment.

Fortress China. In response, Xi Jinping is doubling down on a "Fortress China" strategy, prioritizing self-reliance and national security over economic openness. This involves hardening the country against external threats, insulating it from global turbulence, and maintaining strict control over information and capital flows. While this strategy aims to make China resilient, it exacerbates the alienation that drives people to leave.

7. US Tech War: Unintended Boost for China's Self-Reliance

Rather than realizing its own Sputnik moment, the United States triggered one in China.

Counterproductive restrictions. The US trade and technology war, initiated under Trump and broadened by Biden, aimed to cripple Chinese tech firms and recover American technological primacy. However, these restrictions, which blacklisted companies and cut off access to American technologies, have largely backfired. Instead of collapsing, Chinese companies were "riled up to break free of American restrictions."

Strengthening domestic capacity:

• Forced localization: Chinese firms, previously reliant on American components, were compelled to seek domestic alternatives.
• Investment shift: Money and engineering talent that once flowed to the US now stays in China, funding local R&D.
• Talent repatriation: High-profile Chinese scientists, pushed by US investigations, are returning to China.
• Government support: Beijing is eagerly funding technology development, particularly in strategic industries like semiconductors and clean energy.

A new Cold War. The US approach has inadvertently accelerated China's drive for technological self-sufficiency, creating a "Sputnik moment" for Beijing. While the US aims to maintain its lead in innovation, China is steadily building a comprehensive industrial chain, aiming for "completionism" across all industrial categories. This contest is increasingly framed by China as a battle of political systems, where scientific and technological prowess determines superiority.

8. The Engineering State's Limits: Control, Culture, and Economic Distortion

The control neurosis of the engineers is the fundamental limit to China’s power.

The paradox of control. While the engineering state excels at building physical infrastructure and manufacturing capacity, its inherent "control neurosis" fundamentally limits China's broader power and appeal. Beijing's distrust and fear of its own people stifle creativity, leading to a lack of "lovable" cultural output that resonates globally.

Cultural and economic costs:

• Censorship: Suppresses alternative narratives, artistic expression, and even humor (e.g., the crushing of the comedy industry).
• Lack of soft power: China struggles to produce music, art, movies, or literature that captivates global audiences, unlike Japan or South Korea.
• Economic distortions: Regulatory crackdowns on digital platforms, property, and finance, while aiming to reorient talent to "harder" industries, have traumatized entrepreneurs and dampened animal spirits.
• Capital controls: Prevent the renminbi from becoming a global currency, limiting financial influence.

Self-inflicted wounds. The engineering state's solutions often create new problems, resembling "skilled firefighters who douse blazes they themselves ignited." This cycle of overreach and correction, driven by a top-down, centralized approach, alienates its own citizens and hinders China's potential to displace the US as a preeminent global power, despite its manufacturing might.

9. America's Path Forward: Reclaiming its Building Ethos

The United States has to do two things to overcome the lawyerly society.

Reversing stagnation. The United States, currently hampered by its "lawyerly society," needs to reclaim its historical "engineering ethos" to address pressing challenges like climate change, economic inequality, and decaying infrastructure. The author argues that the country's inability to build at scale is a critical weakness, risking commercial and military vulnerability against China.

The need to build:

• Manufacturing capacity: Reconstituting communities of engineering practice to relearn mass production and scale up innovation.
• Affordable housing: Overcoming procedural obstacles to build more homes, especially in prosperous cities, to address cost burdens and segregation.
• Modern infrastructure: Investing in and efficiently executing projects for mass transit, energy, and broadband, learning from countries that balance consultation with construction.

Lessons from the past. Figures like Robert Moses (despite his flaws) and Admiral Hyman Rickover exemplify a past American commitment to large-scale, government-led projects delivered efficiently. The author urges the American left to move beyond mid-century problems and the right to remember government's capacity for wonders, rather than dismantling it.

10. Pluralism and Individual Rights: The West's Enduring Advantage

The ultimate reason to be hopeful for the United States is that it can look to its own history to see the path forward.

The strength of diversity. The United States' most important virtue is its commitment to pluralism—the coexistence and thriving of diverse cultures under equal protection. This allows for a multitude of voices, including lawyers, engineers, economists, and humanists, to debate and shape policy, fostering intellectual antibodies against misguided "scientific" solutions that can lead to social immiseration.

China's fundamental limit. In contrast, China's engineering state, with its deep-seated distrust of its own people and lack of a liberal tradition, struggles to embrace individual agency. While it can achieve impressive material gains, its inability to tolerate dissent and its constant imposition of state designs on bodies, speech, and minds ultimately limit its potential for flourishing and global appeal.

A call for transformation. The author concludes with a hopeful vision for the US: to embrace its "transformational urge" by building more, valuing pluralism, and unwinding the dominance of proceduralism. By declaring itself a "developing country," the US can shed the complacency of "developed" status and focus on unlocking human potential, demonstrating that a democracy can effectively govern and build for its people, a path China, despite its strengths, cannot fully emulate.

Last updated: September 18, 2025