November 18, 2025 • 30 mins
Roger welcomes Dan Wang, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution History Lab and author of “Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future.” They discuss Wang’s perspective on China’s technological rise and the contrast he draws between China’s engineering approach to governance and the United States’ lawyerly system, which emphasizes rights, pluralism and individual liberty. Wang also explains how his life in Canada, the United States and China shaped his understanding of the assumptions and incentives that drive each society.
They explore China’s intense focus on large-scale industrial and technological projects, as well as the costs and vulnerabilities of this top-down model. Wang discusses the long-term social damage caused by policies such as the one child policy and zero-COVID, which reflected an engineering mindset stretched beyond physical infrastructure into attempts to reshape society itself. Additional topics include America’s challenges with permitting, infrastructure and housing, the limited areas where a modest shift toward engineering thinking could help, and how both countries might navigate the complex and uncertain future of U.S. and China relations.
The Liberty + Leadership Podcast is hosted by TFAS president Roger Ream and produced by Podville Media. If you have a comment or question for the show, please email us at podcast@TFAS.org. To support TFAS and its mission, please visit TFAS.org/support.
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SPEAKER_01 (00:01):
Welcome to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast,
a conversation with TFAS alumni,faculty, and friends who are
making an impact today.
I'm your host, Roger Reen.
My esteemed guest today is DanWong.
Dan is a research fellow atStanford University's Hoover
(00:22):
History Lab and the author ofBreakneck: China's Quest to
Engineer the Future.
He was a former fellow at theYale Law School's Paul Psy China
Center, and from 2017 to 2023,he worked in China as technology
analyst at Gavakel Dragonomics.
(00:42):
Raised in Canada andPennsylvania, Dan is one of the
most cited experts on China'stechnology capabilities and is a
highly sought-after keynotespeaker.
He recently spoke at a TFESTdinner here in Washington, D.C.
Dan's essays have appeared inthe New York Times, the
Financial Times, and TheAtlantic.
(01:02):
He's also been a guest on theEzra Klein Show and Bloomberg's
Odd Lots.
And it's a great pleasure towelcome him today to the Liberty
and Leadership Podcast.
Dan, thanks so much for joiningme.
Thank you, Roger.
I'd like to start.
I think this is a great book.
It's a page turner, the way youwrite, some great stories in
here, and great information.
(01:23):
So I highly recommend it.
Tell us a little about yourbackground because it leads into
what kind of led you to writethis particular book.
SPEAKER_00 (01:29):
My family is from southwestern China, which is a
backwater of China.
And when I was seven years old,my parents and I emigrated to
Toronto.
I mostly grew up in Ottawa andlike many Canadians moved a bit
further south into the UnitedStates.
My folks are now in the suburbsof the Philadelphia area.
(01:53):
After working for a littlewhile, after graduating from the
University of Rochester with aphilosophy degree, I spent a bit
of time working in SiliconValley.
And I thought that in 2016 thata lot of the problems that
Silicon Valley had been workingon, which were so many consumer
apps, which were so manycryptocurrencies, had looked
(02:14):
much less ambitious than theSilicon Valley of, let's say, a
few decades ago.
And I had learned about aprogram called Made in China
2025, which was a majorindustrial plan to dominate a
lot of key sectors of thefuture, which included electric
vehicles and memory chips andultra-high voltage transmission.
And I moved to Hong Kong at thestart of 2017, spent about six
(02:37):
years there thinking aboutChina, writing about
semiconductors and clean techbefore moving to the Yale Law
School to be a fellow.
And after that, wrote this book.
SPEAKER_01 (02:46):
In the book, you contrast China's focus on
technology and our country herein the US becoming a lawyerly
society, as you say.
And talk about a little bitabout that contrast between the
focus on engineers andtechnology versus lawyers.
SPEAKER_00 (03:03):
After spending six years of living in China, I
thought that we're reasoningthrough the 21st century, this
big economic, geopoliticalcompetition between the US and
China, using these 19th centurypolitical science terms like
socialist or capitalist orautocratic.
And these did not seem terriblyuseful framings to me.
And so I wanted to try to be funand creative in coming up with a
(03:25):
new framework, which is thatChina's a country I call the
engineering state, because atvarious points in recent
history, the entirety of China'smost senior leadership, the
standing committee of thePolitburo, had degrees in
engineering.
This is engineering of a verySoviet sort.
And so these people treat thephysical environment as a big
engineering project.
(03:45):
China has engaged in these vastspasms of construction, building
roads, bridges, high-speed rail,coal, solar, wind, nuclear, all
sorts of different thingsthroughout the entire country.
They're also engineers of theeconomy.
In 2021, I saw how Xi Jinpingtried to restructure the economy
so that fewer people wereworking for over-leveraged
(04:08):
housing developers to try toencourage a lot more smart
people who are graduating fromtop universities away from
working in cryptocurrencies andmore into semiconductors or
aviation, more strategictechnologies instead.
And China is also fundamentallymade up of engineers of the
soul.
So I write a lot about socialengineering projects, namely the
one child policy as well as ZeroCOVID, which I lived through.
(04:31):
I contrast the engineering statewith the United States, which I
call the lawyerly society,because it seems like everyone
who wants to be president firsthas to go to law school first.
SPEAKER_01 (04:40):
So half of Congress or more than half of Congress.
SPEAKER_00 (04:43):
About half of Congress.
Um, when there's very few peoplewho have studied any STEM
degrees in Congress.
They're all trained in law.
And Roger, you live inWashington, D.C., where we're
speaking.
You you know how it is.
Lawyers totally run the show.
And the issue with lawyers isthat they block more or less
everything.
Um, and so you don't have stupidideas like the one child policy.
You also don't have functionalinfrastructure almost anywhere
(05:04):
in the U.S.
SPEAKER_01 (05:05):
And they kill a lot of projects and building.
And you mentioned in there thatlawyers often are obstacles to
progress and growth.
SPEAKER_00 (05:13):
I find it really pretty incredible that we are
still mostly living withinfrastructure built by not even
our grandparents' generation.
A lot of the New York subway wasbuilt about a hundred years ago.
Two months ago, I took the Exceltrain from New York City to
Washington, D.C.
to speak at the AbundanceConference.
And the Excel train is more orless fine.
(05:33):
I find it very shaky.
So I always get some motionsickness in the car.
But I saw this new headlinesaying that Excel is getting an
upgrade.
We're getting a new class ofExcel trains.
Yeah.
I was quite excited until Iactually actually read the
article.
And it turns out the new Excel'sare 11 minutes slower than the
prior Excelas.
So what are we getting here?
We're getting better foam seats,but Americans are moving slower
(05:53):
and slower every year.
And that doesn't feel like thecountry that has forward
momentum behind it.
SPEAKER_01 (05:59):
Aaron Powell You mentioned in your book that some
years ago, I think all ninemembers of the top leadership in
China were engineers, hadengineering backgrounds, and
even today it's dominated byengineers, the leadership of
China.
Is that something you think weneed more of here?
Because I want to get into thisidea that you touch on of
(06:20):
whether the central planning, ina sense, they're trying to do
imposing this engineering planon the country is the way to go.
You know, you have anotherobservation I think is very true
about how these labels ofcapitalists and socialists are
kind of flawed in terms oflooking at China versus the
United States.
So I'd like to get into that alittle.
There are obviously drawbacks tobeing an engineering society,
(06:42):
which you touch on.
But overall, do you think weneed to move more in that
direction and they need to movemore in the lawyerly direction?
SPEAKER_00 (06:48):
Yes.
I think if there were slightlymore convergence, I think that
would be great for bothcountries.
Now, we're sitting here uh inthe US, and I think that the US
is a country I chose.
I moved back to the US because Iam attracted to values like
pluralism, which the lawyerlysociety is really good at
protecting.
And what I find is quitechallenging about the US is how
(07:11):
there are some really criticalshortages of pretty important
goods, especially housing.
Most blue states have not builtenough housing, especially big
cities like New York City andBoston, as well as Los Angeles
and San Francisco.
There's very poor systems ofmass transit.
We've already mentioned trains,but subway systems in San
Francisco as well as New YorkCity more or less work, but
(07:34):
they're slow and they're superloud, and there's all sorts of
distressing things about that.
The U.S.
manufacturing base has not donevery well, arguably over the
last few decades.
If we take a look at DetroitAutomakers, Boeing, Intel, all
of them have fallen on hardtimes.
And so what I would really loveis for the US to be 20% more
engineering.
It doesn't have to be full bore,just 20% more engineering so
(07:57):
that we are able to deliverhomes to people who have
struggled with housing costs, sothat they can take mass transit
to work in order to get there ontime every morning without being
assaulted by too many loudnoises on the subway.
There should be better publicorder in the streets.
And I think more betterinfrastructure would help with
something like that.
You know, having a few moreengineers, people trained in
(08:20):
engineering in the USgovernment, um, at least the
U.S.
Congress, I'm not that hopefulthat we'll have engineers in
charge of the White House, butat least a few more members of
Congress who have engineeringdegrees, that would be good.
At the same time, I would likeit if the Chinese could be 50%
more lawyerly, um, that it wouldbe really good if the Communist
(08:40):
Party could really learn torespect individual rights, if
they could stop strangling thecreative impulses of uh young
Chinese who I think are supercreative, they make amazing
memes.
I would fundamentally just loveif the Communist Party could
learn to leave people alone fora little bit so that they have
some aspirations of individualliberty.
I think that would be great.
SPEAKER_01 (09:01):
You do acknowledge in your book that we had two
engineers as president, HerbertHoover and Jimmy Carter, and
both were one-term presidentswho lost their elections.
SPEAKER_00 (09:10):
But uh in part because they probably had
terrible electoral instinctsbecause they were engineers, I'm
sure.
SPEAKER_01 (09:15):
Yeah, yeah.
You mentioned in your book, Ithink it was a Stalin quote, in
fact, that the desire toengineer the soul, which you
said was quoted, I think, by XiJinping.
You know, it brought to mind,and then later you touched on
the fact that, you know, thetheory of moral sentiments, Adam
Smith talked about the man ofthe system who tries to engineer
society and move people likepieces on a chessboard or force
(09:38):
them to stand still.
So, how do you think you strikethat balance between pluralism
and engineering and centralplanning?
You mentioned that in many bluestates they have trouble with
housing.
To what extent is that due togovernment policy?
Not necessarily intended to helpprovide housing, but you know,
the cost of housing is so muchmore expensive in cities with
(09:59):
heavy regulation, wheregovernment is, you know, through
zoning and other policies, rentcontrols, things like that are
hurting the development ofhousing.
SPEAKER_00 (10:08):
I think that it is overwhelmingly a government
procedural issue that citieslike New York, Boston, SFLA are
unable to build quite a lot ofhomes.
If we take a look at thesedevastating fires that ravaged
Los Angeles earlier this year,the Planning Council has issued
very few permits in order to letpeople build homes again.
(10:29):
And I think that is very, verypuzzling.
The state of Texas is buildingenormous amounts of solar as
well as wind power, notnecessarily because the
Republicans there are really,you know, endorsing climate
change ideas or cleantechnologies themselves
necessarily, but only becauseTexas has a much, much more
permissive permitting regimethan California, which is
(10:52):
nominally much more committed todeveloping green.
And so what I see is the problemof America is that there has
been a lot of people who havealready been very well
established, people who alreadyhave their own homes, very
intent on pulling up the ladderto prevent other people from
moving to where they are.
I spend a lot of time in theCalifornia Bay Area.
This is absolutely one of themost pristine and beautiful uh
(11:16):
regions of the country, and Iwould argue the world.
There have been a lot of peoplewho have moved to these places
in, let's say, Marin County,which is just north of San
Francisco, across the GoldenGate Bridge, who decided they
would like for no one else tomove to where they are.
Thank you.
And California really exhibits alot of these anti-growth
mindsets where places like SantaBarbara and little counties in
(11:38):
Marin that have the homeownersthat have their own place and
then are preventing more masstransit or sewage and water
development from moving there.
This is one aspect of theAmerican spirit that has been
deformed by uh partially by thelawyers.
My view is that America is acountry that works really,
really well for the wealthy.
If you have a lot of money, thisworks very well for you.
(12:00):
In America, it is relativelystraightforward to transmute a
lot of your wealth into somedegree of political influence,
especially now that we're seeingwith the second Trump
administration.
In China, they do not respectthe wealthy.
Sometimes they cut them down.
In Europe, you can't even getwealthy.
But America, you know, it'sreally good for the wealthy.
You don't really have to worryabout these high housing costs
if you're living in New York.
You get to live in one of theseskinny skyscrapers that overlook
(12:23):
Central Park.
And I think that America cannotstay a great power for the
longer term if it works onlyvery well for the wealthy.
SPEAKER_01 (12:31):
In your book, you have a lot of interesting
insights about China.
You mentioned in there about oneof the worst years to have been
born in China was 1949.
That was kind of fascinating.
And then 10 years later, youpresented it being a pretty good
year to be born.
You want to talk some aboutthat?
SPEAKER_00 (12:47):
Yeah.
So I think the worst year in tobe born in China is 1949,
because if you were born thatyear, about the time that you're
10 years old, you would livethrough a man-made famine made
by Chairman Mao Zedong calledthe Great Leap Forward, in which
tens of millions of uh peoplestarved because of these quack
(13:09):
agronomy techniques that MaoZedong was promoting.
And so, first it would be goodfor you to survive this big
famine.
And then at about the time youwould enter university, Mao
Zedong closed almost all theuniversities in order to agitate
for the cultural revolution.
And so, if you were a smart highschool student, maybe you'd be
working in the fields becausethat was what the Communist
(13:31):
Party ordered you to do.
And if you were having a childat around age 30, you would run
headlong into the one childpolicy, which I describe in the
book as a campaign of ruralterror, mostly meted out against
female bodies.
And near the end of your life,when you're into your 70s and
80s, maybe you would livethrough zero COVID, which
ravaged the elderly in prettybig ways after trying to held on
(13:55):
controls far too long and thendrop them essentially all
overnight.
And so, you know, I think thatis a really negative period to
be born, but only 10 yearslater, if you're born in 1959,
you would skip the famine.
You would be able to re-enterthe universities, right as Mao
passed away, and uh DengXiaoping reopened these
universities.
You might be allocated units ofhousing by the state, or maybe
(14:18):
you start a manufacturingbusiness.
And really, these two sourcesare the great sources of wealth
creation for a lot of Chineseover the last 40 years.
Either you have some propertywhich appreciated substantially
in value, or you started somesort of great business right as
China was integrating into theworld after it formally acceded
to the WTO in 2001.
(14:38):
And you would still live throughzero COVID, but this was a
golden moment to produce a lotof wealth.
And so, what does that say abouta state that is so easily
chirped between the worst yearto be born into the best year to
be born in only 10 years?
This is what I mean by anengineering state that engineers
shift very quickly andunpredictably.
(15:01):
They hold on too long to somebad ideas, and then they shift a
little bit too quickly.
SPEAKER_01 (15:05):
There was a book that came out, it was called The
Coming Collapse of China.
You're probably familiar withit.
Gordon Chang is the one.
That's right.
He seemed to be off in hisprediction.
He thought membership in the WTOwould, I think, bring down many
of these large industries inChina, and we'd see the collapse
of China.
On the other hand, there are alot of Americans who have great
fears about China as a threat toour country, something we should
(15:29):
be very alarmed about, itsdominance in Asia.
Where do you think the truthlies?
I mean, is China rising to be adominant force in the world in a
way that we should fear itssuccess and we need to counter
it?
Can you touch a little bit onthat subject?
Maybe we can talk a little bitabout that.
SPEAKER_00 (15:46):
I think there is no right answer.
I think that it is very validfor specialists as well as all
sorts of people to debate whatexactly is the right threat of
China.
And I think there should be nosingle answer here.
There should be some degree ofpluralism and debate about all
of these sort of things.
Now, I think that one can have aviewpoint that the United States
(16:07):
has more or less vanquishedother threats to its power in
the past, especially the SovietUnion, which collapsed pretty
spectacularly by the end of the1980s.
And probably the Americans wereover-threatened.
They didn't need not need totreat the Japan economic threat
as a very big deal at all.
I think that there was someoverreaction about that.
SPEAKER_01 (16:28):
That was in the 1980s.
SPEAKER_00 (16:29):
That was in the 1980s as well.
And so what my view is that wecan have some due
acknowledgement that China isdoing very well in all sorts of
ways, in all sorts of economicways that could threaten
American interests.
Now, I don't think that it ismostly due to China that Detroit
has been struggling for decades.
And probably economiccompetition with Japan
(16:51):
stimulated production ofAmerican automotives because
they had greater competitionthat they actually had to worry
about.
But I think if we take a look atmany sectors of American
strengths, namely a lot ofmanufacturing with respect to
clean technologies, with respectto semiconductors, aviation, and
so on, China really is doingbetter on a lot of these
different technologies.
And I think that represents somesort of economic challenge to
(17:13):
the US.
There is an obvious flashpointwith the island nation of
Taiwan, as well as the broaderSouth China Sea, in which China
could be saying something like,Well, you know, we heard about
this Monroe doctrine thatAmericans invented, in which you
need to dominate your nearneighbors and, you know, have
your backyard.
Well, we would like some of thatourselves and dominate, you
(17:34):
know, essentially near neighborsof China, some of which are
clear US allies, like thePhilippines or Japan, the US has
been at least somewhat committedto the self-sovereignty of
Taiwan.
And then there's also perhaps avalues question of if China
somehow dominates the world,whatever that means.
I don't expect that it will.
But even if it dominates itsnear neighbors, that the rest of
(17:56):
the world doesn't love it ifHong Kong might be treated as it
is, or Uyghurs and Xinjiang aretreated as they are.
So I think that these are allquite legitimate topics that we
can all debate.
Now, I don't think that Chinawill ever try to seize the state
of Oregon.
What would they do with it?
I don't think that the Americansreally want to seize the
province of Shandong off thecoast.
(18:18):
What would they do with it?
Right.
You know, we don't have to bevery fanciful about what the
China threat is, but I thinkthere is room for a very robust
debate of can China dominate itsnear neighbors and should it,
and what should US policy do?
SPEAKER_01 (18:30):
I will say you know better than to offer a highly
confident view of what Chinawill be like in the future or
what it will do.
I thought that was aninteresting way to start off in
your book, and that there's somepeople who have the all this
great confidence of being ableto predict what China will do.
And to do so, as you note,requires getting in the heads of
(18:51):
these leaders, and that's notsomething that's really
possible.
So would you say that it's quitepossible when there is a
leadership change in China,there could be a dramatic change
in the policies of China?
SPEAKER_00 (19:03):
One can always expect that policies can shift.
I mean, certainly we canacknowledge that it's been
totally impossible to get Chinaright in all sorts of big
debates.
The communist victory over thenationalists in 1949 was a darn
close-run thing.
The nationalists could well havetriumphed over that year.
I think people didn't expect Maoto turn out as he did.
(19:26):
People didn't expect thecultural revolution.
Even after Mao's death, therewas no certain sense that Deng
Xiaoping's economic reformswould make China as rich of a
country as it is today.
And so we keep getting Chinawrong.
And I would be the first to putup my hand to say I've gotten
China wrong three times a daybefore breakfast, every day, and
that I uh have no idea what'sgoing on in China.
(19:46):
I'm always the first to put upmy hand to say something like
that.
And so I feel like I have enoughforbearance not to make
overconfident predictions aboutthe future.
But, you know, could we hope forsome sort of big shift in
policy?
Yes, we can always hope.
Now, it is the case that afterChiang Kai-shek died in Taiwan,
his son, uh Chang Ching Kuo,became a liberalizer who turned
(20:10):
Taiwan into the democracy it istoday.
We can also take a look at theSouth Korean example.
After Park Chong-hee wasmurdered by his own security
guards, the person who tookoffice after him, Chondu Wan,
was a much more repressivefigure than the former army
general.
And after he fired on students,he was deposed.
And only after that did SouthKorea liberalize.
(20:32):
So what way will the Politburoresolve if Xi Jinping were gone
suddenly, which is always apossibility, I have no idea.
But my bet is probably that theywill keep course on some sort of
recognizable way rather thanshift direction really
radically.
I think that he is his ownperson, but he is also a person
of the system.
(20:52):
And so I think that, you know,if he weren't in power, the next
guy may well have been someonequite like him because they have
a political and bureaucraticlogic that is essentially
Leninist about the CommunistParty.
And so it is not crazy to methat things could have been
quite like this.
SPEAKER_01 (21:09):
Aaron Powell You're right in your book that the
greatest trick the CCP has everpulled off is masquerading as
leftist.
Could you explain that?
I thought that was fascinating.
SPEAKER_00 (21:19):
Yeah.
So this is a country ruled by acommunist party that engages in
all sorts of communistpageantry, like every so often
celebrating the birthday of KarlMarx.
It is really strange to see thisgiant portrait of Karl Marx,
this German dude with a bigGerman beard in the Great Hall
of the People, and then you haveeverybody in the central
(21:41):
committee celebrating this guy.
Now they're trying to kick outthe imperialist foreign ideas,
and then they celebrate thisGerman dude.
And I find that very uhdelightful and strange.
But if I take a look at theactual lived experience of being
in China, this is a country thatoffers a pretty threadbare
social safety net.
Xi Jinping said several yearsago, we should not give people
(22:01):
too much welfare, otherwise, itwill make them lazy.
And I think that Ronald Reaganwould never have gotten away
with saying something as bald asthat.
China does not redistribute muchincome.
There's effectively no propertytaxes, which means that the
wealthy have their source ofwealth mostly untouched by
taxation.
Most of the taxation isregressive in nature because
(22:22):
consumption taxes are fundingmost of China's social
expenditures.
This is a country that almostentirely keeps out immigrants,
that is holding on tomanufacturing, that is enforcing
very traditional gender norms.
In my mind, this feels more like1950s Eisenhower America than it
does, you know, 21st centuryBiden America.
SPEAKER_01 (22:43):
In addition to your book, what are some books you
might recommend for people that,not experts who want to become
experts on China, but just tounderstand China?
Are there some books you'drecommend?
SPEAKER_00 (22:55):
The first book on China for me is by uh British
writer Fuchsia Dunlop calledInvitation to a Banquet that is
talking about the greatestChinese creation, namely its
cuisine.
And so this uh runs through alot of Chinese cuisine,
organized by technique.
Fuchsia is a gorgeous writer,and I think that her book is
(23:16):
really, really excellent.
I think a lot about a BelgianSinologist by the name of Simone
Lays, who wrote a book calledThe Hall of Uselessness, in
which it's a series of essaysabout how he understood China.
This is someone who was moreactive in the 1960s and the
1970s.
I think he really captures thespirit of something essential
about the Chinese spirit.
And maybe in more contemporarytimes, I was a big fan of the
(23:40):
New Yorker writer PeterHessler's book, Other Rivers, in
which he was also in Chinaduring zero COVID.
He was teaching at uh universityin Sichuan province.
And Hessler is an excellentstoryteller.
And I think that is a you knowreally nice way to understand
again something about howChinese live their lives based
on his vantage point from a notvery elite part of China.
SPEAKER_01 (24:03):
I uh am partial also to the book Wild Swans.
I don't know if you think highlyof that orview.
And there was a woman who wrotea book many years ago.
She's no longer living, YanChang, who wrote Life and Death
in Shanghai.
Yes.
We had the opportunity to haveher speak to our students, and
she would tell quite a taleabout the cultural revolution.
I also wanted to ask, bring usup to date.
(24:25):
I mean, I know there's newstoday, but how do you see our uh
trade disputes?
I mean, those are hard topredict too, because of our
president.
It's very hard to predict whenit comes to tariffs, but he and
was in Asia and talking abouttrade, and evidently they
reached some sort of deal.
But do you see that improvedtrade relations might help the
relationship develop in a morepositive direction?
SPEAKER_00 (24:48):
I think that improved trade relations would
stabilize the relationship, butI'm not sure how likely it is
that we will have improved traderelations.
I'm not sure that such a tradetruce is likely to be enduring.
And I say that because I livedin Beijing throughout the first
trade war, in which both sidesended up negotiating for a very
long time.
(25:08):
And either side might walk away.
One time he walked away from adeal, another time Trump walked
away.
After they walk away, there'sall sorts of escalations.
This whole thing concluded atthe very beginning of 2020 with
this optimistically named phaseone trade deal, which was
supposed to stabilize the traderelationship.
But what happened at thebeginning of 2020, the most
(25:30):
noteworthy news was not thetrade deal, but this novel
coronavirus that was circulatingin the city of Wuhan.
And right after that, US andChina fell into much bitter
recriminations after this phaseone.
And so, you know, where is phasetwo?
Where is phase three?
I think they're not going tocall it that anymore.
And so my view is that the USand China have a lot of these
fundamental challenges in whichthey don't see eye to eye on a
(25:53):
lot of matters, whether that issecurity or geopolitics or
technology or economics.
It is not going to be, you know,one handshake in Asia that is
going to fix everything up.
I think it is really positivethat they are speaking.
Speaking is much better than notspeaking, especially when you
deal with a mercurial USpresident and a Chinese top
(26:14):
leader that is unsure of how tohandle this relationship.
I think it is really difficultto see how they could be fast
friends anytime soon.
SPEAKER_01 (26:22):
You have a chapter in here about zero COVID, a
chapter about the one childpolicy that China pursued for
many years.
Do you think there were lessonsfrom that that were learned by
the leadership of China thatmight prevent them from pursuing
such draconian policies in thefuture?
I doubt it.
If I remember correctly, yousaid that so many abortions that
(26:45):
it equaled the size of the U.S.
population today?
SPEAKER_00 (26:47):
That's the official statistics that is published by
the Chinese National HealthYearbook.
So over the 35 years of theone-child policy, which turned
into a two-child policy, Chinaconducted about 320 million
abortions, which is the presentpopulation of the U.S.
Now, in a normal year, therewould be certain numbers of
abortions, but they alsosterilized about 100 million
(27:08):
women and sterilized about 25million men.
And these are pretty astonishingfigures that they engineered
their way into partly into ademographic crisis.
At least in demography, theyhave not learned their own
lesson.
I read at the end of my bookthat a lot of these neighborhood
committees that used to be incharge of enforcing birth
planning have turned 180 degreesright around to encouraging
(27:31):
births.
So they are going up to women tosay, when was your last period?
You know, how's her menstrualcycle?
I quoted a one woman who said toa journalist that after she
married, her parents asked heronly once whether she plans to
have children.
Whereas the governmentneighborhood officials have
already asked her six times.
And so they are trying toengineer the population into um
having kids.
(27:52):
And I think it is very difficultto imagine how they can coerce
copulation.
I don't think that could work.
SPEAKER_01 (27:57):
Which a lot of countries in the West are trying
to do as well.
SPEAKER_00 (28:00):
And they're struggling.
And even if you're able to spenda lot of money, um, namely the
Hungary case does not seem tohave worked very, very well.
But I think the Chinese aregoing to double down on
engineering.
They're always going to be, youknow, thinking more about how to
engineer their own population.
And I'm doubtful that thesemethods would really succeed.
SPEAKER_01 (28:21):
Now you write an annual letter on China.
Who's the audience for that?
It's somewhat renowned, I guess.
How do people get a hold of it?
SPEAKER_00 (28:29):
My audience when I first started uh was my mother.
And so I just wanted uh myparents and my friends to know
uh what I was up to in China.
It took a little bit more of alife of its own, especially as I
was uh living in China in zeroCOVID after China kicked out
most of the US correspondenceout of China from the Washington
Post and the New York Times andthe Wall Street Journal.
(28:51):
I was one of the people who wereable to observe China from the
inside, especially during thezero COVID crazy years.
It is published on my website,so anyone is able to read it.
And I'll give you a sneakpreview, Roger, of what I'll be
writing about this year, whichis that now that I'm a fellow at
the Hoover Institution, I spenda lot of my time in Silicon
Valley, which is a deeply,deeply strange place, almost as
(29:13):
strange as China, but also aplace that I take very, very
seriously because I thinkSilicon Valley and China are
both pretty self-serious places,deeply humorless.
And they are thinking about sortof the end of the world.
If you're the communist party,you're always wondering, is this
the day that everything isbrought down?
And in California, people alsotalk about the end of the world,
(29:36):
mostly created by artificialintelligence.
And, you know, there's a lot ofstriking similarities between
these two places.
And so I think that I am uh myannual letter this year will be
uh exploring the differencebetween California as well as
China, the similarities as wellas the differences.
SPEAKER_01 (29:50):
Well, this has been a fascinating conversation.
I thank you for joining metoday.
His book, Dan Wong, W A N G isBreakneck, published by Norton
just out a month or so ago.
I highly recommend it.
Please consider buying it andreading it, and you'll be so
much better informed.
It has an endorsement on thecover by Tyler Cowan, who's at
(30:11):
our academic partner, GeorgeMason University.
If you want to understand China,I suggest you read this book,
Breakneck.
Thank you, Dan, for being withme today on the Liberty and
Leadership Podcast.
My pleasure, Roger.
This is a lot of fun.
Thank you for listening to theLiberty and Leadership Podcast.
If you have a comment orquestion, please drop us an
email at podcast at tfas.org.
(30:33):
And be sure to subscribe to theshow on your favorite podcast
app and leave a five starreview.
Liberty and Leadership isproduced at Podville Media.
I'm your host, Roger Reem, anduntil next time, show courage in
things large and small.
Welcome to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast,
a conversation with TFAS alumni,faculty, and friends who are
making an impact today.
I'm your host, Roger Reen.
My esteemed guest today is DanWong.
Dan is a research fellow atStanford University's Hoover
(00:22):
History Lab and the author ofBreakneck: China's Quest to
Engineer the Future.
He was a former fellow at theYale Law School's Paul Psy China
Center, and from 2017 to 2023,he worked in China as technology
analyst at Gavakel Dragonomics.
(00:42):
Raised in Canada andPennsylvania, Dan is one of the
most cited experts on China'stechnology capabilities and is a
highly sought-after keynotespeaker.
He recently spoke at a TFESTdinner here in Washington, D.C.
Dan's essays have appeared inthe New York Times, the
Financial Times, and TheAtlantic.
(01:02):
He's also been a guest on theEzra Klein Show and Bloomberg's
Odd Lots.
And it's a great pleasure towelcome him today to the Liberty
and Leadership Podcast.
Dan, thanks so much for joiningme.
Thank you, Roger.
I'd like to start.
I think this is a great book.
It's a page turner, the way youwrite, some great stories in
here, and great information.
(01:23):
So I highly recommend it.
Tell us a little about yourbackground because it leads into
what kind of led you to writethis particular book.
SPEAKER_00 (01:29):
My family is from southwestern China, which is a
backwater of China.
And when I was seven years old,my parents and I emigrated to
Toronto.
I mostly grew up in Ottawa andlike many Canadians moved a bit
further south into the UnitedStates.
My folks are now in the suburbsof the Philadelphia area.
(01:53):
After working for a littlewhile, after graduating from the
University of Rochester with aphilosophy degree, I spent a bit
of time working in SiliconValley.
And I thought that in 2016 thata lot of the problems that
Silicon Valley had been workingon, which were so many consumer
apps, which were so manycryptocurrencies, had looked
(02:14):
much less ambitious than theSilicon Valley of, let's say, a
few decades ago.
And I had learned about aprogram called Made in China
2025, which was a majorindustrial plan to dominate a
lot of key sectors of thefuture, which included electric
vehicles and memory chips andultra-high voltage transmission.
And I moved to Hong Kong at thestart of 2017, spent about six
(02:37):
years there thinking aboutChina, writing about
semiconductors and clean techbefore moving to the Yale Law
School to be a fellow.
And after that, wrote this book.
SPEAKER_01 (02:46):
In the book, you contrast China's focus on
technology and our country herein the US becoming a lawyerly
society, as you say.
And talk about a little bitabout that contrast between the
focus on engineers andtechnology versus lawyers.
SPEAKER_00 (03:03):
After spending six years of living in China, I
thought that we're reasoningthrough the 21st century, this
big economic, geopoliticalcompetition between the US and
China, using these 19th centurypolitical science terms like
socialist or capitalist orautocratic.
And these did not seem terriblyuseful framings to me.
And so I wanted to try to be funand creative in coming up with a
(03:25):
new framework, which is thatChina's a country I call the
engineering state, because atvarious points in recent
history, the entirety of China'smost senior leadership, the
standing committee of thePolitburo, had degrees in
engineering.
This is engineering of a verySoviet sort.
And so these people treat thephysical environment as a big
engineering project.
(03:45):
China has engaged in these vastspasms of construction, building
roads, bridges, high-speed rail,coal, solar, wind, nuclear, all
sorts of different thingsthroughout the entire country.
They're also engineers of theeconomy.
In 2021, I saw how Xi Jinpingtried to restructure the economy
so that fewer people wereworking for over-leveraged
(04:08):
housing developers to try toencourage a lot more smart
people who are graduating fromtop universities away from
working in cryptocurrencies andmore into semiconductors or
aviation, more strategictechnologies instead.
And China is also fundamentallymade up of engineers of the
soul.
So I write a lot about socialengineering projects, namely the
one child policy as well as ZeroCOVID, which I lived through.
(04:31):
I contrast the engineering statewith the United States, which I
call the lawyerly society,because it seems like everyone
who wants to be president firsthas to go to law school first.
SPEAKER_01 (04:40):
So half of Congress or more than half of Congress.
SPEAKER_00 (04:43):
About half of Congress.
Um, when there's very few peoplewho have studied any STEM
degrees in Congress.
They're all trained in law.
And Roger, you live inWashington, D.C., where we're
speaking.
You you know how it is.
Lawyers totally run the show.
And the issue with lawyers isthat they block more or less
everything.
Um, and so you don't have stupidideas like the one child policy.
You also don't have functionalinfrastructure almost anywhere
(05:04):
in the U.S.
SPEAKER_01 (05:05):
And they kill a lot of projects and building.
And you mentioned in there thatlawyers often are obstacles to
progress and growth.
SPEAKER_00 (05:13):
I find it really pretty incredible that we are
still mostly living withinfrastructure built by not even
our grandparents' generation.
A lot of the New York subway wasbuilt about a hundred years ago.
Two months ago, I took the Exceltrain from New York City to
Washington, D.C.
to speak at the AbundanceConference.
And the Excel train is more orless fine.
(05:33):
I find it very shaky.
So I always get some motionsickness in the car.
But I saw this new headlinesaying that Excel is getting an
upgrade.
We're getting a new class ofExcel trains.
Yeah.
I was quite excited until Iactually actually read the
article.
And it turns out the new Excel'sare 11 minutes slower than the
prior Excelas.
So what are we getting here?
We're getting better foam seats,but Americans are moving slower
(05:53):
and slower every year.
And that doesn't feel like thecountry that has forward
momentum behind it.
SPEAKER_01 (05:59):
Aaron Powell You mentioned in your book that some
years ago, I think all ninemembers of the top leadership in
China were engineers, hadengineering backgrounds, and
even today it's dominated byengineers, the leadership of
China.
Is that something you think weneed more of here?
Because I want to get into thisidea that you touch on of
(06:20):
whether the central planning, ina sense, they're trying to do
imposing this engineering planon the country is the way to go.
You know, you have anotherobservation I think is very true
about how these labels ofcapitalists and socialists are
kind of flawed in terms oflooking at China versus the
United States.
So I'd like to get into that alittle.
There are obviously drawbacks tobeing an engineering society,
(06:42):
which you touch on.
But overall, do you think weneed to move more in that
direction and they need to movemore in the lawyerly direction?
SPEAKER_00 (06:48):
Yes.
I think if there were slightlymore convergence, I think that
would be great for bothcountries.
Now, we're sitting here uh inthe US, and I think that the US
is a country I chose.
I moved back to the US because Iam attracted to values like
pluralism, which the lawyerlysociety is really good at
protecting.
And what I find is quitechallenging about the US is how
(07:11):
there are some really criticalshortages of pretty important
goods, especially housing.
Most blue states have not builtenough housing, especially big
cities like New York City andBoston, as well as Los Angeles
and San Francisco.
There's very poor systems ofmass transit.
We've already mentioned trains,but subway systems in San
Francisco as well as New YorkCity more or less work, but
(07:34):
they're slow and they're superloud, and there's all sorts of
distressing things about that.
The U.S.
manufacturing base has not donevery well, arguably over the
last few decades.
If we take a look at DetroitAutomakers, Boeing, Intel, all
of them have fallen on hardtimes.
And so what I would really loveis for the US to be 20% more
engineering.
It doesn't have to be full bore,just 20% more engineering so
(07:57):
that we are able to deliverhomes to people who have
struggled with housing costs, sothat they can take mass transit
to work in order to get there ontime every morning without being
assaulted by too many loudnoises on the subway.
There should be better publicorder in the streets.
And I think more betterinfrastructure would help with
something like that.
You know, having a few moreengineers, people trained in
(08:20):
engineering in the USgovernment, um, at least the
U.S.
Congress, I'm not that hopefulthat we'll have engineers in
charge of the White House, butat least a few more members of
Congress who have engineeringdegrees, that would be good.
At the same time, I would likeit if the Chinese could be 50%
more lawyerly, um, that it wouldbe really good if the Communist
(08:40):
Party could really learn torespect individual rights, if
they could stop strangling thecreative impulses of uh young
Chinese who I think are supercreative, they make amazing
memes.
I would fundamentally just loveif the Communist Party could
learn to leave people alone fora little bit so that they have
some aspirations of individualliberty.
I think that would be great.
SPEAKER_01 (09:01):
You do acknowledge in your book that we had two
engineers as president, HerbertHoover and Jimmy Carter, and
both were one-term presidentswho lost their elections.
SPEAKER_00 (09:10):
But uh in part because they probably had
terrible electoral instinctsbecause they were engineers, I'm
sure.
SPEAKER_01 (09:15):
Yeah, yeah.
You mentioned in your book, Ithink it was a Stalin quote, in
fact, that the desire toengineer the soul, which you
said was quoted, I think, by XiJinping.
You know, it brought to mind,and then later you touched on
the fact that, you know, thetheory of moral sentiments, Adam
Smith talked about the man ofthe system who tries to engineer
society and move people likepieces on a chessboard or force
(09:38):
them to stand still.
So, how do you think you strikethat balance between pluralism
and engineering and centralplanning?
You mentioned that in many bluestates they have trouble with
housing.
To what extent is that due togovernment policy?
Not necessarily intended to helpprovide housing, but you know,
the cost of housing is so muchmore expensive in cities with
(09:59):
heavy regulation, wheregovernment is, you know, through
zoning and other policies, rentcontrols, things like that are
hurting the development ofhousing.
SPEAKER_00 (10:08):
I think that it is overwhelmingly a government
procedural issue that citieslike New York, Boston, SFLA are
unable to build quite a lot ofhomes.
If we take a look at thesedevastating fires that ravaged
Los Angeles earlier this year,the Planning Council has issued
very few permits in order to letpeople build homes again.
(10:29):
And I think that is very, verypuzzling.
The state of Texas is buildingenormous amounts of solar as
well as wind power, notnecessarily because the
Republicans there are really,you know, endorsing climate
change ideas or cleantechnologies themselves
necessarily, but only becauseTexas has a much, much more
permissive permitting regimethan California, which is
(10:52):
nominally much more committed todeveloping green.
And so what I see is the problemof America is that there has
been a lot of people who havealready been very well
established, people who alreadyhave their own homes, very
intent on pulling up the ladderto prevent other people from
moving to where they are.
I spend a lot of time in theCalifornia Bay Area.
This is absolutely one of themost pristine and beautiful uh
(11:16):
regions of the country, and Iwould argue the world.
There have been a lot of peoplewho have moved to these places
in, let's say, Marin County,which is just north of San
Francisco, across the GoldenGate Bridge, who decided they
would like for no one else tomove to where they are.
Thank you.
And California really exhibits alot of these anti-growth
mindsets where places like SantaBarbara and little counties in
(11:38):
Marin that have the homeownersthat have their own place and
then are preventing more masstransit or sewage and water
development from moving there.
This is one aspect of theAmerican spirit that has been
deformed by uh partially by thelawyers.
My view is that America is acountry that works really,
really well for the wealthy.
If you have a lot of money, thisworks very well for you.
(12:00):
In America, it is relativelystraightforward to transmute a
lot of your wealth into somedegree of political influence,
especially now that we're seeingwith the second Trump
administration.
In China, they do not respectthe wealthy.
Sometimes they cut them down.
In Europe, you can't even getwealthy.
But America, you know, it'sreally good for the wealthy.
You don't really have to worryabout these high housing costs
if you're living in New York.
You get to live in one of theseskinny skyscrapers that overlook
(12:23):
Central Park.
And I think that America cannotstay a great power for the
longer term if it works onlyvery well for the wealthy.
SPEAKER_01 (12:31):
In your book, you have a lot of interesting
insights about China.
You mentioned in there about oneof the worst years to have been
born in China was 1949.
That was kind of fascinating.
And then 10 years later, youpresented it being a pretty good
year to be born.
You want to talk some aboutthat?
SPEAKER_00 (12:47):
Yeah.
So I think the worst year in tobe born in China is 1949,
because if you were born thatyear, about the time that you're
10 years old, you would livethrough a man-made famine made
by Chairman Mao Zedong calledthe Great Leap Forward, in which
tens of millions of uh peoplestarved because of these quack
(13:09):
agronomy techniques that MaoZedong was promoting.
And so, first it would be goodfor you to survive this big
famine.
And then at about the time youwould enter university, Mao
Zedong closed almost all theuniversities in order to agitate
for the cultural revolution.
And so, if you were a smart highschool student, maybe you'd be
working in the fields becausethat was what the Communist
(13:31):
Party ordered you to do.
And if you were having a childat around age 30, you would run
headlong into the one childpolicy, which I describe in the
book as a campaign of ruralterror, mostly meted out against
female bodies.
And near the end of your life,when you're into your 70s and
80s, maybe you would livethrough zero COVID, which
ravaged the elderly in prettybig ways after trying to held on
(13:55):
controls far too long and thendrop them essentially all
overnight.
And so, you know, I think thatis a really negative period to
be born, but only 10 yearslater, if you're born in 1959,
you would skip the famine.
You would be able to re-enterthe universities, right as Mao
passed away, and uh DengXiaoping reopened these
universities.
You might be allocated units ofhousing by the state, or maybe
(14:18):
you start a manufacturingbusiness.
And really, these two sourcesare the great sources of wealth
creation for a lot of Chineseover the last 40 years.
Either you have some propertywhich appreciated substantially
in value, or you started somesort of great business right as
China was integrating into theworld after it formally acceded
to the WTO in 2001.
(14:38):
And you would still live throughzero COVID, but this was a
golden moment to produce a lotof wealth.
And so, what does that say abouta state that is so easily
chirped between the worst yearto be born into the best year to
be born in only 10 years?
This is what I mean by anengineering state that engineers
shift very quickly andunpredictably.
(15:01):
They hold on too long to somebad ideas, and then they shift a
little bit too quickly.
SPEAKER_01 (15:05):
There was a book that came out, it was called The
Coming Collapse of China.
You're probably familiar withit.
Gordon Chang is the one.
That's right.
He seemed to be off in hisprediction.
He thought membership in the WTOwould, I think, bring down many
of these large industries inChina, and we'd see the collapse
of China.
On the other hand, there are alot of Americans who have great
fears about China as a threat toour country, something we should
(15:29):
be very alarmed about, itsdominance in Asia.
Where do you think the truthlies?
I mean, is China rising to be adominant force in the world in a
way that we should fear itssuccess and we need to counter
it?
Can you touch a little bit onthat subject?
Maybe we can talk a little bitabout that.
SPEAKER_00 (15:46):
I think there is no right answer.
I think that it is very validfor specialists as well as all
sorts of people to debate whatexactly is the right threat of
China.
And I think there should be nosingle answer here.
There should be some degree ofpluralism and debate about all
of these sort of things.
Now, I think that one can have aviewpoint that the United States
(16:07):
has more or less vanquishedother threats to its power in
the past, especially the SovietUnion, which collapsed pretty
spectacularly by the end of the1980s.
And probably the Americans wereover-threatened.
They didn't need not need totreat the Japan economic threat
as a very big deal at all.
I think that there was someoverreaction about that.
SPEAKER_01 (16:28):
That was in the 1980s.
SPEAKER_00 (16:29):
That was in the 1980s as well.
And so what my view is that wecan have some due
acknowledgement that China isdoing very well in all sorts of
ways, in all sorts of economicways that could threaten
American interests.
Now, I don't think that it ismostly due to China that Detroit
has been struggling for decades.
And probably economiccompetition with Japan
(16:51):
stimulated production ofAmerican automotives because
they had greater competitionthat they actually had to worry
about.
But I think if we take a look atmany sectors of American
strengths, namely a lot ofmanufacturing with respect to
clean technologies, with respectto semiconductors, aviation, and
so on, China really is doingbetter on a lot of these
different technologies.
And I think that represents somesort of economic challenge to
(17:13):
the US.
There is an obvious flashpointwith the island nation of
Taiwan, as well as the broaderSouth China Sea, in which China
could be saying something like,Well, you know, we heard about
this Monroe doctrine thatAmericans invented, in which you
need to dominate your nearneighbors and, you know, have
your backyard.
Well, we would like some of thatourselves and dominate, you
(17:34):
know, essentially near neighborsof China, some of which are
clear US allies, like thePhilippines or Japan, the US has
been at least somewhat committedto the self-sovereignty of
Taiwan.
And then there's also perhaps avalues question of if China
somehow dominates the world,whatever that means.
I don't expect that it will.
But even if it dominates itsnear neighbors, that the rest of
(17:56):
the world doesn't love it ifHong Kong might be treated as it
is, or Uyghurs and Xinjiang aretreated as they are.
So I think that these are allquite legitimate topics that we
can all debate.
Now, I don't think that Chinawill ever try to seize the state
of Oregon.
What would they do with it?
I don't think that the Americansreally want to seize the
province of Shandong off thecoast.
(18:18):
What would they do with it?
Right.
You know, we don't have to bevery fanciful about what the
China threat is, but I thinkthere is room for a very robust
debate of can China dominate itsnear neighbors and should it,
and what should US policy do?
SPEAKER_01 (18:30):
I will say you know better than to offer a highly
confident view of what Chinawill be like in the future or
what it will do.
I thought that was aninteresting way to start off in
your book, and that there's somepeople who have the all this
great confidence of being ableto predict what China will do.
And to do so, as you note,requires getting in the heads of
(18:51):
these leaders, and that's notsomething that's really
possible.
So would you say that it's quitepossible when there is a
leadership change in China,there could be a dramatic change
in the policies of China?
SPEAKER_00 (19:03):
One can always expect that policies can shift.
I mean, certainly we canacknowledge that it's been
totally impossible to get Chinaright in all sorts of big
debates.
The communist victory over thenationalists in 1949 was a darn
close-run thing.
The nationalists could well havetriumphed over that year.
I think people didn't expect Maoto turn out as he did.
(19:26):
People didn't expect thecultural revolution.
Even after Mao's death, therewas no certain sense that Deng
Xiaoping's economic reformswould make China as rich of a
country as it is today.
And so we keep getting Chinawrong.
And I would be the first to putup my hand to say I've gotten
China wrong three times a daybefore breakfast, every day, and
that I uh have no idea what'sgoing on in China.
(19:46):
I'm always the first to put upmy hand to say something like
that.
And so I feel like I have enoughforbearance not to make
overconfident predictions aboutthe future.
But, you know, could we hope forsome sort of big shift in
policy?
Yes, we can always hope.
Now, it is the case that afterChiang Kai-shek died in Taiwan,
his son, uh Chang Ching Kuo,became a liberalizer who turned
(20:10):
Taiwan into the democracy it istoday.
We can also take a look at theSouth Korean example.
After Park Chong-hee wasmurdered by his own security
guards, the person who tookoffice after him, Chondu Wan,
was a much more repressivefigure than the former army
general.
And after he fired on students,he was deposed.
And only after that did SouthKorea liberalize.
(20:32):
So what way will the Politburoresolve if Xi Jinping were gone
suddenly, which is always apossibility, I have no idea.
But my bet is probably that theywill keep course on some sort of
recognizable way rather thanshift direction really
radically.
I think that he is his ownperson, but he is also a person
of the system.
(20:52):
And so I think that, you know,if he weren't in power, the next
guy may well have been someonequite like him because they have
a political and bureaucraticlogic that is essentially
Leninist about the CommunistParty.
And so it is not crazy to methat things could have been
quite like this.
SPEAKER_01 (21:09):
Aaron Powell You're right in your book that the
greatest trick the CCP has everpulled off is masquerading as
leftist.
Could you explain that?
I thought that was fascinating.
SPEAKER_00 (21:19):
Yeah.
So this is a country ruled by acommunist party that engages in
all sorts of communistpageantry, like every so often
celebrating the birthday of KarlMarx.
It is really strange to see thisgiant portrait of Karl Marx,
this German dude with a bigGerman beard in the Great Hall
of the People, and then you haveeverybody in the central
(21:41):
committee celebrating this guy.
Now they're trying to kick outthe imperialist foreign ideas,
and then they celebrate thisGerman dude.
And I find that very uhdelightful and strange.
But if I take a look at theactual lived experience of being
in China, this is a country thatoffers a pretty threadbare
social safety net.
Xi Jinping said several yearsago, we should not give people
(22:01):
too much welfare, otherwise, itwill make them lazy.
And I think that Ronald Reaganwould never have gotten away
with saying something as bald asthat.
China does not redistribute muchincome.
There's effectively no propertytaxes, which means that the
wealthy have their source ofwealth mostly untouched by
taxation.
Most of the taxation isregressive in nature because
(22:22):
consumption taxes are fundingmost of China's social
expenditures.
This is a country that almostentirely keeps out immigrants,
that is holding on tomanufacturing, that is enforcing
very traditional gender norms.
In my mind, this feels more like1950s Eisenhower America than it
does, you know, 21st centuryBiden America.
SPEAKER_01 (22:43):
In addition to your book, what are some books you
might recommend for people that,not experts who want to become
experts on China, but just tounderstand China?
Are there some books you'drecommend?
SPEAKER_00 (22:55):
The first book on China for me is by uh British
writer Fuchsia Dunlop calledInvitation to a Banquet that is
talking about the greatestChinese creation, namely its
cuisine.
And so this uh runs through alot of Chinese cuisine,
organized by technique.
Fuchsia is a gorgeous writer,and I think that her book is
(23:16):
really, really excellent.
I think a lot about a BelgianSinologist by the name of Simone
Lays, who wrote a book calledThe Hall of Uselessness, in
which it's a series of essaysabout how he understood China.
This is someone who was moreactive in the 1960s and the
1970s.
I think he really captures thespirit of something essential
about the Chinese spirit.
And maybe in more contemporarytimes, I was a big fan of the
(23:40):
New Yorker writer PeterHessler's book, Other Rivers, in
which he was also in Chinaduring zero COVID.
He was teaching at uh universityin Sichuan province.
And Hessler is an excellentstoryteller.
And I think that is a you knowreally nice way to understand
again something about howChinese live their lives based
on his vantage point from a notvery elite part of China.
SPEAKER_01 (24:03):
I uh am partial also to the book Wild Swans.
I don't know if you think highlyof that orview.
And there was a woman who wrotea book many years ago.
She's no longer living, YanChang, who wrote Life and Death
in Shanghai.
Yes.
We had the opportunity to haveher speak to our students, and
she would tell quite a taleabout the cultural revolution.
I also wanted to ask, bring usup to date.
(24:25):
I mean, I know there's newstoday, but how do you see our uh
trade disputes?
I mean, those are hard topredict too, because of our
president.
It's very hard to predict whenit comes to tariffs, but he and
was in Asia and talking abouttrade, and evidently they
reached some sort of deal.
But do you see that improvedtrade relations might help the
relationship develop in a morepositive direction?
SPEAKER_00 (24:48):
I think that improved trade relations would
stabilize the relationship, butI'm not sure how likely it is
that we will have improved traderelations.
I'm not sure that such a tradetruce is likely to be enduring.
And I say that because I livedin Beijing throughout the first
trade war, in which both sidesended up negotiating for a very
long time.
(25:08):
And either side might walk away.
One time he walked away from adeal, another time Trump walked
away.
After they walk away, there'sall sorts of escalations.
This whole thing concluded atthe very beginning of 2020 with
this optimistically named phaseone trade deal, which was
supposed to stabilize the traderelationship.
But what happened at thebeginning of 2020, the most
(25:30):
noteworthy news was not thetrade deal, but this novel
coronavirus that was circulatingin the city of Wuhan.
And right after that, US andChina fell into much bitter
recriminations after this phaseone.
And so, you know, where is phasetwo?
Where is phase three?
I think they're not going tocall it that anymore.
And so my view is that the USand China have a lot of these
fundamental challenges in whichthey don't see eye to eye on a
(25:53):
lot of matters, whether that issecurity or geopolitics or
technology or economics.
It is not going to be, you know,one handshake in Asia that is
going to fix everything up.
I think it is really positivethat they are speaking.
Speaking is much better than notspeaking, especially when you
deal with a mercurial USpresident and a Chinese top
(26:14):
leader that is unsure of how tohandle this relationship.
I think it is really difficultto see how they could be fast
friends anytime soon.
SPEAKER_01 (26:22):
You have a chapter in here about zero COVID, a
chapter about the one childpolicy that China pursued for
many years.
Do you think there were lessonsfrom that that were learned by
the leadership of China thatmight prevent them from pursuing
such draconian policies in thefuture?
I doubt it.
If I remember correctly, yousaid that so many abortions that
(26:45):
it equaled the size of the U.S.
population today?
SPEAKER_00 (26:47):
That's the official statistics that is published by
the Chinese National HealthYearbook.
So over the 35 years of theone-child policy, which turned
into a two-child policy, Chinaconducted about 320 million
abortions, which is the presentpopulation of the U.S.
Now, in a normal year, therewould be certain numbers of
abortions, but they alsosterilized about 100 million
(27:08):
women and sterilized about 25million men.
And these are pretty astonishingfigures that they engineered
their way into partly into ademographic crisis.
At least in demography, theyhave not learned their own
lesson.
I read at the end of my bookthat a lot of these neighborhood
committees that used to be incharge of enforcing birth
planning have turned 180 degreesright around to encouraging
(27:31):
births.
So they are going up to women tosay, when was your last period?
You know, how's her menstrualcycle?
I quoted a one woman who said toa journalist that after she
married, her parents asked heronly once whether she plans to
have children.
Whereas the governmentneighborhood officials have
already asked her six times.
And so they are trying toengineer the population into um
having kids.
(27:52):
And I think it is very difficultto imagine how they can coerce
copulation.
I don't think that could work.
SPEAKER_01 (27:57):
Which a lot of countries in the West are trying
to do as well.
SPEAKER_00 (28:00):
And they're struggling.
And even if you're able to spenda lot of money, um, namely the
Hungary case does not seem tohave worked very, very well.
But I think the Chinese aregoing to double down on
engineering.
They're always going to be, youknow, thinking more about how to
engineer their own population.
And I'm doubtful that thesemethods would really succeed.
SPEAKER_01 (28:21):
Now you write an annual letter on China.
Who's the audience for that?
It's somewhat renowned, I guess.
How do people get a hold of it?
SPEAKER_00 (28:29):
My audience when I first started uh was my mother.
And so I just wanted uh myparents and my friends to know
uh what I was up to in China.
It took a little bit more of alife of its own, especially as I
was uh living in China in zeroCOVID after China kicked out
most of the US correspondenceout of China from the Washington
Post and the New York Times andthe Wall Street Journal.
(28:51):
I was one of the people who wereable to observe China from the
inside, especially during thezero COVID crazy years.
It is published on my website,so anyone is able to read it.
And I'll give you a sneakpreview, Roger, of what I'll be
writing about this year, whichis that now that I'm a fellow at
the Hoover Institution, I spenda lot of my time in Silicon
Valley, which is a deeply,deeply strange place, almost as
(29:13):
strange as China, but also aplace that I take very, very
seriously because I thinkSilicon Valley and China are
both pretty self-serious places,deeply humorless.
And they are thinking about sortof the end of the world.
If you're the communist party,you're always wondering, is this
the day that everything isbrought down?
And in California, people alsotalk about the end of the world,
(29:36):
mostly created by artificialintelligence.
And, you know, there's a lot ofstriking similarities between
these two places.
And so I think that I am uh myannual letter this year will be
uh exploring the differencebetween California as well as
China, the similarities as wellas the differences.
SPEAKER_01 (29:50):
Well, this has been a fascinating conversation.
I thank you for joining metoday.
His book, Dan Wong, W A N G isBreakneck, published by Norton
just out a month or so ago.
I highly recommend it.
Please consider buying it andreading it, and you'll be so
much better informed.
It has an endorsement on thecover by Tyler Cowan, who's at
(30:11):
our academic partner, GeorgeMason University.
If you want to understand China,I suggest you read this book,
Breakneck.
Thank you, Dan, for being withme today on the Liberty and
Leadership Podcast.
My pleasure, Roger.
This is a lot of fun.
Thank you for listening to theLiberty and Leadership Podcast.
If you have a comment orquestion, please drop us an
email at podcast at tfas.org.
(30:33):
And be sure to subscribe to theshow on your favorite podcast
app and leave a five starreview.
Liberty and Leadership isproduced at Podville Media.
I'm your host, Roger Reem, anduntil next time, show courage in
things large and small.
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