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The cover of Breakneck

Breakneck

Dan Wang, 2025

Understand why China builds fast and breaks people, why America can litigate but not construct, and what each system would have to change to serve its citizens better.

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10 parts, about 24 minutes to read.

Why read it

  • Reads China as an engineering state and America as a lawyerly society, and weighs what each gets right and wrong
  • Helps you see why one country builds fast while the other stalls, and what that costs people
  • Grounded in years of living in China, from a Guizhou bike ride to Shanghai under lockdown

Who it is for

  • Readers trying to make sense of the rivalry between America and China
  • People who work on infrastructure, housing or industrial policy
  • Those who want a view of China beyond the headlines

What the summary covers

  1. Two Superpowers, Two Governing Instincts2 min
  2. The Engineering State and the Lawyerly Society2 min
  3. Building Big3 min
  4. Technology Lives in People and Practice3 min
  5. When Population Becomes a Control Problem3 min
  6. Zero Covid: Achievement, Entrapment, Reversal3 min
  7. Fortress China3 min
  8. A Family’s Bet on the Future2 min
  9. Learning to Build Without Crushing People2 min
  10. Still Developing1 min

Recommended by

  • Evan OsnosAuthor of Age of Ambition
    Dan Wang is an indispensable voice on China issues because he has the rarest combination of precious resources: deep knowledge and unflinching judgment.
  • Chris MillerAuthor of Chip War
    An illuminating account of China’s dizzying rise and its deepening pathologies
  • Odd Arne WestadCo author of The Great Transformation: China’s Road from Revolution to Reform
    A brilliant book about how China got ahead, the United States stagnated, and the challenges that both will face in the future

About the author

  • Dan WangResearch fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and analyst of Chinese technology
    • Born in southwest China; emigrated with his family to Canada at age seven and was raised mostly in Ottawa
    • Studied philosophy at the University of Rochester and previously worked in Silicon Valley
    • Fellow at Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center and lecturer at Yale's MacMillan Center
    • Technology analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, 2017 to 2023
    • Breakneck grew out of the annual letters he wrote from China

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