America’s Lawyerly Society and China’s Engineering State. Which is the Model for the Future?

May 29
4 min read

By Alexander Anchor

Book Review: Dan Wang’s Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future

Dan Wang is a research fellow for the Hoover Institution, a former analyst for Gavekal Dragonomics - a think tank that consults portfolio managers on China’s macro-economic direction - and more recently, author of Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future. According to Wang, the People’s Republic of China is the most successful authoritarian regime since Rome. Why? Because China is an “engineering state”: a country that derives its legitimacy by providing public infrastructure for the people.

The engineering state is the overarching idea that motivates much of Wang’s book. With it, he is able to explain how China’s political-economy works in a way that is memorable because it is grounded with real examples. Take for instance the country’s political ideology. Mention communism to almost anyone and they’ll likely think of a repressive party-state like the Soviet Union. They might picture lines of people waiting for bread or dilapidated apartment blocks without working sewerage whilst party officials live the high-life. Communism in China, Wang explains, is different. Following the death of Mao and the ushering in of the technocratic engineering state under Deng Xiaoping, Chinese communism is chiefly about the party-state providing public infrastructure for the people. Noticeable examples would include the Beijing to Shanghai high-speed railway, the Three Gorges Dam and hospitals that were built in a matter of days during the pandemic. Party officials who oversee successful projects are promoted and the party officials who fail are demoted.

Without the nomenklatura system that rewards and punishes party officials, the United States was once an engineering state. The Transcontinental Railroads, Interstate Highway System and Panama Canal were all government-led projects. As the environmental impacts of these public works became more obvious however, the engineers had to contend with a much shrewder profession: lawyers. Consequently, “The United States”, Wang laments, “has a government of the lawyers, by the lawyers and for the lawyers”. Indeed, every Democratic presidential candidate since 1984 has been to law school and half of all members of Congress have a law degree. In comparison, engineers are the political elite in China. All members of the Politburo Standing Committee in 2002, for instance, had degrees in engineering. China’s current leader, Xi Jinping, studied chemical engineering, his predecessor hydraulic engineering and his predecessor electrical engineering.

Comparison between China’s engineering state and the United States’ “lawyerly society”, as Wang calls it, is a recurring theme throughout his book and it is clear that he is biased towards a society that prioritises engineers that build as opposed to lawyers that litigate. However, Wang does point out one important reason to be thankful for living in a lawyerly society: they are great at protecting civil liberties. This is perhaps his most forceful criticism of China’s engineering state. Whilst it has been excellent at providing public infrastructure for the ordinary Chinese, it can easily become obsessed with achieving results and often at the expense of people’s freedom. Furthermore, when the engineers in charge get it wrong, the consequences can be disastrous. Two examples of this that Wang delves into across two chapters respectively are the One Child and Zero Covid policies.

A misguided idea hypothesised by an aerospace engineer, the One Child Policy grossly intruded on the rights of 320 million women who were subjected to forced abortions as well as over 100 million forced sterilisations. And the result? An existential ageing Chinese population that may doom the country’s economy soon after it is expected to surpass the United States’s GDP later this century. Xi’s Zero Covid Policy is another example of an engineer in charge getting it wrong. Xi’s Maoist solutions to stem the spread of the virus which included instructing hospitals to reject patients with illnesses other than Covid-19, restrictions on the sale of paracetamol out of fear that some might try to hide symptoms of the virus and the forceful removal of people who tested positive to the virus from their homes, would culminate in protests not seen since Tiananmen.

Throughout his book, Wang shows how the engineering state can be “awfully literally minded” and how it sometimes “feels like China’s leadership is made up entirely of hydraulic engine engineers who view the economy and society as liquid flows” that need to be controlled. However, there is also no denying that China’s engineers have been enormously successful at lifting the country out of poverty and placing it at the centre of almost every international supply chain. This naturally begs the question, is China worth emulating in the same way that the Western capitalist system has been? Just as how the Japanese looked to the West for inspiration in the 1800s, is it now the West’s turn to look to China? In many respects, this has already begun. Social media trends depicting British, Americans and Australians at a “very Chinese time in their life” gallivanting through some of the country’s flashier metropolises whilst practising their Mandarin, suggests that there is an appeal to China’s system, courtesy of the engineers who designed it. However, there is also no denying that these very same engineers have developed sophisticated forms of repression anathema to liberal norms that currently uphold the international rules-based order.

If China continues on its current trajectory and supplants the United States, smaller countries will be inclined to believe that a party-state system, governed by unelected technocrats, is the preferred alternative to representative democracy. Disappointingly, this crucial idea is never touched upon by Wang. Students of international relations may therefore feel slightly dissatisfied when they reach the end of his book without him having gone into detail how China’s engineers might plan to rewrite the rules of the international system. Nonetheless, anyone interested in world politics understands that China cannot be ignored. It is simply too big and too important to avoid in any analysis of international relations. Wang’s book is therefore an excellent starting point for anyone interested in understanding how China works and the priority it places on engineers. A political elite who will no doubt have an increased say on the rules of the international system if China continues to rise.

Alexander Anchor is a third-year student at the University of Sydney, pursuing a degree in Philosophy, Politics, and International Relations. He is particularly interested in the US-China rivalry, the Indian-Russia relationship and Australia finding its place in Asia. In addition to these areas, Alex is deeply engaged with the fragility of global supply chains, as well as the historical and political forces that shape contemporary world affairs.