Book Review — “Breakneck” by Dan Wang

I picked up Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future after economist Tyler Cowen hailed it as one of the best books of 2025. Written by Dan Wang, a Hoover Institution research fellow and former China-based technology analyst, the book seeks to explain how China and America have developed such different strengths despite their similarities. What results is a wide-ranging, often brilliant meditation on political economy, technology, and culture.

Wang begins by insisting that “no two peoples are more alike than Americans and Chinese.” Both societies, he writes, are materialistic, pragmatic, competitive, and awed by the technological sublime. Yet America has become a lawyerly society while China has become an engineering state. This framing device is powerful. It helps explain why China can build high-speed rail lines at breakneck pace while the United States drowns in lawsuits and permitting processes. Wang’s own travels, such as his cycling trip through Guizhou province, illustrate this vividly. Even in remote areas, China’s infrastructure exceeds what Americans in wealthy states enjoy. The contrast captures his admiration for China’s ability to bend geography and compress time.

The praise, however, is balanced by critique. Wang’s sharpest chapters focus on the cruelty and hypocrisy of China’s one-child policy and the brittleness of its zero-Covid…