## BREAKNECK: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future (book review)

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**Canonical URL:** [BREAKNECK: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future (book review)](https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/fandd/article/2026/03/books-sisson.pdf)

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### Overview
- Reviewer: Melanie W. Sisson, senior fellow in the Brookings Institution’s foreign policy program.
- Subject: Dan Wang’s Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future — described by Wang as a book about “China’s engineering mindset,” but presented as a blend of autobiography, travelogue, and sociopolitical observation with comparisons between China and the US.
- Narrative approach: Walks readers through landscapes and cityscapes, cultural scenes, culinary details, statistics, history, and personal anecdotes.

### Core arguments and themes
- Net-assessment framing:
  - The review situates the book in the intellectual tradition of Andrew W. “Andy” Marshall, appointed in 1973 to lead the Office of Net Assessment, which emphasized long-term competition beyond near-term military balances.
  - Wang’s book operates as an implicit net assessment comparing China and the US across adaptability, institutional strengths and weaknesses, technological trajectories, and strategic culture.
- Engineering mindset vs. lawyerly mindset:
  - Wang contrasts the CCP’s engineering orientation (managing the economy, controlling population growth and then arresting its decline, accelerating technological innovation, limiting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic) with the US’s “lawyerly” orientation prioritizing pluralism and protection of individual rights.
  - The review emphasizes Wang’s observation that China views citizens in the aggregate while the US prioritizes pluralism and individual rights.
- Personal and humanist lens:
  - Wang’s personal background (born in China, raised in Canada) and willingness to share personal details make the analysis warm and affecting.
  - He is described as unsparing but not ungenerous in assessing successes, failures, benefits, harms, and comparative advantages of engineered projects versus lawyerly projects.

### Strengths noted by the reviewer
- Engaging style: Combines evocative travel writing, cultural observation, and sociopolitical commentary.
- Balanced assessment: Highlights both achievements and harms of China’s engineered projects relative to US approaches.
- Readability: Personal anecdotes and vivid scenes make complex policy questions accessible.

### Limitations and gaps identified
- Stops short of deeper theoretical linkage:
  - Wang frequently notes the fundamental difference between the two systems but does not connect governing philosophies to their logical consequences in a systematic way.
  - The review states that Wang “invites, but does not guide, consideration of how these orientations lead China to engineer and America to litigate.”
- Implicit net assessment:
  - Because the deeper analytic connection is not fully drawn, the book’s net assessment is described as implicit rather than explicit.

### Conclusions and implications
- Wang’s hopeful prescription:
  - Wishes for both countries to adopt select attributes from the other.
  - More optimistic that the US will adopt engineering attributes because citizens may embrace tangible results, and pessimistic that the CCP will tolerate the volatile energies of pluralism and individual rights.
- Broader lesson:
  - The book is described as a study in the limited control governments—whether composed of engineers or lawyers—ultimately can exercise over large, complex, globally interconnected societies.

### Key publication details and exact figures preserved
- Author of reviewed book: Dan Wang.
- Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, New York, NY.
- Year: 2025.
- Length: 288 pp.
- Price: $31.99.
- Historical reference: Andrew W. “Andy” Marshall appointed in 1973 to lead the Office of Net Assessment.

*Melanie W. Sisson, F&D, MARCH 2026.*

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_Source: https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/fandd/article/2026/03/books-sisson.pdf_