A Nation of Lawyers Confronts China’s Engineering State
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/08/china-america-tariffs-trump-economy/683895/
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/08/china-america-tariffs-trump-economy/683895/
Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future
https://www.ft.com/content/261a0eaa-7fb9-4052-ac78-f4d8d9969e72
Wang’s central contention is that China is run as an engineering state that excels at construction while the US has become a lawyerly society that favours obstruction. By 2020 all nine members of the Chinese Politburo’s standing committee had trained as engineers. By contrast, the US has turned into a “government of the lawyers, by the lawyers and for the lawyers.”
The result is that the country’s legal aristocracy prioritises process over outcomes and systematically favours the well-off, Wang argues. From 1984 to 2020, every single Democratic presidential and vice-presidential nominee had attended law school.
https://www.ft.com/content/261a0eaa-7fb9-4052-ac78-f4d8d9969e72
Wang’s central contention is that China is run as an engineering state that excels at construction while the US has become a lawyerly society that favours obstruction. By 2020 all nine members of the Chinese Politburo’s standing committee had trained as engineers. By contrast, the US has turned into a “government of the lawyers, by the lawyers and for the lawyers.”
The result is that the country’s legal aristocracy prioritises process over outcomes and systematically favours the well-off, Wang argues. From 1984 to 2020, every single Democratic presidential and vice-presidential nominee had attended law school.
Breakneck by Dan Wang