Dan Wang, "Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future" (Norton, 2025)

New Books in World Affairs

Dan Wang is a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover History Lab, and previously a fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center. Before that, he was an analyst focused on China’s technology capabilities at Gavekal Dragonomics, based across Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai. Dan is perhaps best known for a series of annual letters, published between 2017-2023, which encapsulate his reflections on Chinese society; his writing has also appeared in other outlets including Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and beyond.

In this New Books Network Episode, Dan discusses his debut book Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future (Norton, 2025). Styled as an aggregation of seven of his famed annual letters, Breakneck presents a dichotomy of China and the US as an “engineering state” and "lawyerly society” respectively, and traces how China’s “engineering state” has shaped Chinese society over the last decade.

Breakneck is now available for purchase online and in physical bookstores.

Show notes:

1. Dan’s website

2. Dan’s annual letters: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017

3. Dan’s blogpost about Breakneck, which we reference several times in the episode

4. China-related English books that Dan mentions: The Halls of Uselessness (Simon Leys), Other Rivers (Peter Hessler), Invitation to a Banquet (Fuchsia Dunlop)

5. Chinese-language movies from 2017+ that Anthony recommends for illustrating a diverse spectrum of sociopolitical noteworthiness: Wolf Warrior 2 (for China's nationalistic/geopolitical narrative), Upstream (for China's tech industry/labor market), Detention (for Taiwanese popular memory on authoritarianism); plus two additional movies not mentioned in the episode — Ne Zha 2 (for China's soft power potential) and Limbo (for a dark taste of Hong Kong's contemporary malaise).

6. Chinese-language movies that Dan recommendations: Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhangke), One Second (Zhang Yimou)

Anthony Kao is a writer who intersects international affairs and cultural criticism. He founded/edits Cinema Escapist—a publication exploring the sociopolitical context behind global film and television—and also writes for outlets like The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Diplomat, and Eater.

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