Is the US falling behind China?

Over the last two decades, China has transformed into an engineering state. Its ability to build almost anything—bridges, high-speed rail, entire cities from nothing—has led to record growth, but also domestic challenges and soaring debt. On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer sits down with Dan Wang, tech analyst and author of the new book “Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future,” to talk about China’s rapid growth, the US-China relationship, and who is winning the race for technological and economic supremacy.

For better or worse, Wang says that China has leaned into a belief that almost anything can be engineered. They’ve invested massively in infrastructure, which has improved life for Chinese citizens in many ways, but the country is also dealing with a stagnating economy and record youth unemployment. China’s “engineering” mentality has led to a stubborn belief that society itself can be built from the top down, Wang says, often to draconian results like the harsh ‘zero Covid’ rules or state crackdowns on the tech sector. Can the US learn from China’s rise and avoid its mistakes?

“China's a country I describe as the ‘engineering state’ because they build a lot,” Wang explains, “They also treat society as a big engineering project, where people are yet another building material that the leadership just want to tweak and destroy if necessary.”