Dan Wang
I spent six years living in China from 2017 to 2023 and the major events of that time included [Donald] Trump’s first trade war, Xi Jinping’s darkening political ambitions, and Zero COVID, which I lived through. Thinking about these two countries at a time when they are being confrontational with each other, I decided that twentieth-century labels like socialist, neoliberal, or democratic weren’t very useful for explaining the present moment.
So I try to come up with a new framework. I call China an engineering state because since the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping has really tried to promote a lot of engineers into the Politburo and at various points some of China’s most senior leaders have had degrees in engineering. And the issue with engineers is that they tend to treat construction as the solution to every problem. That’s why you have so many homes and coal plants and solar and wind and transmission lines and bridges and highways everywhere. A lot of my book is also about how the Politburo can’t stop themselves from just being physical engineers.
At a time when the US and China are being confrontational with each other, I decided that 20th-century labels like socialist, neoliberal, or democratic weren’t useful for explaining the present moment.
They’re also fundamentally social engineers. I spent a lot of time thinking about the One-child Policy, Zero COVID, and the ways the Communist Party tries to Sinicize China’s ethno-religious minorities. The engineering state involves both physical engineering as well as engineers of the soul. And I contrast that with the lawyerly society.
The issue with lawyers is that they block nearly everything, good and bad. So you don’t have stupid ideas like the One-child Policy, but you also don’t really have functional infrastructure or any homes across America. That’s the dichotomy I offer…
Auteur: Dan Wang
