Mason L. Wong at Public Books:
Breakneck is no paean to any state, Chinese or otherwise. Nevertheless, Wang offers a prescription, delivered lightly, that American society should become more Chinese (that is to say, more engineer-like) in its preferences and the Chinese engineering state should become more American (in Wang’s words, more “lawyerly”) in its organization. Breakneck begins with the claim that “no two peoples are more alike than Americans and Chinese” (emphasis mine); at the same time, it also hangs much of its argument on emphasizing the fundamental differences in statecraft and political economy between the United States and China. But are either of these things really “Chinese” or “American”? Is there anything in the history of the “engineering state” that would convincingly mark it as more Chinese than Western?
More here.
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