Episode · Freakonomics Radio · 2025-09-19
Books mentioned on 647. China Is Run by Engineers. America Is Run by Lawyers.
In his new book “Breakneck,” Dan Wang argues that the U.S.
Dan Wang discussed Prototype Nation by Silvia M. Lindtner, The Anaconda in the Chandelier: Writings on China by Perry Link, Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed by James C. Scott, and The Population Bomb by Paul R. Ehrlich. Stephen Dubner discussed Breakneck by Dan Wang.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Prototype Nation
Discussed“My wife is a professor at the University of Michigan. She's an anthropologist really of technology cultures and so she wrote a book about Shenzhen maker spaces called Prototype Nation.”
Where to get it
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The Anaconda in the Chandelier: Writings on China
Discussed“There's a great sinologist named Perry Link who came up with this excellent metaphor for how to think about Chinese censorship. And that metaphor was the anaconda and the chandelier.”
Where to get it
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Breakneck
Breakneck by Dan Wang is a bestselling book exploring China's engineering-driven quest for the future and offering a comparative look at the political economies of the United States and China.
Discussed“Last year, instead of writing his annual letter from China, Dan Wong wrote a book called Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future. By the time it was published in August of this year, he was living back in the States.”
Where to get it
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Seeing Like a State
James C.
Discussed“Yeah, I was born in China's most mountainous province and I am still very much attracted to mountains in part because of the works of political scientist and anthropologist James C. Scott of Yale University. His best known work is seeing like a state in which Scott wrote about how the state really tries to organize the population in order”
Where to get it
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The Art of Not Being Governed
The Art of Not Being Governed by James C.
Discussed“And one of Scott's best works maybe his very best work is called the art of not being governed in which he wrote about a zone he called Zomia.”
Where to get it
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The Population Bomb
The Population Bomb by Paul R.
Discussed“One of the things I will always be grateful to economists for is that economists were the greatest critics of the one child policy in China as well as briefly when it was kind of discussed in the US after Erlick published the population bomb.”
Where to get it
