America vs. China

What if you could rate a country like a restaurant?

That idea sounds absurd until you let Dan Wang lead you through his version of a travel review — except the review is of systems, not sunsets. He treats China like a place to test hypotheses: what works, what breaks, and what lessons ripple back across the Pacific. I found myself both admiring the scale of what he describes and unsettled by the human costs masked behind glossy megaprojects.

Postcards that feel like field notes

Wang’s mental postcards of Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai read like quick studies in contrasts. Hong Kong appears as a tropical Manhattan — efficient public transit and polite crowds — but economically stale, trapped under property tycoons’ thumbs. Beijing arrives as a city built to project power: wide boulevards, guarded embassies, and state presence visible at every corner. Shanghai, by contrast, is the easiest to love — leafy promenades, cafes, and a long habit of refined urban life that earned it the nickname "Paris of the East." I kept picturing myself walking those streets, slightly jealous and slightly wary.

Engineers vs. lawyers — an explanatory lens

Here’s what stood out: Wang’s central idea is a simple but powerful one — one nation is run like an engineering problem, the other like a legal brief. China, after Deng Xiaoping, promoted an army of engineers to high office. The result is a government that thinks in blueprints, shovel-ready projects, and measurable outputs. America, by contrast, is awash in lawyers and legal processes. That yields protections, unpredictability for the powerful, and, crucially, a different speed of change.

Honestly, I didn’t expect the metaphor to land as cleanly as it did. The engineering frame explains why China can spew bridges and high-speed rails with breathtaking tempo. It also explains why mistakes — enormous, costly mistakes — happen with tragic regularity. Engineers build. Lawyers delay. Both cultures have virtues and pathologies.

Infrastructure as political currency

What really surprised me was how Wang connects infrastructure to legitimacy. In China, building is a route to power. Ambitious officials are sent to far-flung provinces and rewarded for visible, big-ticket projects. Guizhou — mountainous, poor — now boasts airports, high-speed rails, and record-breaking bridges. The imagery is intoxicating: a roaring physical transformation that promises upward mobility. But there’s a shadow: debt, environmental damage, and sometimes literal bridges to nowhere. I imagined the villagers who gained a paved road and also the families displaced by dams.

How manufacturing becomes innovation

Another compelling thread: production is apprenticeship. Wang insists Chinese manufacturing is not just low-cost labor; it’s an education system. Workers and mid-level managers in Shenzhen and other hubs learned to assemble high-tech goods, troubleshoot daily puzzles, and then iterate new products rapidly. Knowledge spread through proximity, conversation, and the messy everyday work of factories. That ecosystem — "knowledge travels at the speed of beer," as Wang quotes — helps create entirely new industries. I kept thinking of what might have happened if consumer electronics manufacturing had clustered in Pennsylvania instead of Shenzhen.

The trade-offs: freedom, safety, and social engineering

Wang is frank about why he left China. The Great Firewall and censorship were initial annoyances. Then came more alarming intrusions: detained foreigners and blocked websites. He frames China as a place that often rewards engineering efficiency while curtailing legal protections and civil liberties. This combination produces a paradox: rapid material gains without robust due process. Wang suggests that China resembles a right-wing welfare-lite state masquerading in red banners — an ironic, sometimes jarring observation.

Practical borrowings — but from where?

When it comes to lessons, Wang is cautious. He doesn’t recommend importing China’s blunt methods. Instead he points to Europe and Japan as models for delivering infrastructure that is fast, affordable, and rights-respecting. He argues the U.S. should become something like “20% more engineering” — build more homes, better transit, and revive manufacturing ecosystems — while China would benefit from being "50% more lawyerly" — stronger protections for speech, labor, and due process.

• Speed matters: China’s development cycles can be measured in months, not years.
• Institutions shape outcomes: who runs a state — engineers or lawyers — changes incentives.
• Infrastructure is political theater: it builds legitimacy as much as mobility.

A personal reaction

I found myself oscillating between admiration and discomfort. Admiration for the audacity to build at scale and discomfort at the costs imposed when planning outruns restraint. Wang’s writing left me wanting a hybrid: a country that can build like China but argue like America, and a China that embraces legal protections without sacrificing dynamism.

The most surprising part? How obvious some trade-offs become once you have the right lens. Engineers will always celebrate a new bridge. Lawyers will always file the next injunction. Neither worldview is morally superior. Each produces wins and failures that are instructive if we’re brave enough to notice.

Final thought

What really caught my attention is how the mundane — the smell of a subway car, the screw of a bridge bolt, the morning commute — tells a larger story about governance and values. If nations could be reviewed like products, the rating would be complicated: five stars for audacity, three for justice, and a footnote for the people displaced along the way. I’m left wondering whether the future will be written by those who can both plan and argue — who can stitch law and engineering into something that builds and also protects.