The main argument of Dan Wang’s Breakneck, which contrasts modern China with the United States, is that ‘China is an engineering state, which can’t stop itself from building, facing off against America’s lawyerly society, which blocks everything it can.’ According to Wang, this tension between get-it-done technocracy on the one hand and rule-bound caution on the other is what will define the 21st century.

Such a framework may be a useful means of exploring current US–China relations, and Wang’s characterisation of the United States as a sort of nervous developer rings true when it comes to their infrastructure problems, but it is incomplete. For example, US companies remain not just the global leader in technological software but also often in hardware – semiconductor chips, pharmaceuticals, defence and aircraft. There is also a general sense of missing context that comes from forcing two complex economies into one taxonomy.

When Wang compares contemporary China with the USA of the late 19th century, he is on safer ground. Back then, the USA was industrialising; now, like the other major economies where services make up a large portion of national output, it is de-industrialising (though it is still the second--largest global