Can the US Beat China’s Engineering State?

a16z Podcast

From high-speed rail to electric cars to batteries to AI, it’s clear that China can operate with incredible speed at massive scale. Can the US still compete?

We sat down with Dan Wang, a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of “Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future” to discuss.

Timecodes:

0:00 Introduction

1:36 Lawyers vs. Engineers: Cultural and Economic Differences

4:06 Urban and Rural Life: Comparing Infrastructure

7:20 Barriers to Progress: Regulation and Governance

11:00 Industrial Policy and Public-Private Partnerships

14:20 The Double-Edged Sword of Legal and Engineering Mindsets

16:50 Social Engineering and Policy in China

23:00 Competition, Intellectual Property, and Business Culture

27:10 Manufacturing, Scale, and Global Supply Chains

36:00 Lessons from Japan and Korea

41:30 Complacency, Quality, and the Future of Competition

48:45 Strategic Resources and Industrial Policy

54:00 Foreign Policy: Engineering Diplomacy vs. Alliances

59:00 Taiwan, Demographics, and the Future of US-China Relations

Resources:

Follow Dan on X: https://x.com/danwwang

Read Dan’s blog: https://danwang.co/

Buy Breakneck on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1324106034/

Follow Steven on X:

https://x.com/stevesi

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