China is an engineering state, obsessed with building megaprojects, while America is a lawyerly society, reflexively blocking everything, good and bad. That’s the framework for a new book by Dan Wang which explores the merits and madness of Beijing’s engineering state – and how it compares with Washington.

Through personal insights from living in both countries, Dan Wang explores China’s strengths and weaknesses, and offers a critique of how American leadership could lose the technological arms race to its rival.