America's Lawyers vs. China's Engineers: A New Framework for Understanding Global Rivals

Why are two of the world's most dynamic and similar superpowers constantly at odds? Author Dan Wong offers a compelling new lens: the fundamental clash between a "lawyer society" and an "engineering state."

Two Alike, Yet Opposed

Wong argues that Americans and Chinese are surprisingly similar. Both peoples embrace dynamism, reject stasis, and exhibit a high degree of hustle and a willingness to take shortcuts. This stands in contrast to more stability-oriented cultures found in Europe and Japan. The tragedy, and comedy, of their geopolitical rivalry is that these two akin civilizations are locked in a struggle fueled by mutual misunderstanding.

The Engineering State: China's Blueprint for Power

China's identity as an "engineering state" is deeply embedded in its leadership. For a period in the early 2000s, all nine members of the Politburo Standing Committee held engineering degrees. This technical background shapes a worldview where society is treated as a system to be optimized and controlled.

• Monumentalism: A drive to build on a colossal scale, from the world's tallest bridges to the most extensive high-speed rail network.
• Infrastructure Abundance: In China's fourth-poorest province, Guizhou, Wong witnessed infrastructure—airports, highways, rail—that far surpassed that of wealthy U.S. states like California and New York.
• Top-Down Control: Economic and social policy is approached like a math problem, with solutions implemented from the top down.

The Lawyer Society: America's Foundation

The United States, by contrast, was founded as a "lawyer society." The Declaration of Independence reads like a legal brief, and a disproportionate number of its leaders, from the Founding Fathers to the present Biden administration, have legal training.

• Procedure Fetish: A system built on debate, litigation, and procedure, which ensures pluralism but can lead to paralyzing gridlock.
• Rule of Law: The legal framework is the primary mechanism for dispute resolution and social ordering.
• Political Elite: Consistently, about half to two-thirds of members of Congress hold law degrees, while only a handful have STEM backgrounds.

The Dark Side of Engineering: When the State "Breaks People"

The engineering mindset becomes dangerous when applied not just to physical infrastructure but to human populations. Wong highlights two catastrophic examples of social engineering:

• The One-Child Policy: Conceptualized by a missile engineer who believed population trajectories could be controlled like missile paths, the policy resulted in an estimated 300 million forced abortions and sterilizations—a number equal to the present population of the U.S.
• Zero-COVID: An extreme logistical campaign that sealed the country off, prioritizing system control over individual liberty and, ultimately, economic well-being.

This tendency to treat people as variables in a system is the fundamental pathology of the engineering state.

Lessons for America: Confronting Abundance and Scarcity

Observing China holds a mirror to America's own challenges. The U.S. struggles with scarcity—especially in housing and infrastructure—while China, for all its faults, has mastered the politics of abundance, building vast quantities of everything from homes to highways.

The U.S. must ask itself a difficult question: Can it preserve its pluralistic, lawyerly virtues while rediscovering the political will to build and govern effectively? The American system worked for the lawyers and engineers who built the Hoover Dam and went to the Moon. The key shift, Wong suggests, occurred in the 1960s when public trust in technocratic authority collapsed, and the legal profession transformed from deal-makers into litigious regulators focused on suing "the bastards."

The Future of the Rivalry

The long-term contest may be decided by which system works best for the majority of its people. China's model offers rapid execution and tangible infrastructure but at the cost of freedom and potential instability. The American model offers liberty and debate but is often paralyzed by procedure and struggles to deliver material benefits for its middle class.

There is no perfect hybrid system, but the U.S. retains a crucial advantage: its capacity for self-criticism and reform. The ultimate question is whether it can overcome its own lawyerly inertia to build a future that matches its ambitions.