Is a Sino-American synthesis possible?

WE SHOULD all welcome the publication of Chinese-Canadian analyst Dan Wang’s new book, Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future.

Yes, I am biased, because Wang is my friend. But I would say the same thing if I did not know him. Nor am I alone. The economist Tyler Cowen calls Breakneck “arguably the best book of the year flat out”. John Thornhill of the Financial Times calls it “compelling, provocative and highly personal”. Stripe CEO Patrick Collison says that Wang “illuminates China like no one else”. Bloomberg’s Tracy Alloway calls him “one of the best China writers out there”.

At seven, Wang’s family migrated from Yunnan, in China’s far south-west – where the local dialect differs from the Mandarin spoken in Beijing as much as Louisiana Cajun does from the English of Down-East Maine. He now rotates between Palo Alto and Ann Arbor, and has lived in Toronto, Ottawa, Philadelphia, Rochester, Freiburg, San Francisco, Kunming, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, and New Haven.