Breakneck, the big parade, and mirrors in mirrors

China Translated - Briefing #58

Dan Wang’s Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future has been making the rounds on social media lately. I have not read the book yet, but I have already read close to 50 reviews and comments about it, all of which were in my social media feeds without me even actively trying to look for them. This book has been so popular, and I have read so many of these reviews, to the point that I feel I have almost finished reading the book.

My favorite review so far was written by our always insightful

Jonathon P Sine

of

Cogitations

, titled Litigation Nation, Engineering Empire. It’s one heck of a book review, blending his personal experience with a lot of data (which Dan seems to be lacking in his book), and gives a rigorous and well-intentioned “lawyerly prosecution” of the case in “true American fashion”. If you don’t have time to read Dan’s book, I encourage you to read Jonathon’s review instead.

Because I haven’t read the book yet, I can’t give you my book review. But I find it interesting to give a review of the reviews. Maybe this is where the public reaction to the book is even more interesting than the book itself.

A common pattern I observe in the reviews is that for Chinese people, or for people who have a deep understanding of China, the book barely registers. I suppose this is because for us, most of what the book covers is already common knowledge. For instance, one member of Baiguan said in our Discord community that although she expected herself to be glued to the book, she was a bit disappointed thus far.

Another friend of mine, a Silicon Valley founder born in China but who later relocated to America as a teenager, commented:

The book talks about stuff that’s not in the main American discourse on China. But for me it doesn’t really offer anything new / insightful.

Then obviously, there is a huge contrast in how the American public is receiving this book. I am truly impressed, and perhaps even a bit envious, by how much of a media buzz Dan has created with this book.

The wild public reaction shows one thing: Breakneck is more about America than about China. It’s about how Americans, and especially the elites, after witnessing exasperating signs of decline in themselves, suddenly find China as a mirror and try to draw some inspiration from there. In that sense, Breackneck can even be seen as a sub-branch of the broader self-reflection kick-started by Abundance, part of the broader soul-searching of the American Left advocating for economic growth and a “supply-side progressivism” beyond identity politics.

Here, China only serves as a mirror, a referencing object, so the real subject can reflect on itself.

In the past, China was only a niche topic in the US. For Americans, China was no more than a curiosity. I don’t think it has to do with “discrimination”. Nor do I think there is any real “smearing抹黑” like what China’s state media often claimed. No. It’s just nonchalance. Neglect. China is just a small news item, curious, alien, and sometimes even grotesque, flashing by every now and then. America didn’t really care about China.

But ironically, Chinese people would unconsciously, but wrongly, assume they were the focus of America’s attention.

Why? Because America has always been China’s “referencing object”. Chinese people, from elites to masses, watch America closely and intently. When I was a kid, Monica Lewinsky was as big a topic as she was in the US. We studied your language. We studied the papers written by your founding fathers. We tracked every one of your technological breakthroughs. You created the Internet? We wanted it. You created smartphones? We wanted it. You made commercial space programs and commercial electric vehicles a reality? We wanted them. Large language models? We wanted them too, ALL of them. Most, if not all, of the decisions, from political decisions to business decisions and down to family and personal decisions, are made in reference to what the United States of America has to offer. “America is doing this and that. Can we as well?”

And so what is truly amazing about what’s going on right now is that for the first time in history, China has risen to become a “referencing object” for America, too. At long last, China is no longer a niche topic, and not just an abstract “adversary”, but a true peer that the American nation as a whole needs to reckon with. No longer is it just one mirror pointing at another side, but two mirrors looking at each other.

Heralding this new age, I guess this is why Breakneck, a book that’s only a beginner’s guide for those of us in China, can have such a huge success on the other side.

The parade and the mirrors

Also notable in the last week was the military parade on Wednesday commemorating the 80th anniversary of the War Against Japanese Aggression. I don’t want to comment on the military hardware, which I don’t know much about. What I want to share with you is a translation of a video, which is yet another telling example of this “mirror in mirror”.

The video was made by Mr. Jonathan Kos-Read, a US-born actor who made his film career mostly in China. More fluent in Mandarin than even many Chinese people, he was better known in China by his Chinese name, “曹操 Cao Cao”, named after the famous warlord during the Three Kingdoms period.

Cao Cao / Jonathan has a large following in the Chinese short video space. On Douyin alone, he has over 7 million followers. He is known for his wise and witty remarks about intercultural observations between China and the West. Many of his followers have noted that Cao Cao seems to understand China even better than many of the Chinese people themselves.

Cao Cao’s recent video was about his observations of the military parade. Specifically, he talks about why the Chinese people and the American people view this parade differently. Because I can’t find a version with English subtitles, I will just translate the transcript for you:

曹操看阅兵 How Cao Cao looks at the military parade

Hello everyone, I’m Cao Cao. There’s something very interesting about China’s military parades: the kinds of questions Chinese people ask me are very different from the ones foreigners ask me.

Chinese people ask: when foreigners see all our weapons, our powerful tanks, our advanced aircraft, our drones, even robot dogs — how do they react? Do they understand China’s strength? Are they afraid?

Foreigners, on the other hand — first of all, not that many ordinary people abroad actually know about these parades, but there are always some who notice. And since I’ve been living in China for nearly 30 years, they often come to me with basically three questions. The first: why do Chinese people think a military parade is so important? The second: I watched the parade, the marching was so perfectly in sync — isn’t that just empty formalism? The third: foreigners say, the army is so regimented, every step identical down to the millimeter, isn’t that strange? Isn’t it excessive? You’ve lived in China almost 30 years — how can you stand to live in such an “excessive” country?

Honestly speaking, foreigners who’ve seen or heard of these parades really only ask these three questions. None of them ask about the new weapons. So how do I explain this to them?

As you know, explaining your own culture to outsiders can be hard, because so many things feel self-evident to us. Of course the marching has to be neat — even kindergarteners can march neatly here, how could it not be? But how do you explain that to a foreigner? It’s not easy. So here’s how I explain it.

I tell them: every country, every person, every culture has its own habitual way of solving problems — a “default logic” that people believe will lead to good outcomes. I give them an American example, because they understand that. I say: look, Americans always say freedom is most important. But from outside, we often see America as chaotic, violent, looting in stores, messy. So why do Americans like it this way? Because their core logic is that freedom is the best way to solve problems. Why? Because if people are free, they can compete: “I have this solution.” “No, I have a better one.” Through intense competition, the strong ideas rise and the weak ones fall, and in the end you get an effective solution. That’s the American way of problem-solving, and it’s easy to understand.

How did this start? America was founded by people who didn’t want to be ruled by the king, so they came to America to be free, to solve problems on their own terms. From then until now, people who come to America are those who want to live their own way. So the American society is very comfortable for people who value freedom. That’s why the U.S. Constitution and its underlying logic always put freedom first.

Then I ask them: do you get it? And they say: “Yes, yes.” Then I say: good — Chinese culture also has a core logic, a fundamental way of solving problems. That logic is: above all, you must prevent disorder. Why? Because if there is chaos, there is absolutely no way to get a good result.

Where does this come from? I explain that Chinese culture was born by the Yellow River. You could only survive there because of its water. But the Yellow River flooded catastrophically every two years. How could you manage the Yellow River? Freedom won’t help — if everyone just does their own thing, you’d be drowned. The only way was to organize everyone in society, set clear relations, and prevent disorder. Only then could you control the floods and benefit from the river.

So I tell foreigners: if your civilization grew up next to the world’s most dangerous river, you too would understand the universe as one great river. That’s how Daoism was born. And Confucianism, Legalism, all of them — they’re about clarifying relationships, from emperor and commoner down to two brothers, so that the “Dao” flows smoothly and doesn’t break down. Because if the flow breaks down, you get disasters — floods, storms, earthquakes, even family quarrels. So if that’s your worldview, then the thing you fear most is disorder.

The best way to prevent disorder is to keep relationships and positions organized and correct. From this angle, it’s just common sense. Look at anything in China — it’s always orderly. Compare a Western dinner party, which is chaotic, people sitting wherever. A Chinese banquet isn’t like that: the seating arrangement shows your exact place in the hierarchy, and it must be that way. In calligraphy, you have freedom within strict square rules. In siheyuan courtyards, in the Forbidden City — I could give a thousand examples.

And what’s the ultimate display of organizational ability? If you can make 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000 people do exactly the same movement, not a millimeter off, anyone watching will feel reassured. Because it shows we have the organizational capacity to prevent chaos. That’s what the parade represents: the highest expression of an orderly society where relationships are in place, and therefore chaos will not come.

And then I say: now do you see the Chinese parade differently? And they reply: “Get it! That makes sense.”

And this “makes sense”, I believe, lies the foundation of “求同存异seeking common ground while respecting differences.”

I hope you notice the many mirrors here: me translating into English an observation of how Americans view Chinese people, made by an American with a Chinese name, originally told in Chinese for a Chinese audience.

As Cao Cao said, the Chinese “operating system” is all about how to govern “乱chaos”, while the American system is all about how to promote freedom. Both China and the US are sitting at two ends of the spectrum and have perfected their own models.

Yet neither one needs to prevail over the other. Governance without respect for individuality is bound to wither and die, while freedom without proper governance will also end up in nihilism. Engineers without lawyers only create Leviathan in the end, while lawyers without engineers only create castles on the sand.

So, neither China nor the US can fundamentally change the other side. Instead, they will serve as the reference point for each other, providing constant inspiration for new patches into their respective operating systems and new succor into their respective cultures, while also offering living examples for the rest of the world to adopt what works for them.

Isn’t this wonderful?