New Delhi, Feb. 2 -- Few questions are as revealing today as how the world's two largest economies-the US and China-differ in their economic approaches.

In Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future (2025), Dan Wang offers a useful lens. China, he argues, functions as an "engineering state," where leaders and institutions think like engineers, prioritizing large-scale building, rapid industrial expansion and centralised problem-solving. This contrasts sharply with the US's more process-oriented, rule-bound "lawyerly society".

This engineered flexibility helps explain how China weathered successive rounds of US tariffs and emerged stronger, posting a record trade surplus of $1.2 trillion in 2025. Below is a look at the forces behind...