Mind Blogging. Mind Boggling.

No spoiler review, referencing only blurb material and commonly known facts: Written by a Chinese born Canadian journalist Dan Wang, Breakneck journeys through diverse parts of China, ranging from the urban agglomoeration sprouting up in largely rural Chonging, to the historic enclaves of Shanghai. Its premise is of China being an 'engineering' economy, chasing goals of 'building' - be it breathtaking infrastructure or products across industries for customers across the world. The book mentions this as a great merit of the Chinese development story, but also as a stumbling block: through draconian policies such as 'One Child' or 'Zero Covid'. He contrasts it with USA, which he calls a Lawyerly economy, which makes things difficult to build because the builders have to watch out for lawsuits. At the same time, there is free press and significantly better protection for human rights. Clear evidence is in the corridors of power: many of the heads of state and their advisers are lawyers in USA and engineers in China. Xi , Hu Jintao and most Politburo members are engineers. The book is concise (250 odd pages) and fast paced. It's a whirlwind tour of ideas and places, set on the strong central premise outlined above. Which leads me to wonder- if US is lawyerly and China is Engineer-y, what is India? There are no obvious answers, for India got 'economic freedom' only in 1990, so it's not immediately clear which modern profession India is skewing towards because there's significantly less number of years as a modern capitalist economy. I'd say: an 'entertainment' economy. Film industry makesup a higher %-age of GDP than China and USA: in India it's some 0.5-0.7%-age, which is highest of all top 10 economies, 2x of USA and 3-4 x of China, and also higher than South Korea which as we know is a global entertainment hub (Source chat gpt) This is despite the fact that Indians don't pay for movies and music and piracy is rampant, without which this economy would be even bigger. Music is popular, ranging from Kishore Kumar to Arijit Singh. There are movie industries across every state of India. Being a liberal, pluralist and dizzyingly diverse society with a largely free media: there are innumberable stories to be told. There is also a hoary tradition of storytelling : Mahabharata and Ramayana. And now in 2026, we had: Dhurandhar!

Labels: Books