China hype is enhancing its image at home and abroad

A new book unfavourably compares a 'lawyerly' US with Beijing's engineering can-do mindset

- RAHUL JACOB

A gargantuan military parade, complete with state-of-the-art stealth carrier-based fighter jets, tanks with optical sensors and militarized robots, might seem an odd setting from which to sound bugles of peace, but China's President Xi Jinping did just that on 3 September. "Only when nations and peoples treat each other as equals and watch out for and help one another, can we safeguard common security, eliminate the roots of war, and prevent the recurrence of historical tragedies," said Xi.

The parade coincided with reviews of Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future by Dan Wang, a book that attributes the Communist Chinese leadership's ability to steer the economy ahead rapidly to the fact that most of its senior leaders are engineers. The US, by contrast, Wang argues, is weighed down by having too many lawyers and too much litigation. Wang contrasts the high-speed rail between Beijing and Shanghai that was built in a couple of years and has been running since 2011 with the planned super-fast link between Los Angeles and San Francisco, which is still years from completion. Cue alarming headlines like: 'Does the Future Belong to China?'