Dan Wang - The US vs China In The 21st Century - [Invest Like the Best, EP.444]
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The best operators have a relentless focus on leverage, finding ways to multiply their impact rather than just working harder. But here's what I see happening in finance teams everywhere. Brilliant people getting buried in expense management busy work. If you think about it, you become a finance leader because you love strategic work. Modeling scenarios, optimizing capital allocation, finding the insights that actually move the business forward. But instead, you're chasing receipts and categorizing transactions. It's the opposite of leverage. This is exactly why I'm so bullish on what the team
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of Positive Sum. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Positive Sum. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of PositiveSum may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. To learn more, visit psum.vc.
My guest today is Dan Wang. Dan is a technology analyst and author who spent six years living in China studying its manufacturing ecosystem and tech development, best known for his new book, Breakneck. Dan offers the most nuanced framework I've encountered for understanding US China competition. We explore a critical asymmetry. It's far harder for The US to rebuild manufacturing capacity than for China to improve scientific research with profound implications for AI, national security, and investment returns. For investors, Dan explains the ByteDance problem, why exceptional Chinese companies
We had a series of titles, and the one that I thought that would make the most sense was Move Fast and Break People, China's Quest to Engineer the Future.
Publisher did not like that one?
Too much like Facebook, they thought. They were right. And I think Breakneck is a nice snappy title. I love that it mostly has a positive connotation. We made the vaccines at breakneck speed, we built the bridges at breakneck speed. Yeah, look at that coil of violence inside the title. I think this one worked. What about breaking people is relevant though? I think the part of China that I object to the most is that for the most part physical dynamism in building a lot of new things, bridges, subways, highways, new homes, hyperscalers, whatever else. Some problems there but mostly pretty positi
What is the can you teach us the origins of that aspect of their society?
So China's a country I call the engineering state because they wanna engineer the physical environment, the economy, the people as well. And I wanna be just pretty playful with this framework that they're a country of engineers, in part the roots are from the fact that in recent years if you take a look at the most senior leadership, the entirety of the standing committee of the Politburo had degrees in engineering. And I also draw this back to slightly older roots, if we take a look at the Chinese emperors way back in the past, let's say fifteen hundred years, two of China's biggest projects
What do you think the greatest aspect of The US system is that you have the hardest time imagining getting truly adopted in China?
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