New Delhi, Oct. 14 -- China's Quest to Engineer the Future, Dan Wang describes two distinct approaches to development. China, he argues, has risen to its current global stature on the back of an engineering mindset-the unshakeable belief that social problems can be overcome by solutions we build. America, by contrast, has focused on governance, letting the rule of law and process adherence guide its development pathways. Seen this way, today's bipolar order is a contest between China's engineering state and America's lawyerly state.

China owes its approach to the fact that the political leadership in China has always been composed of STEM-trained technocrats. As a result, it treats infrastructure projects as tools of governance and execu...