I finished reading Breakneck this morning. some stray reflections:
- I had no idea that one-child was implemented with such cruelty, but then again, I’ve never really thought about it before. It never comes up in Western media. I knew about it but had no idea what it meant. Trying to cork biology only succeeds in creating misery.
- Left wondering what the long term implication of one child might be, it has already fomented a demographic imbalance while harming and alienating women.
- Same for zero COVID. I assumed the state was doing authoritarian state things but again I had no idea the extent of its cruelty. In the US the let-it-rip policy felt crazy but it maximized personal freedom. If it were more than a bad flu we would have been truly crippled in those first weeks and months, and the evidence that we were vulnerable but not completely fucked was enough to let the state back off and private industry to take over.
- The prominence of the chip industry cannot be overstated, because it seems like one of the US’s last strategic advances over China. The whole thing seems so delicately balanced on the ability to create the advanced silicon that goes in seemingly everything, most notably consumer electronics, military hardware, and surveillance systems.
- Only glancing references to one of the biggest differences between the US and China, the freedom of religion. Religion is how people find deeper meaning through shared belief. I’m guessing that compulsory belief in the state and party is the replacement for religion in China. I think one of the defining parts of the American experience is being able to reject or embrace the ideology of your choosing. Suppressing that seems like a mistake. It will hold people back from defining their own futures.
- The role of self-determination in society is a powerful theme.
- I really enjoyed the Robert Moses callout in the last chapter. I had already made the connections myself in chapter one. Moses would have a field day if he were transplanted to China in 1990. Imagine what he could have wrought (both the means and the ends) in a society that was pressing on the gas.