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Dan Wang

Writer and researcher on China, technology and industry; author of Breakneck, research fellow at Stanford, known for a widely read annual letter.

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What they believe

The bold line is korrents’ wording; the quote is theirs. These one: what they wrote before what they said aloud, one per source, newest first.

All 41 beliefs and 1 change of mind, on korrents

Everything, newest first — across every channel.

Sources

18 March

Dan Wangx.com

28 February

Dan Wangx.com
  • governmentAmerica

24 January

Dan Wangx.com
  • America

19 January

Dan Wangx.com

15 January

Dan Wangx.com

1 January

Dan Wangx.com
Dan WangKorrents

From one piece 2025 letter 3 beliefs · danwang.co

Dan WangRecommends
  • Lovedrcmnd.app

    The Red and the Black

    Their words

    I last picked up Stendhal’s The Red and the Black a decade ago. I wasn’t certain that the novel, which I keep calling my favorite, would hold up on re-reading.

    danwang.co

  • Likedrcmnd.app

    The Wall

    Their words

    Marlen Haushofer’s The Wall is short and engrossing. It was deemed a “Cold War” novel by the German press when it was published in 1963.

    danwang.co

  • Likedrcmnd.app

    The Eastern Front

    Their words

    Nick Lloyd’s The Eastern Front covers the clashes between Imperial Germany and the Russian Empire as well as the Austro-Hungarians against the Italians and the Serbs. Whereas the western front was essentially static throughout the whole war, the east was characterized by the sort of maneuver warfare that most generals had expected to fight.

    danwang.co

+ 5 more
  • Mixed onrcmnd.app

    Austria 1867-1955

    Their words

    John Boyer’s Austria 1867-1955 offers parts of the answer, though not in a conceptually organized way. It’s a work of history written for specialists, which means that the narrative serves the footnotes rather than the other way around.

    danwang.co

  • Their words

    1913: The Year Before the Storm presents a whimsical slice of Central Europe. Art historian Florian Illies collates fragments of leading figures month by month, diary-entry style.

    danwang.co

  • Their words

    Nan Z. Da’s The Chinese Tragedy of King Lear also has an experimental form. Da is a professor of literature at Johns Hopkins who emigrated from Hangzhou before she was 7.

    danwang.co

  • Lovedrcmnd.app

    Piranesi

    Their words

    I’d like to read more experimental books like this one. Susannah Clarke’s Piranesi is a glittering jewel.

    danwang.co

  • Their words

    There is something deeply satisfying with reading out loud phrases like: “for in mere breath did it come, and into darkness it goes, and in darkness its name is covered.” Though King James is iconic, Robert Alter better conveys overall the literary power of the Hebrew Bible.

    danwang.co

5 December 2025

Dan Wangx.com

21 November 2025

Dan Wangx.com

12 November 2025

Dan Wangx.com

20 October 2025

Dan Wangx.com
  • hoover.org

25 September 2025

Dan Wangx.com
  • immigrationAmerica

18 September 2025

Dan Wangx.com
  • tomwestgarth.substack.com

    management

15 September 2025

Dan Wangx.com

9 September 2025

Dan Wangx.com
  • nytimes.com

    ChinaAmerica

2 September 2025

Dan Wangx.com
  • writingpolitics

25 July 2025

Dan WangKorrents

From one piece Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future 3 beliefs · danwang.co

23 January 2024

Dan WangKorrents

From one piece 2023 letter 9 beliefs · danwang.co

+ 6 more

18 July 2023

4 March 2023

Dan WangBlog
  • 2022 letter

Dan WangChanged their mind

1 January 2022

Dan WangBlog
  • 2021 letter

    Chinadesign

1 January 2021

Dan WangBlog
  • 2020 letter

The whole feed →

Beliefs

  • Korrents What they believe 41 beliefs, 1 changed mind — each backed by an exact quote.

    Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.

    Recent

    • China trails the United States in AI capability, but only by a small margin rather than years.
      On AI, China is behind the US, but not by years. There's no question that American reasoning models are more sophisticated than the likes of DeepSeek and Qwen. But the Chinese efforts are doggedly in pursuit, sometimes a bit closer to US models, sometimes a bit further.

      2025 letter Said 1 Jan 2026

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      ChinaAmerica

    • Chinese technological success has become the rule rather than the exception.
      I believe that Chinese technological success is now the rule rather than the exception.

      2025 letter Said 1 Jan 2026

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

    • Silicon Valley's intolerance of dissent functions as a kind of soft Leninism.
      Startups don't need dissent; they want workers who can grind until the network effects kick in. VCs don't like dissent, showing again and again that many have thin skins. That contributes to a culture I think of as Silicon Valley's soft Leninism.

      2025 letter Said 1 Jan 2026

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      startupsventure capitalSilicon Valley

    Show 38 more
    • China is an engineering state that solves problems by building and acting, while the United States is a lawyerly society whose legal system mostly blocks action, for good and bad.
      China is an engineering state, which brings a sledgehammer to problems both physical and social, in contrast with America's lawyerly society, which brings a gavel to block almost everything, good and bad.

      Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future Said 25 Jul 2025

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      ChinaAmerica

    • The dominance of lawyers in the American elite has turned the United States into a litigious vetocracy.
      The dominance of lawyers in the American elite has helped transmute the United States into a litigious vetocracy.

      Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future Said 25 Jul 2025

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      America

    • A country cannot remain a great power if its system serves mainly the wealthy and well-connected.
      America cannot remain a great power if it is so committed to a system that works well mostly for the wealthy and well-connected.

      Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future Said 25 Jul 2025

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      America

    • The West's biggest blindspot is repeatedly underestimating China's speed and capabilities.
      I worry however that one of America’s superpowers is to spin up yarns to reduce the urgency for action.

      2023 letter Said 23 Jan 2024

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      ChinaAmerica

    • China's industrial lead was manufactured by deliberate state industrial policy rather than by market forces alone.
      The foundations of China’s success in EVs were built a decade ago, when the state decided to bet on batteries, and then bought up a lot of the mines for these metals.

      2023 letter Said 23 Jan 2024

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      Chinabatterieselectric vehicles

    • Xi Jinping is mostly right about the problems he identifies, and his government's brute-force solutions reliably make them worse.
      The trouble with Xi Jinping is that he is 60 percent correct on all the problems he sees, while his government’s brute force solutions reliably worsen things.

      2023 letter Said 23 Jan 2024

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      government

    • Most of China's economy may be dysfunctional, but the small part that works spectacularly well is what threatens American interests.
      While 50 percent of China’s economy might be dysfunctional, the 5 percent that’s going spectacularly well is pretty dangerous to American interests.

      2023 letter Said 23 Jan 2024

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      ChinaAmerica

    • China will not fade away, so America has to reform itself for a protracted contest with a peer competitor.
      It is that China will not fade away, meaning that America must reform itself for a protracted contest with a peer competitor.

      2023 letter Said 23 Jan 2024

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      ChinaAmerica

    • China will remain the world's largest manufacturer for many years yet, whatever production moves to India and Vietnam.
      Though companies are relocating production to India and Vietnam, China is going to remain the world’s largest manufacturer for many more years to come.

      2023 letter Said 23 Jan 2024

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      China

    • American shipbuilding capacity has collapsed to a rounding error beside China's.
      China built half of the world’s ships (by gross tonnage) in 2022, while the US had 0.2 percent of capacity: in practice, this meant that while China builds hundreds of new ships a year, the US builds three to five.

      2023 letter Said 23 Jan 2024

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      ChinaAmerica

    • It is the party's censorship, not any lack of talent, that has made China a cultural underperformer beside Japan and South Korea.
      As I’ve written in each of my previous letters, the party’s strangling of free expression has rendered China into a pitiful underperformer relative to Japan and South Korea in the creation of cultural products.

      2023 letter Said 23 Jan 2024

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      ChinacensorshipJapan

    • Xi Jinping has formally demoted economic growth from being China's top task.
      And Xi Jinping has formally de-prioritized economic growth as China’s top task.

      2023 letter Said 23 Jan 2024

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      China

    • America treats its inability to build and to admit skilled migrants as mysteries to be endured rather than problems to be solved.
      So it feels to me that the US is treating its deficiencies — an inability to build stuff or create a functional system for admitting high-skilled migrants — as mysteries to be endured rather than problems to be solved.

      2023 letter Said 23 Jan 2024

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      immigrationAmerica

    • China's leadership views large language models as offering little economic upside and posing significant political risk, similar to social media platforms.
      I suspect the Chinese leadership views large language models as something akin to social media platforms: technologies with little economic upside and significant political risk.

      China notes, July ’23: on technological momentum Said 18 Jul 2023

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      LLMsChinasocial media

    • Semiconductor manufacturing is a more technologically challenging endeavor than rocket science.
      Nonetheless, I think that chips are much more challenging than rockets.

      China notes, July ’23: on technological momentum Said 18 Jul 2023

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      semiconductors

    • China will substantially close its strategic technology gaps, including in chips and aviation.
      So I continue to hold the view that China will mostly patch up its strategic deficiencies, including in chips and aviation.

      China notes, July ’23: on technological momentum Said 18 Jul 2023

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      Chinaaviation

    • The Chinese state today is an autocratic regime occasionally capable of economic pragmatism, not a technocratic regime that occasionally lapses into Marxism.
      And on balance I believe we should think of the Chinese state today as an autocratic regime that is occasionally capable of economic pragmatism rather than a technocratic regime that slips occasionally into Marxist faults.

      2022 letter Said 4 Mar 2023

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

    • China's problem is not too little state capacity but too much of it.
      Second, China’s problem is usually not too little state capacity, but too much.

      2022 letter Said 4 Mar 2023

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      China

    • The Chinese state's famous capability is largely spent putting out fires it started itself.
      First, it increasingly resembles a crew of firefighters who bring extraordinary skill to dousing fires that they themselves ignited.

      2022 letter Said 4 Mar 2023

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

    • Partnering with Russia was a strategic mistake for Beijing, because it is the United States and Europe that hold the markets and the technology.
      Beijing decided to partner with Russia, an imperial aggressor, when it is the US and Europe that have markets and technology.

      2022 letter Said 4 Mar 2023

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      EuropeChinaRussiaAmerica

    • China's technological competitiveness is grounded in manufacturing capability rather than in scientific research.
      Whereas the US has a track record of doing great science, China’s technology competitiveness is grounded in manufacturing capabilities.

      2022 letter Said 4 Mar 2023

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      China

    • Doing the science first does not win the industry: America laid the scientific groundwork for solar and Chinese firms ended up making the cells.
      Consider the solar industry, for which the US laid the scientific groundwork, only for Chinese firms to make all the photovoltaic cells.

      2022 letter Said 4 Mar 2023

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      solarAmerica

    • China's cultural and intellectual output to the world is far smaller than its economic weight.
      Never has any economy grown so much while producing so few cultural exports.

      2021 letter Said 1 Jan 2022

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      China

    • China's central government has a stronger record of pulling off politically difficult reforms than any other developing country.
      It has displayed a stronger record of reform than any other developing country, as the leadership keeps pulling off politically-difficult tasks: shrinking the state sector, re-orienting the economy towards export-led growth after WTO accession, and so on.

      2021 letter Said 1 Jan 2022

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      governmentChina

    • Beijing deliberately rejects comparative advantage and targets a high level of manufacturing output for its own sake.
      The leadership is targeting a high level of manufacturing output, rejecting the notion of comparative advantage.

      2021 letter Said 1 Jan 2022

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      China

    • Beijing diagnosed the dangers of financialization earlier than the United States did.
      Beijing diagnosed the problems with financialization earlier than the US, where the problem is now endemic.

      2021 letter Said 1 Jan 2022

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      ChinaAmerica

    • America's pursuit of efficiency left it with neither the factories to make more goods nor the logistics to import them.
      The US focus on efficiency has revealed the brittleness of its economy, which has neither the manufacturing capability to scale up domestic production of goods nor the logistics capacity to handle greater imports.

      2021 letter Said 1 Jan 2022

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      America

    • Technological capability has to be practised to be kept: a country that stops making something forgets how.
      We should think of technology as a living product, which has to be practiced for knowledge even to be maintained at its current level.

      2019 letter Said 1 Jan 2020

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

    • Process knowledge — the experience of actually making things — matters more than tools or blueprints.
      I believe that the hard-to-measure process knowledge is more important than the more easily observable tools and IP.

      2019 letter Said 1 Jan 2020

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

    • Because Chinese workers make most of the world's goods, they accumulate more of the world's technological learning than anyone else.
      Today, Chinese workers produce most of the world’s goods, which means that they engage more than anyone else in the technological learning process.

      2019 letter Said 1 Jan 2020

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

    • Assembling other people's products was never mere assembly: it trained the engineers who now drive the marginal innovation in hardware.
      First, even if most of the workforce learns little, a few thousand line engineers become the world’s greatest experts in electronics assembly.

      2019 letter Said 1 Jan 2020

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      innovation

    • Putting research and manufacturing in the same place shortens the loop in which industrial knowledge circulates.
      These hubs allow for tight connections between R&D and manufacturing, shortening the circulation of knowledge in a production loop.

      2019 letter Said 1 Jan 2020

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

    • Western firms that kept the high-value work at home are betting the workforce they trained cannot absorb the technology, and that bet has already lost several times.
      That bet has failed at least in technologies that include high-speed rail, shipbuilding, and telecommunications equipment.

      2019 letter Said 1 Jan 2020

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

    • No country can keep a key technology to itself for long, because the knowledge leaves with the people who hold it.
      And it’s difficult for any country to monopolize a key technology over the long term.

      2019 letter Said 1 Jan 2020

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

    • Only a handful of countries can do high technology at all, because industrial capability is path-dependent and the initial conditions are very hard to get right.
      One lesson is that technology is highly path-dependent.

      2019 letter Said 1 Jan 2020

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

    • The skills America picked up while becoming an industrial power are what set it up for a century of technological leadership.
      The skills US workers learned in the process of becoming an industrial giant helped set the US up for technological leadership over the rest of the century.

      2019 letter Said 1 Jan 2020

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      America

    • Consumer internet is not the highest form of technology, and treating it as such pulls talent away from the industries that matter more.
      I find it bizarre that the world has decided that consumer internet is the highest form of technology.

      2019 letter Said 1 Jan 2020

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

    • Judged against its market size and its stage of development, Chinese industry has underperformed rather than overperformed.
      In fact, I suspect that Chinese firms should be considered underperformers as a whole.

      2019 letter Said 1 Jan 2020

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

    Beliefs others hold too

    • The West's biggest blindspot is repeatedly underestimating China's speed and capabilities. 2 hold this
      I worry however that one of America’s superpowers is to spin up yarns to reduce the urgency for action.

      2023 letter Said 23 Jan 2024

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      ChinaAmerica

    • China's industrial lead was manufactured by deliberate state industrial policy rather than by market forces alone. 2 hold this
      The foundations of China’s success in EVs were built a decade ago, when the state decided to bet on batteries, and then bought up a lot of the mines for these metals.

      2023 letter Said 23 Jan 2024

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      Chinabatterieselectric vehicles

    • American shipbuilding capacity has collapsed to a rounding error beside China's. 2 hold this
      China built half of the world’s ships (by gross tonnage) in 2022, while the US had 0.2 percent of capacity: in practice, this meant that while China builds hundreds of new ships a year, the US builds three to five.

      2023 letter Said 23 Jan 2024

      Full record — everyone who holds this →

      ChinaAmerica

    All 41 beliefs and 1 change of mind →

What is a korrent?

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Recommends rcmnd

  • rcmnd What they recommend 8 things — each backed by an exact quote.

    Compiled by rcmnd.app, not by them: the quotes are theirs, and each links to the post it was copied from.

    Recent

    Show 5 more
    • Liked 1913: The Year Before the Storm
      1913: The Year Before the Storm presents a whimsical slice of Central Europe. Art historian Florian Illies collates fragments of leading figures month by month, diary-entry style.

      danwang.co 1 Jan 2026

      What others say about 1913: The Year Before the Storm →

    • Mixed on Austria 1867-1955
      John Boyer’s Austria 1867-1955 offers parts of the answer, though not in a conceptually organized way. It’s a work of history written for specialists, which means that the narrative serves the footnotes rather than the other way around.

      danwang.co 1 Jan 2026

      What others say about Austria 1867-1955 →

    • Liked The Eastern Front
      Nick Lloyd’s The Eastern Front covers the clashes between Imperial Germany and the Russian Empire as well as the Austro-Hungarians against the Italians and the Serbs. Whereas the western front was essentially static throughout the whole war, the east was characterized by the sort of maneuver warfare that most generals had expected to fight.

      danwang.co 1 Jan 2026

      What others say about The Eastern Front →

    • Liked The Wall
      Marlen Haushofer’s The Wall is short and engrossing. It was deemed a “Cold War” novel by the German press when it was published in 1963.

      danwang.co 1 Jan 2026

      What others say about The Wall →

    • Loved The Red and the Black
      I last picked up Stendhal’s The Red and the Black a decade ago. I wasn’t certain that the novel, which I keep calling my favorite, would hold up on re-reading.

      danwang.co 1 Jan 2026

      What others say about The Red and the Black →

    All 8 recommendations →

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