Building things and breaking things in China (Summer School World Tour)

Summary

Planet Money: “Building Things and Breaking Things in China”
NPR • July 15, 2026
Host: Robert Smith | Featured Guest: Dan Wang

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Episode Overview

In this episode of Planet Money’s “Summer School World Tour,” host Robert Smith and guest professor Dan Wang (author and Hoover Institution fellow) dive deep into the forces behind China’s extraordinary economic transformation. They introduce the concept of “the engineering state,” explore the dangers of growth-at-all-costs, examine the fallout from China’s real estate crisis, and discuss how the country’s demographic challenges are shaping its economic present and future. Through case studies and first-hand accounts, the episode draws lessons for both China and the United States, offering timely insights into the costs and consequences of engineering-driven economic policy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The “Engineering State”: China’s Growth Philosophy

[02:58-04:05]

• Dan Wang advances the idea that China is deeply shaped by an “engineering state” model: its senior leadership, often trained as engineers, approach societal problems like technical challenges to be solved by building—“build, build, build.”
• Wang contrasts China's "engineering state" with America's “lawyer culture” (more reliant on laws and process than on building infrastructure quickly).
• Quote:
  “What do engineers like to do? They like to build, build, build... They can also be awfully literal minded at treating society as if it were just another building material.” —Dan Wang [03:05]

2. Case Study #1: Real Estate Boom and Bust

[06:49-17:06]

• The episode revisits an earlier Planet Money story to trace how China’s engineering fervor fueled a massive, and reckless, real estate boom.
• Desmond Shum, a well-connected developer, recounts the wild west era—deals sealed with lavish bribes ("tributes of respect"), enormous logistics projects, and surreal displays of wealth (e.g., private jets flown empty so moguls could play cards together).
• As property became THE investment of choice, speculation went rampant:
  "Over just a couple of decades, China went from basically not letting people own private property to 90% of people owning their own homes." —Emily Feng [13:39]
• The 2017 Party Congress marked a turning point when Xi Jinping declared, “houses are made for living in, not for speculating.” The following years saw crackdowns and tighter regulations ("three red lines"), culminating in the collapse of giants like Evergrande.
• By 2026: “There are an estimated 90 million empty unsold or unfinished homes in the country.” —Robert Smith [17:27]

3. Socialism with Chinese Characteristics & Malinvestment

[17:49-21:52]

• Wang explains the hybrid model of "socialism with Chinese characteristics": shifting, pragmatic, and ultimately determined by the Communist Party’s strategic needs.
• Quote:
  “Ultimately, what that means is that the Communist Party will at all points determine whether it needs to be more state driven or market driven, and that it’s the party’s pleasure to decide.” —Dan Wang [18:25]
• Smith and Wang discuss “malinvestment”—resources funneled into unnecessary or underused prestige projects (e.g., Guizhou province’s 15 airports and 50 of the world’s tallest bridges).
• Quote:
  “Should one province...have 50 of the world’s tallest bridges? Is that some sort of economic success or...bureaucratic lack of creativity?” —Dan Wang [19:54]
• Even as cities dazzle with futuristic trains, basic needs (like clean tap water) remain unmet.
  “It is still one of these puzzles to me that China...has not built enough sanitation plants such that people are able to drink the tap water.” —Dan Wang [21:26]

4. Case Study #2: China’s Demographic & Youth Crisis

[23:45-32:16]

• China’s “demographic bust”: Fertility rates have fallen to around 1.0, with the population expected to halve by 2100 and median age rising sharply.
• The youth unemployment rate in major cities is staggeringly high—21% at one point; adjusted to about 17% in 2026 after a change in government calculation methods.
• Personal story: Azi, a young Beijing woman, secretly quits her unfulfilling job, reflecting the malaise among China’s “lying flat” youth.
• Structural factors:
  • One-child policy means many urban youth inherit real estate, live at home longer, and feel emotional/social pressure to succeed.
  • Dizzying growth created sky-high expectations; with growth slowing, white-collar jobs have dried up and many young people feel hopeless or disconnected.
• Quote:
  “It’s not a great idea, just as a society, to have young people feeling hopeless, you know, with no direction, in a funk. That’s never good in China.” —Nancy Chan [31:08]
• Parents struggle to understand—the generational gap is sharp.

5. State Response to Demographic Decline

[33:46-36:01]

• The Communist Party treats declining births as an engineering problem, deploying “neighborhood committees” to prod women about fertility.
• However, China maintains a threadbare social safety net and relies more on regressive taxes (like consumption taxes), rather than robust welfare spending.
• Quote:
  “This is the sort of socialism that has a pretty low tax regime and a pretty threadbare social safety net.” —Dan Wang [36:04]
• Wang likens today’s China more to a 1950s American Republican ideal than to modern European socialism.

6. Lessons for the U.S.

[37:25-38:35]

• Smith asks what the U.S. can learn from China's example.
• Wang’s advice: “Build, build, regulate.” The U.S. should emulate China’s infrastructure ambition—more homes, more manufacturing—but with regulatory guardrails.
• Quote:
  “China’s agenda is to build, build, build its way out of every problem. And in my view, what the United States should do is to build, build, regulate.” —Dan Wang [38:00]
• Smith riffs: “We can call it capitalism with American characteristics.” [38:31]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Americans are crazy. Chinese are crazy. These are two countries full of these crazy hustlers.” —Dan Wang [02:08]
• “The rise and fall of the real estate sector in China...seems to contain the worst excesses of capitalism and socialism wrapped up in one disaster.” —Robert Smith [17:49]
• "They are likely to face a lot of emotional pressure to find a job...‘you’re being spoiled...what’s wrong with you?...Let us tell you how we made it, how poor we were.’" —Nancy Chan [29:31]
• “...no property tax. China has never quite gotten around to being able to impose a property tax...a lot of China’s taxation is funded by consumption taxes, which are a regressive form of taxation.” —Dan Wang [36:04]
• “Being too literal minded about building too much across the country, but also treating people as if they were building materials to be torn down and remolded as the state wishes.” —Dan Wang, defining "engineering state" [39:08]
• “Whatever the Communist Party says is correct.” —Dan Wang, defining "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" [39:52]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:58] The engineering state explained
• [06:49] Case study: Real estate boom (Desmond Shum’s story)
• [14:55] Xi Jinping’s turn against real estate speculation
• [17:49] Post-bust: Evergrande collapse; “socialism with Chinese characteristics”
• [19:28] Malinvestment defined and discussed
• [21:06] Futuristic infrastructure vs. unmet daily needs
• [24:00] Demographic decline and youth unemployment
• [25:00] Azi’s story: young people “lying flat”
• [28:12] Impact of one-child policy and inherited wealth
• [31:08] Societal risks of youth malaise
• [33:46] State attempts to encourage births
• [36:04] China’s thin social safety net, regressive taxes
• [38:00] Wang’s lesson: “Build, build, regulate”
• [39:08] Key concept review: engineering state, malinvestment, socialism with Chinese characteristics

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Concluding Concepts and Vocabulary

[39:08-39:57]

• Engineering state: Overemphasis on visible infrastructure; treating people as materials for grand projects.
• Malinvestment: Investing in unnecessary or unproductive projects.
• Socialism with Chinese characteristics: The Party’s policy flexibility to toggle between socialism and market capitalism as needed.

---

Final Takeaway

China’s rise has been driven by an engineering mindset—rapid, large-scale building, sometimes at the expense of real human needs or prudent economic planning. Now facing the complexity of overbuilt cities, malinvestments, and a generation of disaffected youth, China offers both a cautionary tale and selective inspiration for the West: ambitious building must be paired with responsive governance, market signals, and attention to lived realities.

Robert Smith’s closing quip:
“We can call it capitalism with American characteristics.” [38:31]

Transcript

[Dan Wong]

This is Planet Money from npr.

[Robert Smith]

The world is filled with big economic ideas that could help us live better here in the United States. So this summer we've decided to collect them all. Ville Coleman and bienvenue to Planet Money Summer School World Tour, the only international educational experience that doesn't have a carry on weight limit. Bring the extra shoes. All summer long, we are traveling through the seven continents and looking for economic lessons that can help us understand the place we call home. There are hundreds of ways to create jobs, keep prices low and make us all richer or screw up a perfectly good economy. Let's learn from them. Today's journey, China and the perils of an engineering Economy. I'm Robert Smith. No country on earth has seen the kind of economic growth that China has. Over the last 50 years. China has become the factory to the world, a grand experiment in central government planning and personal ambition. Along the way, China has created enormous wealth and pulled 800 million people out of extreme poverty. It has been a wild trip. In 2012, Planet Money traveled to China to marvel at the progress.

[Train Announcer]

Ladies and gentlemen, it is a great

[Robert Smith]

pleasure to have you on board the

[Train Announcer]

Beijing Shanghai Express train.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Ladies and gentlemen, this is not just any train. This is part of China's new bullet train network, the largest in the world. Tops out at over 300 kilometers per hour. That's 200 miles an hour. It makes Amtrak look primitive.

[Robert Smith]

Of course, now China is a rich country facing rich country problems, bubbles bursting, young people resentful. And we can learn a lot from China about how to handle the despairs of success. And our guest professor today says we should pay attention because our two countries have the same economic soul.

[Dan Wong]

Americans are crazy. Chinese are crazy. These are two countries full of these crazy hustlers.

[Robert Smith]

Dan Wong is a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the author of China's Quest to Engineer the Future.

[Dan Wong]

It's no accident that the future is being invented in Shenzhen and in Silicon Valley and through Wall street as well as Beijing. And I think that more countries around the world need to appreciate sort of this crazy household energy that both the US And China have.

[Robert Smith]

Dan, we consider you the perfect person to be our guest professor today. You were born in China. You've lived in both China and the US and in in Canada, I should say. And you're about to travel back to China now and you've developed this fascinating theory about how China grew so fast and why that's creating problems. Now, what is the theory?

[Dan Wong]

China is a country I call the engineering state because at various points in the recent past, the entirety of the senior leadership have had degrees in engineering. What do engineers like to do? They like to build, build, build, whether that is a hydraulic dam or a coal plant or solar, wind, nuclear, a lot of homes, roads, bridges, high speed rail everywhere. They can also be awfully literal minded at treating society as if it were just another building material.

[Robert Smith]

I love this idea of the engineering state that every problem is solvable with enough money, manpower or duct tape. And it isn't just a metaphor. I should say in your book you talk about how the people in charge of the government have actual engineering degrees, chemical engineering degrees, mechanical engineering.

[Dan Wong]

Oh, hydraulic engineering. And the prior general secretary built a dam. The present general secretary had his undergraduate in chemical engineering. And these are people who sort of treat society as if it were just another hydraulic flow to be shifted around and blocked and re channeled as they

[Robert Smith]

wish, I should say. Dan Wong is going to be our guide on today's show. And in his book he pointed out that the United States has more of a lawyer culture than an engineering culture. But most US Politicians couldn't build a dam, but they would know how to use the law to slow things down. So China builds the high speed trains. The US Goes to court for years over where the tracks should go. That's the difference. Today we'll have two case studies about the perils of the Chinese engineering state, and Dan will return with lessons we can take from it. It's easy to get jealous of all the growth in China, but every boom has a bust growing inside of it. Rapid economic growth can lead to more debt and more risk and more chaos. It's a cautionary tale. Ahead after the break.

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[Robert Smith]

NPR Planet Money Summer School World Tour has arrived in Shanghai and our professor for the grand tour is Dan Wong from the Hoover Institution.

[Dan Wong]

Hey Dan, it's great to be in class.

[Robert Smith]

Friends, anyone who's Been to China is just immediately struck by how much they can build, how fast they can build. As you've said, build, build, build. You see the neon covered skyscrapers, highways, bridges, factories as big as cities. Do you have one image that sticks with you as a symbol of what they can accomplish.

[Dan Wong]

In the summer of 2021, my two friends and I cycled this really mountainous province called Guizhou, China's fourth poorest province in the mountainous southwest. And what I saw were these very tall bridges that were some of the highest in the world. And afterwards, I looked up some of these bridges and I found that this one province of Guizhou has three. 50 of the world's tallest bridges. 50 of the world's tallest bridges, not China's highest bridges. This province of about 40 million people, again, one of the poorest in China, has something like 13 airports. There you have the engineering state.

[Robert Smith]

Okay, Keep this image in your mind. The bridges, the airports, build, build, build. As you listen to our first case study, which is the perfect illustration of the dangers of growth when there's money to be made, no one thinks maybe we should slow down a bit. It's an Excerpt from a 2023 Planet Money episode about the boom and bust of China's real estate sector. Nick Fountain and Emily Feng take us behind the scenes of China's Go Go years to meet a man who got very rich in the early 2000s from that push to build more bridges, airports, and logistics. And then after, we'll talk to our professor about the big lessons we can take from this case study.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

If we're going to talk to anybody about those Go Go years, it should be this one property developer who wrote a tell all book about his.

[Emily Feng]

Yeah, and that guy is Desmond Shum. Desmond was an insider's insider during the Go Go years. And talking to him is a bit like getting a glimpse through a keyhole into this period of extreme growth and also extreme wealth creation in China.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

So first, I don't know the easy question. Who are you and what do you do?

[Desmond Shum]

Who am I? Actually, that's never an easy question. That's one, that's actually the hardest question when people ask me touche.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

In simple terms, Desmond was a real estate developer. He had a business with his then wife, Whitney.

[Emily Feng]

Whitney was friendly with the wife of the second in command of the country, the premier of China. And Desmond and Whitney used those political connections to make deals with local governments.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Yeah, Desmond told us the story of one of their most famous deals. It shows just how wild these growth years were. The story starts in 2003, when Desmond and Whitney saw this piece of land with great potential next to Beijing's airport, they came up with a kind of audacious idea. They wanted to build a huge logistics hub with millions of square feet of warehouses and import and export processing centers. The airport hub would be the first of its kind.

[Desmond Shum]

It was a bit crazy. We know it's, we think it's going to be profitable because it's, you know, it's a monopoly business. How every monopoly business got to be profitable. But at the same time, we know zippo about the business.

[Emily Feng]

Since this was a time of economic growth in China, Desmond knew that having the only air cargo logistics hub in Beijing could mean massive profits because essentially they could get a little richer every time goods came in and out of Beijing's airport.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

He hires consultants, hires a staff, and he does a lot of wining and dining. To hear Desmond tell it, at this point in China's economic development, it was rational to engage in casual bribery on a day to day basis because there was so much money to be made off these deals.

[Emily Feng]

Desmond said he would routinely spend thousands of dollars buying officials dinner. Apparently there was $1,000 soup that people couldn't get enough of, made of a part of a fish called an air bladder.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

You write that at one point you just like went to Hong Kong and bought like half a dozen watches of 10 to $20,000 value and you just had them as bribes for the future.

[Desmond Shum]

Well, as tribunal, respect for the future.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Oh, sorry, I keep calling them bribes, but sure, tribules of respect.

[Desmond Shum]

Because really, I mean, for the people we deal with, like, you know, 10,000 is nothing. It's like nothing for them. It's like, you know, in the community we move in. Those are really tributes of respect. If I give them anything less, they're there. Think, what do you think of me? I'm just like a beggar of the street.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Desmond, I can't tell if you're being a little facetious or what. Like do you now see these as bribes or do you still.

[Desmond Shum]

I mean, you know, obviously in the west we see it's obviously the bribe, but in the community we move in the situation of the time, nobody actually, seriously, nobody considered their vibe. Was it just because it's not going to, it's not people not going to do something for you because you give them $10,020 watch. In the community we were moving, according

[Narrator/Interviewer]

to Desmond, those bribes got way bigger than the watches.

[Emily Feng]

Yeah. One amazing story he tells, it's from when they were building that cargo logistics hub. And Desmond needs a sign off from

[Narrator/Interviewer]

the customs chief, who tells him over dinner, sure, I'll help you out, but I'm gonna need the following amenities for my 300 person workforce. Regulation size basketball, badminton, and tennis courts, an indoor gym, a 200 seat theater, a banquet hall, and a karaoke bar.

[Emily Feng]

And Desmond agreed to it. He needed the custom head's approval. It added $50 million to the project.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

But once the logistics hub got built, Desmond says they sold it for a profit of close to $200 million. Desmond and his wife got very rich. They also started building a fancy hotel with a fancy condo project. And they became part of this new, extremely rich elite.

[Emily Feng]

But he was small fry compared to the really big property developers who were amassing wealth in China at the time. People like this one man he met named Xu Jiayin.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Yes. The founder and head of this property development company. It's called Evergrande.

[Emily Feng]

And while Desmond was giving out $10,000 watches, he says Xu Jiayun's bribes were next level. Like according to Desmond, Xu Jaiying offered to buy Desmond's wife Whitney a ring worth more than a million dollars, presumably for her political connections. Desmond says she declined.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Was he a fun person to hang out with?

[Desmond Shum]

Not really. I mean, no.

[Emily Feng]

Desmond tells this one story of a trip that he took with Xu Da Yin that shows just how enormously wealthy these property developers were becoming. The story goes that he and Xu Jiayin were thinking about investing in a new members only wine club in Beijing with a few other rich families.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

And they decide to go to France to try some wines. They initially planned on each taking their own private jet, but right before they take off, they decide, actually, we want to play cards. So they end up flying all three private jets to France. They play cards on one, and the other two fly empty. What game do you play?

[Desmond Shum]

It's a very common Chinese card game,

[Emily Feng]

Desmond, for people who don't speak Chinese. What does du dizu mean?

[Desmond Shum]

Struggle the landlord.

[Emily Feng]

Struggle against the landlord.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

You were playing a card game called struggle against the landlord on a private jet with two of the biggest real estate developers in China.

[Desmond Shum]

Yeah, that was the game.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

If there was a top to China's real estate boom, it might have been this moment. Two private jets flying empty en route to France, next to one full of real estate moguls playing struggle against the landlord.

[Emily Feng]

Yeah, these folks were getting enormously wealthy because over just a couple of decades, China went from basically not letting people own private property to 90% of people owning their own homes. And there was so much demand, prices kept rising and real estate started to seem like a great investment. So people were sometimes buying second or

[Narrator/Interviewer]

third homes now for the crisis. And Emily, you actually witnessed the exact start of this chapter. You were a reporter in Beijing at the time. Who were you working for?

[Emily Feng]

2017? I was still working for the Financial Times. It's this lovely little salmon, coed British newspaper. And it was my first ever party congress that I was covering. So that was really exciting.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Yeah, the party congress. This happens every five years, and it's where the Communist party gets together to decide the future of China.

[Emily Feng]

Yeah. And it's at this party Congress in 2017 that the head of the party, Xi Jinping, says something very important that will change China's entire real estate market.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Xi Jinping starts his big speech. It's a long one, but deep in the speech, he drops the bombshell.

[Emily Feng]

Yeah, he says one line about how houses are made for living in, not for speculating. And that is a very clear, directed criticism of people who are just buying apartments for investment but not actually living in them.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

This is a very big deal because essentially she is saying all that building that real estate developers have been doing, much of it was unproductive, not good for the party, not good for China. Cut it out.

[Emily Feng]

And so that's when you see this sea change of tighter regulation on all parties, on local governments, on banks, on private developers, on regular investors to limit them on how many apartments they can buy, because basically, he's saying there's too

[Narrator/Reporter]

much of this stuff.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

But problem was, Xi Jinping could only do so much at once. And all these different parts of the economy were relying on more apartments, more

[Emily Feng]

growth, starting with regular people. Many people were still waiting on their apartments to be built and delivered, because the way it works in China is you often prepay for your apartment before it's even constructed.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Also, the property developers, with all their debt, they had to keep selling new apartments to pay off those debts.

[Emily Feng]

And of course, local governments needed the building to keep happening too, because a good portion of their revenues came from property and land sales.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

So for a few years after Xi Jinping's big speech, China's real estate market just keeps ramping up until 2020, when the government decides, we gotta slow this market down. And so the central government draws a line in the sand. Well, three of them, actually.

[Emily Feng]

Yeah, the policy is called the three red lines. And the three red lines are pretty hard caps on how much debt a developer can have, specifically on three different measures of debt. And if a developer's above those debt levels. No more loans for them.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

This was the turning point. After decades of rapid growth, property prices, especially in smaller cities, started to drop. Evergrande, the company whose founder, Xu Jiaying, liked to give out million dollar rings, well, by 2021, Evergrande had hundreds of billions of dollars in debt. Yes, hundreds of billions of dollars. And they started to miss payments.

[Robert Smith]

Nick Fountain and Emily Feng from 2023. Let's jump now to 2026 to finish the story. Robert Smith here. Evergrande did indeed default on its debt. Its founder recently pled guilty to fraud. And China is mired in the deaths right now of a real estate bust. There are an estimated 90 million empty unsold or unfinished homes in the country. Desmond Shum, our developer and McKinney occasional briber, escaped before the crash fully happened. He moved to the United Kingdom. I want to bring back our professor Dan Wong here. Hey, Dan, have you ever tried the air bladder soup?

[Dan Wong]

I have never tried the air bladder soup. I'm not on Desmond's level here.

[Robert Smith]

The rise and fall of the real estate sector in China is an interesting case study because it seems to contain the worst excesses of capitalism and socialism wrapped up in one disaster. They didn't regulate enough when the real estate bubble was forming, and then they probably popped the bubble too quickly when it was at its top. There's a phrase the Chinese use, Dan, to describe this particular mixture of economic systems. Why don't you give it to us now?

[Dan Wong]

Socialism with Chinese characteristics.

[Robert Smith]

The socialism with Chinese characteristics. What is the difference between these two models?

[Dan Wong]

If you're a socialist country, probably what that means is that the state commands quite a lot of the means of production, owning a lot of things like telecommunications or oil and gas or airlines. If you're a market economy, it means that the state does not get involved in these sort of things. So ultimately, how is this tension resolved? Well, by adding in this magical phrase with Chinese characteristics. And ultimately, what that means is that the Communist Party will at all points determine whether it needs to be more state driven or market driven, and that it's the party's pleasure to decide. And so this is where China has this very strange economy by any standard, that it is substantially state controlled. It is also in many ways more capitalist than the United States. In my view, China is practicing capitalism red in tooth and claw, in some cases much more effectively than the Americans are. And ultimately, this is the Communist Party's prerogative to determine whether it wants to be more state driven or market driven at any given Moment.

[Robert Smith]

There is a term that we use often when states are talking about intense control of the economy, depending on how they do it. And that term is malinvestment. And malinvestment is when the resources get misallocated. The money and the time and the resources go into one area of the economy that is perhaps not the one that is most needed. It is the one that's decided in a Central Committee. How has that been a problem for China?

[Dan Wong]

Let's go back to the province of Guizhou, China's fourth poorest province, in which I cycled through in 2021. As I mentioned, Guizhou has something like 15 airports. And when I took a look through some of these databases tracking Chinese flights, some of these airports have only a couple of flights per week. Does not great utility capacity utilization here. Should one province, though it is very mountainous, have 50 of the world's tallest bridges? Is that some sort of economic success or is that more an indication of bureaucratic lack of creativity? I would say it is perhaps more of the latter. And so when you have engineers who are perhaps more invested in building engineering projects for their own sake, for the value of the prestige, we can start to question whether what the Guizhou residents most need is yet another ginormous bridge or hey, wouldn't they like some perhaps better healthcare? How about that? How about some better cash transfers so that they are able to live a little bit better? How about better schooling for their kids? And so this is a way in which the Communist Party is much more invested in big prestige power projects rather than delivering for the people.

[Robert Smith]

Well, you know, I experienced this when I took my kids to Shanghai and we got on the high speed maglev train. It goes 186 miles per hour. It just blows your mind to be on this train. And then when we get to our hotel, I have to tell them, oh yeah, don't drink the water here. Be very careful about this.

[Dan Wong]

It is still one of these puzzles to me that China, though it is doing all sorts of amazing engineering projects, has not built enough sanitation plants such that people are able to drink the tap water. This is how I understand China to be much more interested in doing things that look amazing through the lens of an influencer that is shooting a vertical video, but it is not necessarily paying that much attention to what the people actually need.

[Robert Smith]

I guess this goes back to that big idea of the engineering state. Someone has to direct the engineering energy at some particular problem that needs to be solved. But without the market to signal what people want, China has to sort of rely on, I don't know, the guts or maybe the whimsical of its party leadership. So coming up next on Planet money, what do people want in China? Our next case study on Planet Money summer school is about the economics of young people today in China. What does the future look like when you've already built the future? Amazing looking cities and bridges. After the break.

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[Robert Smith]

We are back on our world economic tour. This time we take to the streets of Beijing. Before we hear our case study. Dan Wong, our professor du jour, says we should keep in mind another bust that China is dealing with right now, a demographic one.

[Dan Wong]

People in China just don't want to have kids. The total fertility rate across the entire country, according to official statistics in China, is 1.0, which means that the average family, the average woman is having one child in her lifetime. The United nations demographic body expects that China's population will be cut in half by the year 2100. Now 700 million people by the year 2100, it's still a pretty substantial population, will still be bigger than the United States, but it will be also a very old population in which the median age, I believe, could be something like the early 60s. And it is just kind of hard to imagine a society functioning in which half the population is over 60s. But that is the demographic future really staring at China.

[Robert Smith]

It's an economically terrifying one and it's a lot of pressure to put on young people in China. Our next case study is from Planet Money's Indicator, hosted by Waylon Wong and Darian Woods. It comes from 2023 in Beijing.

[Narrator/Reporter]

About six months ago, Azi quit her job and she didn't tell her parents.

[Azi]

So I had to go out on time at 8 o' clock every morning and then appear downstairs in our house

[Narrator/Reporter]

wearing her work clothes and a face full of makeup. Each morning, Ahza pretended to walk to her old bus stop and then she would keep walking. She'd get breakfast at KFC or McDonald's. Then around 10, she'd go to a cafe like the one we met her in, and it's here where she would usually take out her pencils and start drawing.

[Azi]

Drawing is the best way to pass the time, in my opinion, because you'll spend most of the time drawing without even knowing it.

[Narrator/Reporter]

AZI is one of tens of millions of young Chinese people who don't have jobs and aren't in school. In June, the urban youth unemployment rate hit 21%, and that's way up from pre pandemic time times. It's 1 in 516 to 24 year olds who have looked for a job over the last few months but don't have one.

And the numbers are so disconcerting that a few weeks ago the Chinese government put a pause on publishing them, citing the need for a review. But this vast number of unemployed people is getting a lot of scrutiny because what it means has big implications for the Chinese economy and the world.

Adzu always wanted to be a cartoonist. Growing up, she couldn't quite get that job out of college, but she worked instead as a content editor for an entertainment news publication. And initially she loved it.

[Azi]

My job was so great. I was very happy every day and felt amazing when I produced good content. When I looked at the results of our output, I thought to myself, well done. It's worth all the effort.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Well, it didn't last. Azah found herself hopping from job to job and ended up in a job that didn't give her a lot of joy.

[Azi]

There was pressure from various targets, which made my boss quite stressed, and he passed that stress on to us. Our work life was like being on a horror cruise every day.

[Narrator/Reporter]

So earlier this year, she quit. But when deciding whether or not to take on a new job offer, she reflected on work life in general in China. At any workplace in China, there's a schedule called 996, and that means starting the day at 9am, finishing at 9pm, six days a week. And although this is technically illegal, very long hours are still common in China,

and Aza was no exception. She'd had to take a lot of Overtime, it was just too much for her. And so she told her parents she was still working and meanwhile worked on her hobbies instead. She grew plants, made necklaces, painted.

[Azi]

I'd start a new hobby every time I've become unemployed. I'd see if I can find something I really like and if it's possible to make that on my work.

[Narrator/Reporter]

And you might be thinking, how can she afford this? Well, Adzi doesn't have to pay rent or a mortgage, which is perhaps more common for young people in urban China than you might think.

[Nancy Chan]

They're almost certainly going to be an only child on both sides of their family.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Nancy Chan is a professor of economics at Northwestern University. She points to China's one child policy. This brutal enforcement of long term contraception, sterilizations, and huge fines for having more than one kid. The policy was in place in China from 1980 to 2016, which means that most people Arti's age are only children

[Nancy Chan]

and they'll have grandparents who are from the city. So what this means is that they're going to be inheriting a lot of real estate from their grandparents, not to mention, you know, maybe savings that their parents have been accumulating over time.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Nancy was born in Shanghai in the late 70s and as a kid moved to the US with her family. But she goes back often and has younger cousins who have struggled with China's changing economy. As China's growth has slowed, entry level jobs in law, finance, tech and government have dried up. White collar jobs are incredibly competitive.

[Nancy Chan]

It's the high paying, high skilled jobs that have been shrinking in numbers. And these are what the current cohorts of college graduate students have been trained for. What they were expecting, what they wanted, they're not there.

[Narrator/Reporter]

So a lot of young people like Aza end up not working at all. That said, Nancy says they are likely to face a lot of emotional pressure to find a job.

[Nancy Chan]

They have their parents and their grandparents saying, you're being spoiled, like, why are you not more successful? We've given you everything, right? What's wrong with you? Let us tell you how we made it, how poor we were. Even people with college education at different points in time were probably shoveling manure on a farm.

[Narrator/Reporter]

And that's why Adze kept the truth from her family. The China that her parents grew up in was just so different to hers.

[Nancy Chan]

I mean, China grew at 10% per year for almost two decades, but for some urban areas, we're going like at 20, 30% per year.

[Narrator/Reporter]

And to illustrate what that kind of turbocharged Growth looks like Nancy used the example of where she was as a young kid in the French Concession district of Shanghai.

[Nancy Chan]

I lived in an extended family with around 10 people in three rooms, probably around 300 square feet. We had a flush toilet, so we were considered really rich.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Wow. That was the marker of relative wealth at the time.

Yeah.

[Nancy Chan]

I felt really special, people living in those neighborhoods. Now they're living in skyscrapers surrounded by Louis Vuitton and Prada stores. There are Lamborghini car dealers left and right. I'm emphasizing this because the places that had the highest expectations about the future, they're being hit with unemployment.

[Narrator/Reporter]

It's kind of a whiplash feeling.

[Azi]

Yeah.

[Nancy Chan]

And so I think that makes us concerned about the social ramifications.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Nancy says these young people are both spoiled, in her words, and also miserable at the same time. There's this huge gulf between expectations and what kind of jobs are available.

[Nancy Chan]

It's not a great idea, just as a society, to have young people feeling hopeless, you know, with no direction, in a funk. That's never good in China.

[Narrator/Reporter]

It's translating into a potentially huge problem for the economy.

[Nancy Chan]

There is a real concern that not working those lost years of work right out of college can have serious negative impact on your lifetime productivity later on, which is going to impact the aggregate productivity of the economy as a whole.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Aza has a different view.

[Azi]

Work is one of the only things that you. You can choose by yourself. And if you can't find your footing at work, then you don't have much meaning.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Aza eventually got tired of all the questioning from her parents and lying to them. So she decided to confess. While her mother was watching tv, Aza said she hadn't been working.

[Azi]

They said that's okay. They very calmly accepted it. So I think they already knew.

[Robert Smith]

That was Darian woods and Waylon Wong from back in 2023 on the indicator planet Money's Daily Show. If you aren't listening, you're missing out. By the way, the Chinese government changed the way it measured the youth unemployment rate. It sounds better now. In 2026, with the new statistics, it is around 17% unemployment. Still a devastating number of people looking for work. After the break, our professor returns to tell us how an engineering state deals with a low birth rate.

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[Robert Smith]

We are back with our summer school professor Dan Wong. What do you hear when you talk to young people in China today? We have this go, go country that feels like it has this great future ahead of it. And it seems like some of the young people are not excited by that.

[Dan Wong]

You know what I hear, Robert? I hear American kids. I hear that there's a lot of people who are slackers who are trying to just have some fun. That's not following these dictates of the state that are interested in trying drugs that would be legal in the state of California. Chinese kids who are graduating from universities today have a pretty clear sense that they are no longer living in the boom era of the Chinese economy, which probably petered out roughly 10 years ago, that they are not so excited about the economic future.

[Robert Smith]

And the Chinese state, I know, like the engineers, they are look at this like an engineering problem. The demographics and the young people. And so they have these programs in place to encourage women to start having more children. They're looking at this as a supply problem for the factories of the future. Is that working? Because if you, if you feel despair about the future, you're not going to have more children.

[Dan Wong]

The Communist Party is doing what the Communist Party does best, trying to plan a lot of the future, in this case, women's childbearing intentions. And the Communist Party has sent these neighborhood committees, which are formally the lowest level of the Communist Party, to go up to young families to ask about their childbearing intentions. And in my book, I quoted a woman who complained that her neighborhood committee has been harassing her to ask about her menstrual cycle. And in particular, she was upset that shortly after marriage, she said that her parents asked her only once whether or not she plans to have kids, whereas the Communist Party has already asked her six times.

[Robert Smith]

You know, it's interesting. Usually when we talk about socialist nations, they tend to have a really, like, expansive safety net, meaning government programs to support people who are unemployed, who are poor, with economic hardships, programs that support the elderly and mothers and fathers who choose to have children and stay home. But China ranks pretty low on these metrics when you compare it to other developed countries. What happened to a socialist country that doesn't provide that level of support?

[Dan Wong]

Welcome to socialism with Chinese characteristics.

[Robert Smith]

There you go.

[Dan Wong]

And this is the sort of socialism that has a pretty low tax regime and a pretty threadbare social safety net. And China has all of these strange things about the taxation system. For example, no property tax. China has never quite gotten around to being able to impose a property tax, or it is a pretty marginal property tax. And a lot of China's taxation is funded by consumption taxes, which are a regressive form of taxation because the poor pay a relatively higher share of the taxes than the rich. And roughly speaking, among the Western European countries, they spend about 30% of their annual income on retail distribution. The United states spends about 20% of its annual income. China spends about 10%. In many ways, I think that the present Communist Party feels like sort of the Eisenhower Republican Party run America in the 1950s in which there is this giant emphasis on manufacturing, there's skepticism of immigration, there's a very fierce commitment to traditional gender roles. And I think this is the sort of state that probably Eisenhower and Reagan would recognize more than any of the socialist European countries today.

[Robert Smith]

I love this hot take China as a US Conservative's dream of a centrally planned and yet sort of capitalist country. It's probably why these days when we hear our politicians talk about China, you can hear outrage occasionally, but often you hear jealousy, this sense of like, why can't we grow that fast? Why can't the US Be the manufacturer to the world? Dan, we're doing one last thing in each of these episodes. If the US could take one trick from the Chinese economy, one lesson that might help us in the United States, what should that lesson be?

[Dan Wong]

China's agenda is to build, build, build its way out of every problem. And in my view, what the United States should do is to build, build, regulate. I think we need to build more homes. We need to build a lot more of infrastructure. And I also think that we need to build a lot more of the manufacturing base back because this is sort of one way to get ourselves out of these choke points that other countries around the world can exert over the United States. And this is also a way to invent the future.

[Robert Smith]

We can call it capitalism with American characteristics.

[Dan Wong]

I'd love to have some of that.

[Robert Smith]

Thank you so much for coming in to be our professor today. Dan Wong, you may not know this, but our listeners are sort of front row students. They like to take notes and do well on the test. And we do indeed have a test at the end of the planet Money summer school semester, an online quiz. Everyone should take it. And so in order to prepare for the test we like to do a few concepts, a few vocabulary words to help everyone get that a. All right, we're going to go over them now. The first one is engineering state. What is that, Dan?

[Dan Wong]

Being too literal minded about building too much across the country, but also treating people as if they were building materials to be torn down and remolded as the state wishes.

[Robert Smith]

We talked about one of the dangers of the engineering state and state control and central planning is mal investment. What is mal investment?

[Dan Wong]

Too many roads and bridges to nowhere.

[Robert Smith]

Too many airports or, you know, in economic terms, state investment that doesn't go where it's actually needed and will do the most good. Okay, I'm going to be impressed if you can do the following one in just one sentence because you wrote a whole book about it. Socialism with Chinese characteristics. What does that mean?

[Dan Wong]

Whatever the Communist Party says is correct.

[Robert Smith]

There you go. I hope you enjoy your trip there. They're gonna like the last answer.

[Dan Wong]

Oh, yeah. Always for sure.

[Robert Smith]

Dan Wong is a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the author of China's Quest to Engineer the Future. Speaking of books that I recommend, if you like Summer School, you will love our book Planet Money, a guide to the economic forces that shape your life. That and Breakneck Dance book are available wherever you get your books. Planet Money Summer School is produced by Sofia Polica Carr and edited by Alex Goldmark. It's fact checked by Ciara Juarez. The show is engineered by Maggie Luthar. I'm Robert Smith and this is npr. Thanks for listening. Ladies and gentlemen, gather up your bags and your children. We're now boarding for the Planet Money

[Narrator/Reporter]

flight to Busia, Kenya.

[Robert Smith]

Join us for a special tour of this small town that taught the world

[Narrator/Reporter]

a better way to do economics. We'll be taking off next Wednesday.

[Azi]

Don't be late.

[Train Announcer]

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