I read much of this on the high-speed train to Beijing — cranes out the window the whole way. Dan Wang's contrast between an engineering-led China and a lawyer- or professional-politician-led West felt plausible sitting on that track; whether it's the whole story, I don't know, but it matched what I've seen of process versus building.
Some observations stuck hard, especially railways and cement — the scale of pouring and laying reset how I think about "infrastructure". Wang is not a cheerleader either; when he writes about applying engineering logic to people, I believed him more because he'd already convinced me on the bridges side.
Very interesting book for anyone trying to understand why things here look the way they do.