The Bar Association is having a tough time against the Institute of Engineers

Can democracy survive itself? This is one of the fundamental questions that runs beneath the surface of the excellent book recently published by Il Mulino, "A rotta di collo. Come la Cina sta plasmando il futuro", by Dan Wang. The book analyses, with great narrative skill yet historical and analytical rigour, what has happened and is happening in China over the past few decades. It also explores the direction that this vast and mysterious country is taking. Central to Wang’s analysis is the comparison with the United States, which becomes clear from the very first – and perhaps most important – chapter of the book, entitled ‘Engineers versus Lawyers’, in which Wang writes: ‘China is an engineering state incapable of stopping building, whilst America is a society dominated by lawyers, ready to block anything it can’. It is worth noting that the author is very fond of American freedoms, the guarantees of the rule of law, the valuing of the individual and their protection, and so on. However, in this vivid phrase he aptly sums up his impatience with an American – and indeed, one might well say, Western – society that is becoming a victim of its own legal framework, which now seems aimed solely at stifling any forward momentum.

In this sense, Wang harbours a deep admiration – whilst acknowledging all its problems – for this ‘engineering’ strength of China, which is devoted to construction and development, and which, with disruptive force, has made a country as vast as China modern, futuristic and, at times, certainly dystopian. A country that produces tirelessly, given that a third of everything manufactured in the world comes from there. Looking at infrastructure, Wang notes that everything in China is new, that there is a passion for building and manufacturing, whilst in America infrastructure is obsolete, partly because the procedures for approving any project cause delays to drag on indefinitely and costs to skyrocket (sound familiar?). The loss of industrial capacity in America is well known, but it is striking if one pauses for a moment to reflect on the decline of the American car industry – once a source of national pride – and the triumphant Chinese electric car industry; and it is always worth remembering that this is partly due to Europe’s absurd green policies.

The United States, of course, is not Europe; indeed, it has a booming economy and formidable innovation, led by AI, as well as significant advantages over China, such as a younger and more dynamic population. But the fundamental issue, the essential political question, remains that of openness. Can a democracy – even a powerful and highly dynamic one – survive itself? The danger, in fact, lies precisely in the legalistic drift mentioned above. Among the major Western nations, the United States has the highest number of lawyers – 400 per 100,000 inhabitants – closely followed by Italy with around 390. A country of lawyers becomes a hostage to its own procedures. It becomes hostage to the priests of the law, who must prove the value of their existence by expanding their presence into a web of law and rights that strangles all vitality. A web of pseudo-guarantees that stifle all creative impulse behind the paternalistic façade of supposed universal protection.

This is how a society becomes ossified, stifled by its own civil development, crushed by the colossal machinery of laws which, instead of guaranteeing the free development of all, guarantees only its own existence through correct procedures that stifle any drive for innovation (it is one of the many manifestations of the dreadful principle ‘fiat iustitia et pereat mundus’). It is the absolute primacy of procedure over results. Where this phenomenon occurs—namely in the West—a sense of powerlessness is inevitable. Can an entire decision-making system survive its own paralysis and impotence? A paralysis generated by the very advancement of our unyielding legal civilisation. A system of safeguards and procedures that safeguards only itself, stifling any driving force.

Let’s be clear: China, with its society of total control – perfectly exemplified by social credit, just as it was in the past by the one-child policy – cannot serve as a model. But our society of lawyers and bureaucrats is utterly incapable of looking to the future. It should be remembered, however, that the future cannot be predicted; it is shaped by the very momentum towards it. The possibility of this momentum is what matters—a forward thrust that, when completely stifled as is the case here, becomes impossible.