Dan Wang

Dan Wang is a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover History Lab. He studies China’s technology capabilities, having lived and worked in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai for nearly a decade. His research focuses on semiconductors, clean technology, infrastructure, and the ways China builds and implements technology domestically and abroad.

Previously, Wang was a fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center and a technology analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics. His essays have appeared in in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, the Financial Times, New York Magazine, Bloomberg Opinion, and The Atlantic, and he is a frequent guest on podcasts including Odd Lots and The Ezra Klein Show.

Wang’s annual letters, known as “secure transport of light,” examine the year in technology and globalisation, tracking developments in fiber-optic networks, semiconductors, and global trade. His debut book, Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future (W. W. Norton, 2024), draws on years of field research and personal observation. The book explores China as an “engineering state” focused on building infrastructure, industrial capacity, and technological systems. It also compares it to the United States, which he describes as a “lawyerly society” that relies on regulation and legal frameworks.

Raised in Canada with deep family roots in Yunnan, Wang has lived in more than a dozen cities across North America, Europe, and Asia. He draws on these experiences to write and speak about China’s technology, policy, and the practical challenges of its development.