That reminds me how people say china is a nation run by engineers and the US is a nation run by lawyers. I think both have its pros and cons but just regarding how much shit a nation gets done, my money is gonna be on engineers for sure.

That being said, I wonder if there is a case to be made that for there to be more social & policy interventions that actually are evidence-based and more rigorous, do we need to have technocrats that are not beholden to the short-termism of the democratic political system? But wouldn't they just accumulate too much power without enough accountability? Who will watch the watchers?

Chinese technocrats seem to achieve a lot when it comes to technical things, but not as much in societal context.

The "lying flat" movement seems to persist, the willingness of the young to accept 996 jobs is close to zero, and all attempts to raise the abysmal Chinese fertility rate have so far failed. The (long abandoned) One Child Policy on the other hand worked way too well and might have cost them 200 million young people.

Social engineering is hard.