The senior body of China’s Communist Party is the Politburo’s standing committee. Making up its 9 members are 8 engineers, and 1 lawyer. This is not a relic of the past: 2007 saw the appointments of 1 petroleum and 2 chemical engineers. The last American president to train as an engineer was Herbert Hoover. Why do different countries favor different professions? And why are some professions so well represented in politics?

The presence of so many engineer-politicians in China goes hand in hand with a certain way of thinking.

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