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304 pages, Hardcover
Published August 16, 2022
“Empires have no interest in operating within an international system,” writes Henry Kissinger. “They aspire to be the international system.” That’s the ultimate ambition of Chinese statecraft today..."
"...The prevailing consensus, in Washington and abroad, is that an ascendant Beijing is threatening to overtake a slumping America. “If we don’t get moving,” said President Biden in 2021, “they’re going to eat our lunch.” Countries in every region, a veteran Asian diplomat reports, are “making preparations for a world” in which China will be “number one.”
China is certainly acting like it wants to run the show. The CCP is laying plans to create a Sino-centric Asia and reclaim what it sees as China’s rightful place atop the global hierarchy. Beijing is using an impressive array of military, economic, diplomatic, technological, and ideological tools to protect the power and project the influence of a brutal authoritarian regime. The United States, for its part, is trying to defend a liberal international order it has anchored for generations and prevent Beijing from making the twenty-first century an age of autocratic ascendancy. America and China are thus locked in a fierce global struggle.
It has become conventional wisdom in Washington—a rare point of agreement in a bitterly divided capital—that the two countries are running a “superpower marathon” that may last a century..."
"Our core argument in this book is that the conventional wisdom is wrong on both points. Americans urgently need to start seeing the Sino- American rivalry less as a 100-year marathon and more as a blistering, decade-long sprint. That’s because China will be a falling power far sooner than most people think..."
"Why write a book that warns about a coming conflict with China during a year in which Russia started a major war in Europe? The simple answer is that Russian aggression in Ukraine has made the successful containment of China all the more imperative.
If China were to follow in Russia’s footsteps and expand violently in its region, Eurasia would be engulfed in conflict. The United States would again face the prospect of a two-front war, only this time against nuclear-armed aggressors fighting “back to back” along their shared border.
America’s military would be overstretched and, likely, overwhelmed; America’s alliance system might come under unbearable strain. The postwar international order could collapse as countries across Eurasia scramble to defend themselves and cope with the knock-on effects of majorpower war, including economic crises and mass refugee flows. A world already shaken by Russian aggression could be shattered by a Chinese offensive."
"This book offers a contrarian take on China by explaining why that country is in more trouble than most analysts think, why that trend makes the coming years so perilous, and how America can prepare for the storm that is about to strike. We also challenge the received wisdom about the origins of major war and the rise and fall of great powers..."
"...China’s predicament offers good news and bad news for America. The good news is that, over the long run, the Chinese challenge may prove more manageable than many pessimists now believe. An unhealthy, totalitarian China won’t effortlessly surge past America as the world’s leading power.
We may one day look back on China as we now view the Soviet Union—as a formidable foe whose evident strengths obscured fatal vulnerabilities. The bad news is that getting to the long run won’t be easy. During the 2020s, the pace of rivalry will be torrid, and the prospect of war will be frighteningly real..."
"America’s task, in this decade, is to prevent a peaking China from imposing its will on the world. Yet strategic urgency must be followed by strategic patience: Washington’s reward for getting through the danger zone could be a ticket to a longer struggle in which America’s advantages prove decisive only over a generation or more. That may seem like a meager prize for a country that likes quick, decisive solutions. But it is surely worth winning, in view of the perils that America and the world confront today."