Dr Michael Pillsbury is currently the American Director of
the Center on Chinese Strategy at the Hudson Institute. Over his career he has
served in the Pentagon under two administrations, at the RAND Corporation, and on
the staffs of four Senate committees, and he is without doubt one of America’s foremost
China experts. His 2015 book The Hundred-year Marathon: China's Secret
Strategy to Replace America As the Global Superpower draws on a great
deal of material, public and classified, to argue that China is pursuing a
long-term grand strategy to replace America as the global superpower within
another 40 years while keeping America not only complacent and unaware of the
threat, but in fact using American technology and education and finance to do
so.
This is an important book to read to try to understand why
people like U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer and national security
advisor John Bolton have been leading the effort to stem the worst of China’s trade
abuses. As Pillbury points out, American leaders have a long history of
completely misreading China, though Chinese leaders seem to understand us, and
our weak points, pretty well. This book might help to redress the balance.
Those who would prefer a YouTube video summary can get a pretty good one here. It runs about 18 minutes.
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