The Hundred-Year Marathon {Book Review}

The Hundred-Year Marathon {Book Review}

In today’s world, it seems many countries are fighting for the top spot of the Super Power nations list. Between nuclear weapons, oil and gas, and even labor have all come to play on the world’s stage of politics and power. The book, The Hundred-Year Marathon, by Michael Pillsbury, discusses the particular struggle between America and China.

One of the U.S. government’s leading China experts reveals the hidden strategy fueling that country’s rise – and how Americans have been seduced into helping China overtake us as the world’s leading superpower.

For more than forty years, the United States has played an indispensable role helping the Chinese government build a booming economy, develop its scientific and military capabilities, and take its place on the world stage, in the belief that China’s rise will bring us cooperation, diplomacy, and free trade. But what if the “China Dream” is to replace us, just as America replaced the British Empire, without firing a shot?

Based on interviews with Chinese defectors and newly declassified, previously undisclosed national security documents, The Hundred-Year Marathon reveals China’s secret strategy to supplant the United States as the world’s dominant power, and to do so by 2049, the one-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic. Michael Pillsbury, a fluent Mandarin speaker who has served in senior national security positions in the U.S. government since the days of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, draws on his decades of contact with the “hawks” in China’s military and intelligence agencies and translates their documents, speeches, and books to show how the teachings of traditional Chinese statecraft underpin their actions. He offers an inside look at how the Chinese really view America and its leaders – as barbarians who will be the architects of their own demise.

Pillsbury also explains how the U.S. government has helped – sometimes unwittingly and sometimes deliberately – to make this “China Dream” come true, and he calls for the United States to implement a new, more competitive strategy toward China as it really is, and not as we might wish it to be. The Hundred-Year Marathon is a wake-up call as we face the greatest national security challenge of the twenty-first century.

This book is written by a man who was “waist deep” in politics, schemes, and government going back to the Nixon administration. So when he releases a book about how China has changed and is rising as a global power to be contended with, perhaps we should give his ideas some merit.

The book covers a lot of history of policy, both how the US has interacted and aided China for our own benefit as much as their own. And it’s possible that they no longer want to be “helped” but instead rise over the US as a world power.

It isn’t filled with finger pointing or earth shattering warnings, but it does explain where the author is coming from, why he feels the way he does based on his personal experiences, and how he feels the US should change their strategy when dealing with China.

You can purchase the book, The Hundred-Year Marathon, at Amazon. 

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