![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Hundred Year Marathon
4/5. I don't just read romantic suspense – I contain multitudes. This is an extended mea culpa by a long-time China thinker and government advisor explaining how he, along with a lot of other people, misunderstood Chinese intentions for decades, and misread China as pivoting inevitably towards democracy and capitalism. The book is not nearly as groundbreaking as its packaging would have you believe, as the tide of blob thinking on this had already decisively turned his way per my recollection. But it's interesting and revealing to have it all in one place, from recounting of how defectors who told a story that didn't line up with our conceptions were ignored, to a point-by-point exploration of what the world might look like with unipolar Chinese dominance. He does have a tendency to treat Chinese leadership as monolithic, even as he acknowledges a long history of factionalism, but you have to wonder how much of that is lack of access. It also never even occurs to him to think about the ways U.S. global leadership is problematic, which is not to say China would be any better (and he's right that it would probably be worse), but I suspect that the righteousness of U.S. dominance is such a basic tenet of his belief system that he doesn't even see it as a belief anymore. It's beyond the scope of this book, certainly. In any case, worth reading, though I wouldn't do so in isolation and would suggest pairing it with a few other books on the topic.
4/5. I don't just read romantic suspense – I contain multitudes. This is an extended mea culpa by a long-time China thinker and government advisor explaining how he, along with a lot of other people, misunderstood Chinese intentions for decades, and misread China as pivoting inevitably towards democracy and capitalism. The book is not nearly as groundbreaking as its packaging would have you believe, as the tide of blob thinking on this had already decisively turned his way per my recollection. But it's interesting and revealing to have it all in one place, from recounting of how defectors who told a story that didn't line up with our conceptions were ignored, to a point-by-point exploration of what the world might look like with unipolar Chinese dominance. He does have a tendency to treat Chinese leadership as monolithic, even as he acknowledges a long history of factionalism, but you have to wonder how much of that is lack of access. It also never even occurs to him to think about the ways U.S. global leadership is problematic, which is not to say China would be any better (and he's right that it would probably be worse), but I suspect that the righteousness of U.S. dominance is such a basic tenet of his belief system that he doesn't even see it as a belief anymore. It's beyond the scope of this book, certainly. In any case, worth reading, though I wouldn't do so in isolation and would suggest pairing it with a few other books on the topic.