The Coming Conflict With China

A provocative and urgent analysis of the U.S.–China rivalry. It has become conventional wisdom that America and China are running a “superpower marathon” that may last a century. Yet Hal Brands and Michael Beckley pose a counterintuitive question: What if the sharpest phase of that competition is more like a decade-long sprint? The Sino-American contest is driven by clashing geopolitical interests and a stark ideological dispute over whether authoritarianism or democracy will dominate the 21st century. But both history and China’s current trajectory suggest that this rivalry will reach its moment of maximum danger in the 2020s. China is at a perilous moment: strong enough to violently challenge the existing order, yet losing confidence that time is on its side. Numerous examples from antiquity to the present show that rising powers become most aggressive when their fortunes fade, their difficulties multiply, and they realize they must achieve their ambitions now or miss the chance to do so forever. China has already started down this path. Witness its aggression toward Taiwan, its record-breaking military buildup, and its efforts to dominate the critical technologies that will shape the world’s future. Over the long run, the Chinese challenge will most likely prove more manageable than many pessimists currently believe—but during the 2020s, the pace of Sino-American conflict will accelerate, and the prospect of war will be frighteningly real. America, Brands and Beckley argue, will still need a sustainable approach to winning a protracted global competition. But first, it needs a near-term strategy for navigating the danger zone ahead.

From two former Beijing bureau chiefs with long experience in Asian affairs comes a clear-eyed and uncompromising look at the potentially disastrous collision course now taking shape in U.S.-China relations. Aggressively anti-American, China has nuclear weapons deliberately targeted at the United States. Recent confrontations between Chinese and American military forces indicate that China may try to take Taiwan by force. While our trade deficit rises to unprecedented heights, the powerful new china lobby shapes U.S. policy with the support of American businesses eager for a share of its booming markets. The Coming Conflict with China is required reading for those who wish to understand the tense global rivalry that is already shaping the course of the 21st century. "Plunges harpoons into the tenderest interstices of the Chinese-American relationship."--New York Times "Disturbing and provocative...There is plenty to worry about."--Wall Street Journal

One issue could lead to a disastrous war between the United States and China: Taiwan. A growing number of Taiwanese want independence for their island and regard mainland China as an alien nation. Mainland Chinese consider Taiwan a province that was stolen from China more than a century ago, and their patience about getting it back is wearing thin. Washington officially endorses a "one China" policy but also sells arms to Taiwan and maintains an implicit pledge to defend it from attack. That vague, muddled policy invites miscalculation by Taiwan or China or both. The three parties are on a collision course, and unless something dramatic changes, an armed conflict is virtually inevitable within a decade. Although there is still time to avert a calamity, time is running out. In this book, Carpenter tells the reader what the U.S. must do quickly to avoid being dragged into war.

China is hot. The world sees a glorious future for this sleeping giant, three times larger than the United States, predicting it will blossom into the world's biggest economy by 2010. According to Chang, however, a Chinese-American lawyer and China specialist, the People's Republic is a paper dragon. Peer beneath the veneer of modernization since Mao's death, and the symptoms of decay are everywhere: Deflation grips the economy, state-owned enterprises are failing, banks are hopelessly insolvent, foreign investment continues to decline, and Communist party corruption eats away at the fabric of society. Beijing's cautious reforms have left the country stuck midway between communism and capitalism, Chang writes. With its impending World Trade Organization membership, for the first time China will be forced to open itself to foreign competition, which will shake the country to its foundations. Economic failure will be followed by government collapse. Covering subjects from party politics to the Falun Gong to the government's insupportable position on Taiwan, Chang presents a thorough and very chilling overview of China's present and not-so-distant future.

For more than a century, no US adversary or coalition of adversaries - not Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, or the Soviet Union - has ever reached sixty percent of US GDP. China is the sole exception, and it is fast emerging into a global superpower that could rival, if not eclipse, the United States. What does China want, does it have a grand strategy to achieve it, and what should the United States do about it? In The Long Game, Rush Doshi draws from a rich base of Chinese primary sources, including decades worth of party documents, leaked materials, memoirs by party leaders, and a careful analysis of China's conduct to provide a history of China's grand strategy since the end of the Cold War. Taking readers behind the Party's closed doors, he uncovers Beijing's long, methodical game to displace America from its hegemonic position in both the East Asia regional and global orders through three sequential "strategies of displacement." Beginning in the 1980s, China focused for two decades on "hiding capabilities and biding time." After the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, it became more assertive regionally, following a policy of "actively accomplishing something." Finally, in the aftermath populist elections of 2016, China shifted to an even more aggressive strategy for undermining US hegemony, adopting the phrase "great changes unseen in century." After charting how China's long game has evolved, Doshi offers a comprehensive yet asymmetric plan for an effective US response. Ironically, his proposed approach takes a page from Beijing's own strategic playbook to undermine China's ambitions and strengthen American order without competing dollar-for-dollar, ship-for-ship, or loan-for-loan.

A war between China and the US would be catastrophic, deadly, and destructive. Unfortunately, it is no longer unthinkable. The relationship between the US and China, the world's two superpowers, is peculiarly volatile. It rests on a seismic fault of cultural misunderstanding, historical grievance, and ideological incompatibility. No other nations are so quick to offend and be offended. Their militaries play a dangerous game of chicken, corporations steal intellectual property, intelligence satellites peer and AI technicians plot. The capacity for either country to cross a fatal line grows daily. Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who has studied, lived in, and worked with China for more than forty years, is one of the very few people who can offer real insight into the mindsets of the leadership whose judgement will determine if a war will be fought. The Avoidable War demystifies the actions of both sides, explaining and translating them for the benefit of the other. Geopolitical disaster is still avoidable, but only if these two giants can find a way to coexist without betraying their core interests through what Rudd calls "managed strategic competition". Should they fail, down that path lies the possibility of a war that could rewrite the future of both countries, and the world. "A lifelong student of China, Kevin Rudd has become one of today's most thoughtful analysts of China's development. The Avoidable War focuses on the signal challenge posed by China's evolution to America and to world order. Can the US and China avoid sleepwalking into a conflict? Rudd offers constructive steps for the two powers to stabilize their relations." HENRY A. KISSINGER

For years, China has served as the "factory floor" for global production, driving down prices for consumers worldwide. But, unfortunately, China's rapid and chaotic industrialization has put it on a collision course with the rest of the world. The Coming China Wars was the first book to systematically cover all those conflicts: political, economic, and environmental. Now, in this new edition, Dr. Peter Navarro has thoroughly updated the entire book. You'll find new chapters on the danger posed by China's flood of defective products and contaminated food; China's dramatic military expansion and the rising threat of a "hot war"; China's space program and its profound strategic implications; China's growing suppression of human rights and free speech; and much more. The coming China Wars will be fought over everything from decent jobs, livable wages, and advanced technologies to strategic resources...and eventually to our most basic of all needs: bread, water, and air. Unless all nations immediately address these impending conflicts, the results may be catastrophic. Like the First Edition, this book demands that we think much more deeply about how to stop the coming China Wars, laying out hard choices that must be made sooner rather than later. This new edition offers even more policy recommendations, including original contributions from several of the world's most important China experts.

"The modern-day Chinese and U.S. economies have been locked in an uncomfortable embrace since the late 1970s. Although the relationship was built on a set of mutual benefits, in recent years it has taken on the trappings of an unstable co-dependence. This insightful book lays bare the pitfalls of the current China-U.S. economic relationship, highlighting disputes over trade policies and intellectual property rights, sharp contrasts in leadership styles, the role of the Internet, and the political economyof social stability. Stephen Roach, a firsthand witness to the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s and an economics expert who likely knows more about U.S.-China trade than any other Westerner, details how the two economies mirror one another. Co-dependency augments the tensions and suspicions between the two nations, but there is reason to hope for less antagonism and rivalry, the author maintains. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, both economies face structural changes that present opportunities for mutual benefit. Roach describes a way out of the escalating tensions of co-dependence and insists that the Next China offers much for the Next America--and vice versa"--