In The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower, Michael Pillsbury—a seasoned China scholar and former U.S. defense official—puts forth a provocative thesis: that China’s rise is not accidental, but rather the calculated fulfillment of a century-long plan to displace the United States as the dominant global power.
At the heart of this assertion lies the idea of a secretive Chinese cabal, quietly steering the nation through revolution, reform, and modernization toward a singular geopolitical endgame: global supremacy.
Pillsbury’s claim rests on an expansive reading of Chinese statecraft, drawing from classical military texts like Sun Tzu’s Art of War, Mao Zedong’s guerrilla warfare tactics, and the opaque deliberations of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He argues that deception, patience, and the cultivation of false narratives—what Chinese strategists call shi—are the fundamental tools of Beijing’s global ascent. In his view, China has cloaked its ambitions under the guise of peaceful rise, while systematically exploiting American openness, technology, and markets to fuel its ascent.
But such a unifying vision of Chinese strategy, stretching across dynastic collapses, civil wars, ideological upheavals, and radical policy shifts, invites skepticism. It is difficult, almost fantastical, to imagine figures as ideologically incompatible and historically antagonistic as Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and the architects of post-Tiananmen economic liberalization acting in concert toward a shared geopolitical goal. China’s twentieth century was not one of strategic continuity, but of rupture and reinvention. The fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912, the brutal Japanese occupation, the Communist Revolution, the Cultural Revolution, and the massacre of 1989 are not the signposts of a seamless strategic doctrine but of a nation in existential flux.
What is more plausible, and perhaps more unnerving, is that China’s ambition to reshape the global order coalesced not a century ago, but in the past two to three decades. The accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001, the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, the development of alternative global institutions like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and the recent push for technological self-reliance through "Made in China 2025" are all markers of a country that has moved from introspection to assertion.
By 2024, one could argue that China has achieved substantial success in its bid to rival, if not yet replace, American power. It is the world’s second-largest economy, a technological contender in fields like AI and quantum computing, and an increasingly influential force in global diplomacy. Yet, this rise does not necessarily portend a linear path to hegemony. China’s internal contradictions—demographic decline, environmental pressures, an aging workforce, authoritarian overreach—may prove as limiting as America’s political polarization and strategic overextension.
Pillsbury’s portrayal of China as a master of geopolitical deception is not without merit. He writes: “Chinese literature on strategy from Sun Tzu through Mao Tse-tung has emphasized deception more than many military doctrines… the prevalent payoff of deception for the Chinese is that one does not have to use one’s own forces.… Surprise and deception are assumed to be vital.”
Yet it is worth noting that deception is not a uniquely Chinese virtue. The United States, too, has wielded misinformation, covert operations, and strategic ambiguity to shape the global order. From the Cold War’s psychological games to present-day cyber operations, Washington has been no stranger to the darker arts of statecraft.
What seems increasingly clear is that the age of unipolar dominance—first enjoyed by Britain, then by the United States—is drawing to a close. Whether or not China ascends to fill the void, the future will not belong to a single superpower. Instead, we are entering a world defined by competitive multipolarity, where regional powers, digital empires, and ideological blocs jostle for influence without any one of them reigning supreme.
The Hundred-Year Marathon is, ultimately, a gripping and controversial account. Its greatest value may not lie in its central thesis—too conspiratorial and reductive to account for China’s complex evolution—but in its warning to American policymakers: strategic naivety comes at a cost. Whether China is running a marathon or simply learning to sprint, the race for influence is undeniably underway. And in this new geopolitical landscape, no player is without deception, and no power is invincible.
No comments:
Post a Comment