The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower

I thought this book was going to be dry and boring, it turns out to be insightful and intriguing kept me on the edge of my seat. I read it from cover to cover in 20 days. Only time will tell if these are things to come, in the meantime learning to speak some mandarin might be wise.

The author admits being one of the American "government intellectuals" who for much of his career failed to appreciate that China is a competitor, not a "partner", of the US; this, despite being able to read and speak Chinese and despite having access to intelligence documents. It should concern us that any of our policymakers could be so misguided for so long. Then he woke up, and now wants to shout from the rooftop something a lot of us have known for quite a while: China is not our pal. The book, properly edited, would have made a nice article for the New Yorker. As it is, it is too long and says too little to justify such length. What the author fails to address is of more importance: given China's desire to supplant the US, what is the likely course it will follow, and what is the probability of its success? What should the US do in response?.

SUGGESTION: After reading this book (if you do), read "Poorly Made in China" by Paul Midler (also available on Amazon).

After reading the author's self-claimed expert in China, I found author misunderstood China's ancient philosophy：
Taoism, etc.

wu wei--authored misunderstood it aimed to resort enemies' force to defeat rivals: no, wu wei means that people should adopt harmony attitude to treat others, arriving at the goal of the peaceful country/ world.
All Chinese ancient philosophers teach us to be humble, open-mind, honesty---since each of us lives in this planet only limited time, why take arrogant attitude towards others?

China has so many poor people living in farmers, so its goal is to reduce poverty in long run. Although Mao showed off to catch up with U. K./USA in 30 years back to 1970s, that has become a great joke for its propaganda.

if author advised the sitting president using its misunderstanding and president adopts it, that is huge dangerous for USA and the world.

This book, in simple language, explains and elaborates the reasons and intention behind Chinas actions and repeated broken promises to stop ip theft. It shows how far you can go if you're good at deception and buying time. A war does not always involve guns and other weapons. Amazing read.

Just completed the reading. It is an agnozing experience. Mr. Pillsbury's confess of misreading the Chinese for decades. It is a failure of the US intelligence in epic scale. Pillsbury's diagnosis is that the US intelligence community failed to appreciate the strategic mindsets of the Chinese leaders and thus underestimated the influence of the Chinese hawks. This diagnosis maybe true, but Pillsbury failed to appreciate the most critical danger: the Chinese influence at the US soil. The most effective weapon China has is the "Chinese Market." Imagine if the Soviet Union had the lure of the "Soviet Market," could US have won the cold war? With the lure of access to the Chinese market, Beijing is able extert its influence in Washington and Wall Street. That is the true danger.

After reading the most recent books by Robert Spalding (Stealth War) and Newt Gingrich (Trump vs. China) I wrongfully assumed that Michael Pillsbury’s “The Hundred-Year Marathon” (published first) would include more of the same warnings against China’s Communist Party (CCP). By the ninth chapter, Pillsbury does mention the same trade strategies, intellectual property rights challenges, space and communication developments and general challenges to democracy that Spalding and Gingrich do. However, the first eight chapters provide something only a long-term Mandarin speaking, US government official and researcher could. On the one hand, I was glad to see a long-time practitioner and someone more fully versed in Chinese history, language and culture argue for his opinions on US-China relations. (As an Olmsted Scholar in China and former Attaché to China, Spalding has significant expertise as well). On the other hand, I’m not fully convinced. If anything, Pillsbury proves that Robert Jervis is right about misperceptions, but there appears no signal from either side that can cut through the layers of perceived deception.

Michael Pillsbury reminds his readers at least a dozen times that he was once in the “cooperation” camp. Beginning in 1971, through the combined covert operations between the US and China, increased trade relations status and entrance into the World Trade Organization, Pillsbury was an avid supporter of influencing China’s progression towards democracy. After four decades of study and statecraft, Pillsbury is convinced that the CCP has no intention of relinquishing power and perhaps never will. The “Marathon” thesis hinges on three main points: the minority aggressive “hawks” in China have an outsized influence on Chinese political thought and military strategy, China’s foreign policy is heavily influenced by Chinese history and its lessons of unconventional warfare and finally, no matter what China or the US say or do, their actions will always be interpreted as strategic positioning against the other.

China’s hawks include Liu Mingfu who wrote “The China Dream” in 2009 (pg. 28). In it, Liu mentions the “marathon” or “rejuvenation” strategy where China builds its soft power capacity slowly yet consistently. China will hide its power ambitions in order not to incur the suspicion of other competitors, developing a narrative of peaceful rise, cooperation and in some cases subordination. Pillsbury explains that China’s military sciences learn from and apply the lessons of China’s Warring States period where kingdoms and rulers engaged in cunning deception techniques, decades in the making, to usurp their neighbors’ power and eventually grow a unified Chinese empire. The intent of the marathon is not necessarily to achieve power by force but to dissolve the opponent’s power by means of irregular warfare.

The majority of Pillsbury’s book covers the lessons of the Warring States, their influence in various Chinese military circles and the relatively secretive application to foreign policy (pg. 35). Even as Pillsbury’s suspicion of China grew in the 2000’s, he was still approved travel in China where he met with a number of academics (pg. 34) and engaged in what I’ll call “bookstore sleuthing”. With his strong background in Mandarin, Pillsbury was able to note the shifts in book content and journal articles towards a strong nationalist position tied to a heavy irregular warfare strategy. As a foreigner and non-People’s Liberation Army (PLA) member Pillsbury was not allowed access to the more sensitive portions of the bookstores but Pillsbury makes observations and logical leaps based on comments by the store keeper and other Chinese academics.

My two cents, “bookstore sleuthing” can be a valuable research exercise but using it as a primary data point is either poor research or could be an honest reflection of the cultural barriers and research challenges to understanding China’s complex social and political system. As an aside, I’ve enjoyed “bookstore sleuthing” in Egypt, Tunisia, Senegal and Indonesia, among other places, noting any Wahhabi influence or opinion on Muslim Brotherhood activities. Granted, in cultures where reading is not widespread, the bookstore could be a mere bookstand and, in every case, unlike in China, the outside influence was more powerful than the weak internal government propaganda.

In addition to Pillsbury’s focus on the Warring States period strategy model, the book explores a number of other concepts that Pillsbury claims are only evident to a finely-tuned China watcher. “Sha Shou Jian” is translated as an “assassin’s mace” and symbolizes, from history, a weapon of precise targeting instead of blunt force. Pillsbury argues that China is developing a number of weapons programs capable of crippling large networks or destroying an army’s capability or will to fight with a single hit to a critical node. Another complex concept that Pillsbury uses to interpret China’s international relations is “shi”.

Shi does not have its equivalent in the English language but Pillsbury writes that it is the foundation for China’s thinking in military strategy. Shi is a general concept but in relation to strategy can be considered a confluence of psychological warfare, espionage, diplomacy and political balancing that takes nothing at face value. Combined with China’s proud heritage and a worldview as described in the “The Tianxia [under heaven] System” by one of China’s most well-known philosopher’s Zhao Tingyang, shi is not only anathema to conventional warfare but very difficult to qualify to a non-Chinese culture. In the hands and through the interpretation of China’s influential hawks, any of the above can be converted into an aggressive Chinese foreign policy.

On top of personal research, interviews, travels to China and direct involvement in US policy towards China in the last forty years, Pillsbury also bases his argument on a number of conversations he had with high-level Chinese defectors to the US. Despite the impressive research and accumulative knowledge collected by Michael Pillsbury, I was left wondering why it is that both China and the US can be left only with strategies based on misperceptions. It doesn’t help that minority scholars in China have attempted to reinterpret the entirety of the US-China history relations as one of intentional deceit on the part of the US. Recent accepted works of research in China accuse US presidents as far back as Taylor and Lincoln of orchestrating a long-term plan to stunt China’s prosperity.

However, perhaps the biggest weakness in theses such as this one by Pillsbury, despite its many merits, is that it implies that China has executed to perfection its marathon plan. Using the obscure shi concept, Pillsbury suggests that China has been in control of US-China relations since before Kissinger’s secret visit, and has yet to fail in any of its tactics. Any perceived US advantage had been carefully calculated prior on the CCP’s grand Wei Qi board. Competing countries often give their competitor more credit than they deserve, considering even their mistakes and miscalculations to be intentional power plays. Using “shi” as the cover, it would be easy to conclude that in this long-term game of unconventional warfare, China is playing to perfection. This error in conflict analysis only highlights the challenges to interpreting signals in a multicultural environment. It also exposes the dangers of confusing expert opinion with a bias towards exoticism.

As Pillsbury does admit, China wrongly believes the US to be a master at “shi”. China gives way more credit to the US than it deserves. Pillsbury should know better than to assume the same of China. What “The Hundred-Year Marathon” does make clear, however, is that the US-China relations are entrenched in a mutual misunderstanding where no amount of confidence building measures seem capable of building an ounce of trust. I still find it hard to believe that despite the millions of Chinese students that have passed through the halls of US academia (and perhaps due to the lack of US students in China), the close US interaction with China, to include military and business cooperation, few aside from Michael Pillsbury know enough of Chinese language and culture to argue the shi and sha shou jian of China’s strategy. At this rate, if China were to clash kinetically with the US, it would seem as if mutual ignorance would be the overwhelming propellant. That doesn’t sound like Sun Tzu at all.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning and thinking about how the United Sates should be dealing with China. It reviews an incredible amount of fascinating information about modern Chinese history, particularly as it relates to the Chinese
economy, military, foreign policy and culture. And it does so in a way that continues to captivate the reader's interest.

The author is currently a "hawk" when it comes to his feelings about how much China can be trusted. But he comes by his stance honestly having once been an ardent supporter of a cooperative collaboration with China.

He doesn't really suggest any detailed plan or policy recommendations for how to deal with China going forward other than to strongly suggest we look clearly at the reality of what China is doing right now which is very different from what traditional foreign policy has tended to focus on in the past. Maybe it will spur us on to thinking seriously about how we can avoid Thucydides' Trap, wherein war, more often than not, breaks out when an established power finds itself confronted and challenged by a strong, rising power. (see Graham Allison's "Destined for War")

Although a few years old at this point, Michael Pillsbury's work is a fitting summary of his professional career as a China watcher and provides recommendations not only about China's future intentions but, more importantly, how to foil these intentions which are just a relevant today as when this book was written. In the books initial chapters one wonders if the author is headed towards a rehash of his career under the guise of an international strategy / politics book, but fortunately this is not the case. Equally worrisome in the first few chapters is the author's seeming fixation with China's Warring States period and modern Chinese leaders' inspiration from this period's writings. While Pillsbury continues to explore his Warring States influence thesis through the book, as the narrative progresses his facts and assumptions coalesce and improve significantly in his favor. This book does provide very high-level advice to help the United States combat this ever quiet but scheming foe across the Pacific, but it would have been nice for these recommendations to be explored a bit more. True, though, doing so may have exceeded a book length the publisher would have supported and probably narrowed the audience a bit. I recommend this book to anyone involved with the United States military or Department of Defense, to United States politicians with stakes in foreign trade and affairs (like large city's Mayors, Governors, Representatives, and definitely Senators), and also to C-Suite leadership in companies who do business with China or are in sectors of interest to the Chinese like computing and defense. Just because we do a lot of business with China today does not make them our allies or even friends, but could very well make them a highly dangerous rival (if they're not so already).

The author reviewed decades of Sino-American relations and came to the conclusion that China has been benefiting from the American assistance in strengthening herself. Worse still, America is, in fact aiding an adversary who has been strategically hiding her ambitions to replace America as the global hegemon. This secret Chinese strategy is dubbed ‘The Hundred-Year Marathon’, dating back to the formation of the PRC in 1949. The book is filled up with evidence to demonstrate that such secret Chinese strategy actually exists. Thus, America’s constructive engagement with China, assuming that such engagement may lead to the democratization of China, is fundamentally flawed. After all, America has been misled by China into believing that the rise of China is peaceful and innocuous for America-led global order.

The secret Chinese strategy, whether it is real or imaginary, can be explicated by the realist theory in international relations. The China Dream (of national regeneration) naturally pushes China into seeking regional preponderance, finding a place safe for Chinese authoritarianism and nationalism. On the other hand, given the growth differentials between China and America, China’s power, if left unchecked, may continue to grow and exceed America’s, to the point where America is forced to accept China’s regional or even global preponderance. This must be the best scenario for China: to win the war of regional or even global domination without fighting with America. To avoid the worst from coming true, the author reminds America that she needs to be wary of the threat posed by the rising China before it is too late.

excellent read