Review of The Hundred-Year Marathon by Michael Pillsbury
My personal copy of The Hundred-Year Marathon
Category: Non-fiction, history, international diplomacy, national & international security
Page Count: 244 (Paperback Edition)
Year of Publication: 2015
Rating: 5/5
10-Word Summary: China’s secret strategy to replace America as the global superpower.
About The Hundred-Year Marathon
Everything you think you know about China is probably a lie; they are a foe—not a friend. That previous sentence captures the tone as laid throughout Michael Pillsbury’s book.
For background, Pillsbury is the director of the Center for Chinese Strategy at the Hudson Institute and has served in eight presidential administrations. He has also held senior positions in the Defense Department and is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. So it’s no surprise that in the opening pages, Pillsbury notes that the CIA, the FBI, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and an agency of the Defense Department reviewed the book prior to publication to ensure that no classified information would be leaked to the public. In sum, Pillsbury knows what he’s talking about when he writes about China.
The book opens up with a chapter on the false assumptions people have about China, such as that China is on the road to democracy, that China wants to be like the USA, and that China hawks are weak. He reinforces this point in the following chapter by describing the Chinese strategy during the Warring States period, lessons that include inducing complacency to avoid alerting your opponent, manipulating your opponents’ advisors, being patient and waiting decades or longer to achieve victory, avoiding being encircled by others, and never losing sight of shi: a Chinese concept that roughly means “the alignment of forces” so as to take advantage of the timing of events for the opportunity to strike or to take advantage of the enemy.
Every chapter that follows these first two chapters highlights China’s strategic use of the above strategies from its opening up with the USA beginning with Mao Zedong until the present day. Pillsbury argues that the USA is merely a tool for China, China’s ba, roughly equivalent to the word “tyrant,” that China will use to wipe out its rivals until eventually it, too, will be wiped out like the tyrants of the Warring States period. The most reliable intelligence gained from Chinese spies confirm this suspicion. As a matter of fact, Chinese history is being rewritten to cast the USA as China’s archvillain. Abraham Lincoln was nothing but an imperialist, and Saddam Hussein was, in reality, the voice of reason—or so goes the narrative portrayed by China’s government.
The Chinese government is also hard at work to prevent foreign journalists from covering any news that would be unfavorable to China in the international community, and Chinese journalists are hard at work doing their best to establish pro-China views overseas. China is also building their military strategy, what Pillsbury calls the “Assassin’s Mace,” to defeat the superior American military. This strategy includes the strengthening of cyber warfare, supporting the use of biological warfare, and building up the equipment used to destroy American satellites. Given that the USA still holds the military superiority in terms of technology and strength, China needs every asymmetrical advantage to win a hypothetical war between the two superpowers.
Pillsbury concludes the book discussing what a China led world order would look like in the year 2049, assuming China is successful at supplanting the USA as the world’s leading superpower—a future where internet censorship is normal, a future with significant air pollution and contamination, not to mention cancer villages, and a future where China proliferates weapons to America’s enemies for profit. It’s a grim thought experiment that, quite frankly, is upsetting to people such as myself who take advantage of free speech daily by simply logging on to the internet and browsing its contents without worrying that the government is keeping me from reading or watching things that go against their narrative.
What I Liked
What was striking to me was how much I couldn’t help but believe the author. Michael Pillsbury himself claims, on more than one page, that he too wanted to believe in China. Here is Pillsbury in his own words:
“Like many working in the U. S. government, I had heard the democracy story for decades. I read about it in countless books and articles. I believed in it. I wanted to believe in it. My faith was shaken in 1997, when I was among those encouraged to visit China to witness the emergence of “democratic” elections in a village near the industrial town of Dongguan. While visiting, I had a chance to talk in Mandarin with the candidates and see how the elections actually worked. The unwritten rules of the game soon became clear: the candidates were allowed no public assemblies, no television ads, and no campaign posters. They were not allowed to criticize any policy implemented by the Communist Party, nor were they free to criticize their opponents on any issue…. Violations of these rules were treated as crimes.” (Pages 8-9)
There were also more shocking revelations made by Pillsbury, claims such as top colonels in the PLA who were promoted shortly after publishing a manuscript titled Unrestricted Warfare advocating for the use of biological and chemical weapons to defeat stronger nations such as the USA. Keep in mind that The Hundred-Year Marathon was published five years before the outbreak of COVID-19, so there’s some food for thought.
Should You Read The Hundred-Year Marathon?
The ideal reader for this book is someone who is becoming skeptical about the future of Sino-American relations but is not quite over the hump. This book may just push you over edge and into the anti-China camp.
