It is my belief that China’s desire for access to islands around the world is to harvest nuclear warheads in secret away from their mainland. This way, when China is done biding their time, they will be ready to show their strength to the “enemy troops…. outside the walls.”

If one had to compare Xi Jinping with any of his predecessors, the only comparison should be with Mao Zedong. Whereas Mao’s strategy for China was based on continual revolution, Xi’s leadership strategy is based on continual corruption and the need to rid the Communist Party of it. Hence Xi’s amendment of the Constitution in 2018 to abolish the two-term limit on the presidency—if he leaves, then the corruption will only continue, or so goes Xi’s rationale.

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.

My favorite part about On China is that I felt like a fly on the wall amongst some of the world’s most powerful individuals and their conversations, as the outcome of these conversations would go on to shape geopolitics until our present day.