The One Hundred Year Marathon, by Dr. Michael Pillsbury 


The following Excerpts of Michael Pillsbury’s book The One Hundred Year Marathon are drawn from an article by Wendell Minnick, Asia Bureau Chief for Defense News (link below)

Pillsbury advocates that Americans must finally come to grips with a clear understanding of what China has in store for us.  This must begin by facing down false assumptions America has with China.

False Assumption #1

Engagement Brings Complete Cooperation

For four decades now, China watchers believed that "engagement" with the Chinese would induce Beijing to cooperate with the West on a wide range of policy problems. Trade and technology were supposed to lead to a convergence of Chinese and Western views on questions of regional and global order. Both have failed.

False Assumption #2

China is on the Road to Democracy

There is no evidence China is moving towards democracy and that the Chinese Communist Party is on the verge of extinction. China is moving towards "authoritarian resilience" and the Party could survive for decades without change.

False Assumption #3

China, The Fragile Flower

Many China watchers have expressed worry that if the United States pressed China too hard to have elections, free dissidents, to extend the rule of law, and to treat ethnic minorities fairly, then this pressure would lead to the collapse of the Chinese state – causing chaos throughout Asia.  No evidence to support this notion.

False Assumption #4

China Wants to Be – And Is – Just Like Us

"There is no evidence in that China seeks to match and mirror our society."

False Assumption #5

China's Hawks Are Weak

China seeks to set up a world order that will be fair to China, a world without American global supremacy, and revise the U.S.-dominated economic and geopolitical world order. 

Now China has a new robust leader in power in Beijing, President Xi Jinping, who has a goal that places a resurgent China at the rightful top of the global hierarchy. 

Pillsbury looks to Chinese history as the template for today's hawks in Beijing. The nine principle elements of Chinese strategy include the following:

1. Induce complacency to avoid alerting your opponent.

2. Manipulate your opponent's advisers. "Such efforts have been a hallmark of China's relations with the United States."

3. Be patient – for decades, or longer – to achieve victory.

4. Steal your opponent's ideas and technology for strategic purposes.

5. Military might is not the critical factor for winning a long-term competition. “Chinese strategy advocates targeting an enemy's weak points and biding one's time."

6. “Recognize that “the United States will not go quietly into the night as its power declines relative to others."

7. Never lose sight of critical components of Chinese strategy: "deceiving others into doing your bidding for you and waiting for the point of maximum opportunity to strike."

8. Chinese strategy includes assessing China's relative power, during peacetime and in the event of war, across a plethora of dimensions beyond just military considerations.

9. Always be vigilant to avoid being encircled or deceived by others. "In what could be characterized as a deeply ingrained sense of paranoia, China's leaders believe that because all other potential rivals are out to deceive them, China must respond with its own duplicity."

"On the international level, if you are a rising power, you must manipulate the perceptions of the dominant world power to not be destroyed by it."

China rejects the idea common in the Western world that mercantilism has been rendered obsolete by the success of free markets and free trade. Instead, China embraces mercantilism by maintaining a system of high tariffs, gaining direct control of natural resources, and protection of domestic manufacturing, all designed to build up China's monetary reserves.

China uses four strategies to influence U.S. media organizations

- Direct action by Chinese diplomats, local officials, security forces, and regulators, both inside and outside China. These measures obstruct news gathering, prevent the publication of undesirable content, and punish overseas media outlets that fail to heed restrictions.

- Employing economic carrots and sticks to induce self-censorship among media owners and their outlets located outside mainland China.

- Applying indirect pressure via proxies – including advertisers, satellite firms, and foreign governments – who take action to prevent or punish the publication of content critical of Beijing.

- Conducting cyberattacks and physical assaults that are not conclusively traceable to the central Chinese authorities but serve the Party's aims.

On China's senior political decision-making, Pillsbury, quoting Robert Suettinger, a longtime CIA analyst, writes it is "opaque, non-communicative, distrustful, bureaucratic, inclined to deliver what they think leaders want to hear, and strategically dogmatic."

Pillsbury makes numerous recommendations for the U.S. government to implement.

- Keep Track of Your Gifts – every year the U.S. taxpayer provides a variety of programs and assistance to China. The U.S. Congress should enact annual reporting requirements of all agencies of their assistance to China.

- Find Common Ground At Home – A coalition should be formed in the U.S. with the mission of bringing change to China promoting reforms.

- Build a Vertical Coalition of Nations – The U.S. should build an alliance amongst nations in the Asia-Pacific that give China "pause and temper its bellicosity" particularly in the South China Sea and East China Sea.

- Protect the Political Dissidents – The West should safeguard and promote the idealism and aspirations of Chinese dissidents who escape and those who remain in prisons. The U.S. President should tie China's human rights achievements to issues Beijing cares about, such as trade relations.

-Support Prodemocracy Reformers –The U.S. should support democratic and civil society groups within China. "China's concern when it talks about a new Cold War is that the Americans will revive their Cold War-era programs that helped to subvert the Soviet Union from within by using the power of ideas."


To view the entire article, click here