The Long Game:
China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order

Forthcoming from Oxford University Press, July 8, 2021

Available at Amazon and Oxford University Press.

Summary

For more than a century, no US adversary or coalition of adversaries - not Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, or even the Soviet Union - has ever reached sixty percent of US GDP. China is the sole exception, and it is fast emerging into a global superpower that could rival, if not eclipse, the United States.

What does China want, does it have a grand strategy to achieve it, and what should the United States do about it? The Long Game draws from a rich base of Chinese primary sources, including decades worth of party documents, leaked materials, memoirs by party leaders, as well as careful analysis of China's conduct, to provide a history of China's grand strategy since the end of the Cold War.

Taking readers behind the Party's closed doors, this book uncovers Beijing's long, methodical game to displace America from regional and global order through three sequential "strategies of displacement." The book shows how China's strategy is profoundly shaped by key events that change its perception of American power - the end of the Cold War, the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the populist elections of 2016, and the coronavirus pandemic of 2020.

Finally, the book offers a comprehensive yet "asymmetric" plan for an effective US response to the China challenge. Ironically, the proposed approach takes a page from Beijing's strategic playbook to undermine China's ambitions and strengthen American order without competing dollar-for- dollar, ship-for-ship, or loan-for-loan.

Table of Contents

Introduction and Summary
Chapter 1 – “A Coherent Body of Thought and Action”: Grand Strategy and Hegemonic Order
Chapter 2 – “The Party Leads Everything”: Nationalism, Leninism, and the CCP

Part I: “Hiding Capabilities and Biding Time”:
Blunting as China's First Displacement Strategy (1989-2008)

Chapter 3 – “New Cold Wars Have Begun”: The Trifecta and the New American Threat
Chapter 4 – “Grasping the Assassin’s Mace”: Implementing Military Blunting
Chapter 5 – “Demonstrate Benign Intentions”: Implementing Political Blunting
Chapter 6 – “Permanent Normal Trading Relations”: Implementing Economic Blunting

Part II: “Actively Accomplish Something”:
Building as China’s Second Displacement Strategy (2009-2016)

Chapter 7 – “A Change in the Balance of Power”: The Financial Crisis and the Dawn Building
Chapter 8 – “Make More Offensive Moves”: Implementing Military Building
Chapter 9 – “Establish Regional Architecture”: Implementing Political Building
Chapter 10 – “Aboard Our Development Train”: Implementing Economic Building

Part III: “Great Changes Unseen in a Century”:
Global Expansion as China’s Third Displacement Strategy (2017-)

Chapter 11 – “Toward the World’s Center Stage”: American Decline and China’s Global Ambition
Chapter 12 – “Standing Tall and Seeing Far”: The Ways and Means of China’s Global Expansion
Chapter 13 – An Asymmetric Strategy for US-China Competition
Conclusion