Andrew Singer Talks About China and America , Vol. 3, Issue 32 Michael Pillsbury’s The Hundred Year Marathon lays out a stark, urgent premise worthy of a John le Carre novel: that China has been quietly and brilliantly executing a long-term, covert strategy to displace the United States as the world’s dominant superpower by 2049. According to Pillsbury, this is not just geopolitical rivalry. It is a methodical, calculated effort rooted in ancient stratagems and cloaked in de