Has China Been Strategizing America’s Decline?

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 deception, designed to lull America into complacency while China rises, reshapes global institutions, and rewrites the rules of the international order in its favor.

I recently attended a local book club to discuss Pillsbury’s 2015 book, which still echoes loudly in today’s political rhetoric. The conversation gave me a chance to reflect on the question at the heart of the book: Does China have a grand strategy to replace America? If so, does it matter? And if it matters, what should America do about it?

(Image: www.dialograkyat.com)

Here is my take.

The government of the People’s Republic of China wants China to be a strong, respected, feared, and obeyed economic and political leader of a multipolar world. In short, they want what the United States has enjoyed in a bipolar/unipolar world since the end of World War II. This is a national goal, one the Chinese Communist Party believes it is uniquely suited to helping China realize.

China (civil and Party governments alike) has indeed been remarkably consistent in pursuing this ambition over the past several decades. From global infrastructure projects like the Belt and Road Initiative to enthusiastic and assertive participation in international institutions, from rapid naval expansion to dominance in sectors like AI, green energy, and high-speed rail, China has been planning. And implementing.

None of this is secret. The information is readily available to anyone paying attention. So, does this amount to a grand strategy? And more to the point, does it require America to surrender its standing?

Thirty-Six Strategies, China, Warring States Period (Image: www.gwongzaukungfu.com)

Pillsbury clearly believes the answer is yes on both counts. His book presents a sinister view of China’s rise, tying its modern behavior directly to three dozen ancient stratagems from the Warring States Period (475 BCE to 221 BCE). He portrays China’s ascent as a deliberate, treacherous plot that will culminate in a future where the world is dominated by autocracies, polluted by deregulated industrial growth, and flooded with revisionist history that discredits the West and glorifies Beijing.1

Pillsbury wants us to be afraid.

I do not see the situation that starkly.

While China’s desire to gain global predominance is real and rational, I do not believe they are out to replace the United States as the world’s moral or ideological director.

China wants power, leverage, and resilience, not apparently a starring role as the world’s traffic and virtue cop. Their moves tend toward pragmatism over ideology. They want to protect what they see as their own successful model and expand their options, and this does not require converting the rest of the world to its system.

Granted, I am not sitting in the meetings of the Politburo. I could be wrong. However, when push comes to shove, China’s actions often reflect a preference for stability and self-interest, not crusading doctrine.

For balance, I turned to the more grounded, yet similar, view of Rush Doshi. His 2021 book The Long Game relies heavily on primary-source, internal Chinese documents and speeches. Doshi sees China’s words and actions as motivated and methodical, a grand strategy with clear political, economic, and military ambitions designed to supplant the U.S. In his account, China’s self-described task is to seize “great changes unseen in a century” to surpass the United States by 2049 while avoiding a conflict with a declining America that might not go quietly.2

To me, the distinction between a grand strategy and just a strategy is less important than recognizing what is happening. It might have been more important three and four decades ago if we had been listening. Not now.

China is striving to restructure its global posture in ways that will reshape the existing international order and serve its interests. Whether that is part of a decades-old scheme or a more recent business plan is beside the point. What matters is that it is working.

(Image: www.pixabay.com)

And this brings us back to America.

The American government, Republican and Democrat, sees this competition, like Pillsbury, as a zero-sum game. If China rises, America must fall. It is either-or. This sentiment is even more prevalent now under the current Trump administration than it was when Pillsbury first published his book during the Obama Administration. The threat is widely framed as existential.

I believe America has a (time-limited) choice. Yes, America’s relative dominance will shrink as China’s influence grows. This does not mean America must be humiliated, displaced, or consigned to irrelevance in the process. It means we are no longer the only game in town. A multipolar world is at hand. America needs to recognize this.

At present, while China carries through with its planning, America operates reflexively on nostalgia for a mythic past and panic. I often wonder if what truly upsets America is not China’s political system or even its expanding global reach, but the fact that China is now doing what we used to do—better. 

China is increasingly offering the world opportunity, or at least the appearance of it. America, by contrast, is retreating from the very values and assets that made us powerful in the first place.

Instead of investing in our generational strengths and global relationships, we are dismantling them. International aid has been slashed. Our allies are banding together to protect themselves from us. Trade partners are cutting deals that exclude us. Media outlets are settling lawsuits by promising to adjust their editorial content. Higher education is under siege. Scientific and climate research is being gutted. Public infrastructure and private innovation are stalling, delayed, or canceled.

Meanwhile, China continues building and developing—technology, ships, coalitions, and clout.

A third voice in this debate, Singaporean academic Kishore Mahbubani, urges us to look beyond the binary of America and China. He wants us to consider the broader impact of strategic missteps on both sides. His concern is not which country wins but what happens to the rest of the world as a result of the competition.

Mahbubani captures the cultural divide well. Americans believe fervently in freedom of speech, press, and religion, in individuality and independence. We believe every individual is entitled to basic human rights. The Chinese, by contrast, believe that society and individual needs are best advanced by social harmony and stability.3

America’s system encourages chaos in the service of liberty. The Chinese system is designed to prevent chaos. In this, history has not been kind to China. Chinese dynasties have always been top-down, but they have also been frequently fragile. Rebellions, disunity, and collapse have shaped Chinese history as much as hierarchy and control.

This discussion circles me back to the book club conversation. It is too simplistic, too sanctimonious, and ultimately too self-defeating to treat China as a villain simply because they are executing a plan, grand strategy or not, while we fumble.

The truth is,

˃ American corporations helped build China’s economic strength. They willingly transferred factories and technology in pursuit of low-cost labor and higher profit margins. The consumers of America reveled in bountiful, inexpensive products. Now that China has become a budding superpower, we resent it.

˃ China holds nearly $800 billion in U.S. debt, and we pay them billions in interest every year for these loans.

˃ As America pulls back from the global stage, China is stepping in. Through the BRI, BRICS, SCO, and other international organizations, China is making itself indispensable.

A not-recent feeling of pessimism about America’s future had been strengthening in me during the evening. Others offered perspective, and food for thought. One member reminded us that America has faced deep internal fractures before—social, economic, cultural—and emerged stronger. Another shared a conversation with local Native American elders who see this period as one of transformation, not pre-ordained collapse.

Maybe they are right. Maybe this is just a painful cycle, and something better lies ahead.

Whether China’s rise is the result of a grand strategy, American decline, or a mix of both, the moment we are in is real. China is on the verge of achieving many of its goals. America still has a choice. But we are running out of time to make it.

---

Notes

1 Michael Pillsbury, The Hundred Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower (2015), Page 195.

2 Rush Doshi, The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order (2021), Page 271.

3 Kishore Mahbubani, Has China Won? The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy (2020), Page 276.