The first one, in which Kevin Rudd is a relatively reliable guide to China’s ambitions and challenges, occupies three quarters of the book and is the best part of it. the first book ends with a speculative chapter on what lies ahead for Xi Jinping after he is crowned “Leader of the People” for life and how he may be edging toward nationalism as the PRC’s most important legitimization device. The second book conjures up 10 scenarios for the decade of living dangerously. Few struck me as compelling, all are very brief. These short vignettes might be useful sources of brainstorming for national security China wonks . In the third book, Rudd seeks to address Rodney King’s question: can we, kcan we all get along? That is, can we envision a structure of US and PRC interaction Rudd refers to as “managed strategic competition”? Given events in Europe since 24 February 2022, answers to King”s question have become more difficult to conjure, as XI Jinping’s ties to Vladimir Putin have grown stronger, despite Russia’s underperformance in the Ukraine (as of this writing, 17 July 2022).
I’ve docked the book star for stating at the outset the authorial decision to have neither footnotes or bibliography or even an epilogue that discusses sources. Sometimes he attaches a name to an idea _ Graham Allison, for example, in discussing his “Thucydides Trap” – but very rarely. Moreover, the 16th page index has some curious emissions. “Wolf warriors,” for example, or “social media,” both of which come up frequently, but you’ll have to thumb and thumb and thumb or annotate the book for the post it to get back to the idea and its discussion.
But its a 21st century book that deserves a spot on the bookshelf of, at very least, American China wonks and, I’d go as far as say, China specialists everywhere. And I presume it is already on the shelves Chinese Communist Party national security think tanks and government America watchers.