This was a very interesting read. It was well argued that as China improves as a country the threat between countries increases mainly America. This is a very eye opening book that had the ages turnering fast. I enjoyed it immensely and read it all in one day. While reading this book I learnt so many things. I especially found it fascinating how china's restrictions on child birth has had an effect on the numbers of younger generation to progress the country. Also the traditions of the younger generation looking after the elders causes many different problems itself. 

The authors arguments about the possibility of conflict were very interesting but I had the feeling they were definitely holding back somewhat. I'm guessing they don't want their book to start a war. I really recommend this book if you are interested in china's politics, military strengths and social history of the country and how they potentially make it a superpower.

Many thanks to the authors and publishers for creating this very interesting and eye opening well argued and researched book.

The above review has already been placed on goodreads, waterstones, Google books, Barnes&noble, kobo, amazon UK where found and my blog today https://ladyreading365.wixsite.com/website/post/danger-zone-by-michael-beckley-hal-brands-ww-norton-4-stars either under my name or ladyreading365. The links for the retail sites is on my blog.

DANGER ZONE by Hal Brands and Michael Beckley is subtitled "The Coming Conflict with China" and will be published in mid-August. Both authors are affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute; Beckley is associate professor of political science at Tufts University and Brands is the Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. They argue that China is nearing its "peak," facing "slowing growth at home and surging anti-Chinese sentiment abroad" which makes conflict (especially involving Taiwan) more likely and thus our countries are in a "danger zone." Advice for US policy makers is to look to history, specifically Truman's efforts at the beginning of the Cold War: set priorities ruthlessly; adhere to objectives, but take advantage of pragmatic opportunities; take calculated offensive risks; play for the long game. Would you like to see a preview of DANGER ZONE? Below is the link to their upcoming Saturday Essay in this week's Wall Street Journal: "The Coming War Over Taiwan." A thoughtful, but worrisome outlook that comments on Xi Jinping's motivations and future actions, saying, "In the mid- and late 2020s, he'll have his best chance to accomplish that mission ["liberating" Taiwan]. ... America can win a protracted competition against a formidable but faltering China, but only if it braces now for the very real possibility of a dramatic attack on Taiwan." 4.5 stars

Link to Wall Street Journal article:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-coming-war-over-taiwan-11659614417

And link to additional reports and analyses (Think Tank Search) from the Harvard Kennedy School Library:
https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=015560548092242357066%3Awb9hyhrlxms&ie=UTF-8&q=Taiwan&sa=Search#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=Taiwan&gsc.sort=date

The Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China opens with a provocative look at how a 2025 war between the U.S. and China could begin. A contested U.S. election, massive naval exercises in the Taiwan Strait and a global disinformation campaign set the stage for strikes on U.S. aircraft carriers and bases in Okinawa and Guam. It's harrowing reading which lends a sense of urgency to the historical analysis and policy suggestions that follow.

Co-authors Michael Beckley, associate professor of political science at Tufts University and Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and Hal Brands, the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and former Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Strategic Planning, explain why the Americans must recognize that the threat of war with China will climax this decade, as China has reached the stage of a rising power ("the peaking power trap") where it is "strong enough to aggressively disrupt the existing order but is losing confidence that time is on its side."

They argue that the threat of war will be strongest just as China's bloated global ambitions are outweighed by its economic, demographic and political issues. Danger Zone presents suggestions based on the assumption that China will be a falling power sooner than most people think. Until recently, democratic nations were "lethargic and unfocused" in their response to China's "wolf-warrior" diplomacy and confrontational behaviour. Despite the grim introduction, this book is not alarmist or defeatist about the strategic challenge presented by China. It shines light on the pessimistic over-thinking and procrastination that plagues the U.S. approach to China while urging the U.S. to act urgently, not stupidly.

China is entering a perilous stage seen before in the rise and fall of great powers. In incredible detail, authors look to the past to draw attention to what previous peaking powers have done as their windows of opportunity closed. Thucydides, of course, is discussed when analysing what happens when a country peaks and wants to "grab what it can before it is too late." The book first summarises recent Chinese political history, where "paranoia is a virtue rather than a vice," its forthcoming economic and demographic decline and the increasingly hostile geopolitical climate it finds itself in. It has some especially useful sections on why China's territory doesn't naturally hold together and how its resources are under the homeland's of China's minority groups. It outlines border disputes with its neighbouring countries, its objectives of "Asia for the Asians," and why it has been encouraging nationalism after abandoning the original ideology of socialism. It has a fairly short look at the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), but it does cover recent developments with countries that might not have made top news in the U.S. For example, the section "On Every Front" describes briefly how Italy signed on to the BRI and "effectively reversed that decision in 2021" and how the Czech Republic unexpectedly contributed to opposing Huawei and supporting Taiwan.

It is fascinating to read about how China rose purposefully with great subtlety and carefully targeted its influence. Danger Zone describes how the CCP has positioned itself in key positions in institutional superpowers, including ASEAN. I especially enjoyed reading quotes from U.S. policy makers about how they considered China to be tomorrow's problem or compared it to a long book you always put off reading. The authors do a great job of setting the scene - complacent and distracted US policy makers mixing with a Chinese strategy that encouraged over thinking and procrastination. Or as one section put it, "Beijing has a long track record of luring Washington into formal, high-level blab-fests." As numerous other recent publications have shown, this allowed China to take Western technology and capital, export its products while keeping its own market relatively closed, build up its military, fill international organisations with Chinese officials and exploit the pandemic.

This now familiar story of China's spectacular rise is followed up by China's internal institutional decay over the last decade, one that bizarrely prioritizes control over the economy. One example of this is how the state's "zombie firms" have been supported while private firms have to live on small budgets and pay out bribes to party members for protection. This was also the first I've read about how the anti-corruption campaign, which sounds good, actually blocked economic experimentation. The authors argue that "this is a formula for tight political control - and economic stagnation." There is an expected description of China's increasingly well known ghost cities and unprofitable infrastructure projects. Many of these ailments of misdirected state funding and state sector bloat are described as being remarkably similar to the Soviet Union. More alarmingly, "half of all new loans in China are being used to pay interest on old loans."

Elsewhere on the topic of loans, is the acknowledgement that many loans China has paid out worldwide are unlikely to be paid back. This default will happen just as the Chinese people themselves may be grappling with a reduced living standards. Without the economic growth that the younger generations are now used to, "the gravy train of subsidies and bribes that China's leaders use to keep powerful interests (state owned enterprise bosses, local governments, and above all, the military and security services) in line will grind to a halt." Here the authors took the risk of describing how the Chinese people are responding and may respond to these economic changes. Never do the authors describe the Chinese people as an unknowable "other" or unworthy of our sympathy or understanding. That said, the book states that "America has a China problem, not a Xi Jinping problem" and bases this on a brief summary of Chinese political aims from the 1980s to present. Similarly, it criticises the times Washington policymakers seemed to be asleep at the wheel, but recognises what efforts were made later.

After this massive but necessary information dump, readers are then presented with in-depth histories and parallels drawn from the World Wars and the Cold War, where conflict sprung from the "intersection of ambition and desperation." The danger of falling powers is illustrated by 1914 Germany, particularly in its economic slowdown and sense of strategic encirclement. This fear of decline incites "risky, belligerent behaviour." To counteract economic slowdowns, falling powers anxiously expand their territory for an emergency source of wealth, which unites rivals and further feeds the falling power's fears and sense of victimization.

The authors themselves describe how "many countries have followed this path, including some you might not expect." For example, it refers to France, which tried to rebuild its interests in Africa after their economy stalled in the 1970s. The United States did the same in the Philippines and Puerto Rico after the post-Civil War economic surge ended. In short, rapid growth allowed China the ability to expand and behave aggressively, but the forthcoming economic decline is giving it the motive. This situation has historically shown to result in "catastrophic gambles" for last minute glory and to deliver on promises to its citizens. Advice on how not to provoke China was based on the attack on Pearl Harbor and U.S. experiences in reducing tensions with the Soviet Union.

History shows China's actions are not unique and it is possible to predict how China's statecraft may develop and to plan in advance. The case studies follow with proposals for how China may grow techno-authoritarianism and aggravate its neighbours. This book offers a contrarian analysis, which I think many readers will appreciate if they already have a sizeable China-Taiwan library. It challenges received (ancient!) wisdom about the origins of war and argues that states can rise and fall simultaneously. They might "seize territory or arm themselves rapidly even as their economies wheeze and stumble. The anxiety caused by relative decline, not the confidence that comes with rising strength, can make ambitious powers erratic and violent." China has exacerbated its own problems by paranoid policies which led to aggression - aggression that frightened and the unified its neighbours. The country's "strategic holiday" has ended and through its own overreach, has made an enemy out of the U.S., which did so much to help it rise.

Technology and its uses in economic rivalries and modern warfare is a large part of this book, ranging from "intellectual property theft, forced technology transfer, and commercial espionage," to the development of telecommunications infrastructure and the worrisome uses of advanced surveillance equipment. This extends into how to defend Taiwan with potentially useful military technology and how it would be best used based on the island's geography. One small remark that I wish that had been expanded on was that "CCP officials surely have doubts about how well a heavily politicized, still corrupt PLA would perform in the fog of war." This observation came out of nowhere and the reader is left hanging.

How the authors advocate for preparing Taiwan for an invasion, increasing the U.S. military's regional presence and disrupting China's military communication systems may be overly optimistic. They do warn that the U.S. and its allies must mentally and materially prepare for a conflict that could drag on for months or years. It is hugely depressing to read about such potential misery and have it close with how Xi "might keep the war machine running, in hopes of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat or simply saving some face." There are many frightening descriptions on the book shelves of what may come with China, and this book is no exception. It covers the possibility of nuclear war, genocide, a CCP panopticon and seemingly endless human suffering and waste. What sets this book apart from similar recent publications is that it takes pains to present careful studies of history to show that the global community has faced these challenges before and can do so again. The authors take the risk of anticipating how the next few decades will look and what China is likely to do, even after the threat of war has passed. It offers hopeful, point by point policy suggestions for the U.S. and other likeminded countries to follow. For the non-policymaker reader, it is an engaging look at the history of war, the rise and fall of great powers and applies these theories to the current events which will be dominating the news for some time.

This book was provided by W. W. Norton & Company for review.

A well-researched book on how US military hawks perceive China's threat to Western democracy.
To Beckley and Brands, China is rapidly approaching a “sloWestern-centricphic brought opinion by tdoesscades-long “One Child Policy.”
Whilst the book provides many examples of China's slowing down - mainly due to demographics - it fails to appreciate that modern advances in technology negate the need for a large albeit, dwindling workforce- as per yesterday's industrial model of economic growth.
Whilst the book provides convincing examples of slowing economic growth of the Asian tiger as well as the all to urgent need to keep a China in 'check' - the study is too Western -centric in it's opinion and does not offer a balanced global perspective.

If you are interested in how the US and its allies must confront Red China this is the book to read. It gets a little weaker towards the end as the authors are apparently unwilling to go full throttle and instead they hedge their bets. The book's most important point is that the US/China completion is not a one hundred year marathon as Michael Pillsbury asserts but rather is a ten years sprint. In about one decade the Chinese Communist Party is likely to hit one of several brick walls and will probably collapse. You Must purchase this book and read it!