Note: this story first appeared in The New York Post in 2015, but it is even more relevant now as China shows no signs of changing tack.<\/em><\/p>\n In 1995, Michael Pillsbury, an expert on China who has worked with every US president since Nixon and has, he writes, \u201carguably had more access to China\u2019s military and intelligence establishment than any other Westerner,\u201d was reading an article written by \u201cthree of China\u2019s preeminent military experts\u201d about \u201cnew technologies that would contribute to the defeat of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n It was in this article that Pillsbury first saw the term \u201cAssassin\u2019s Mace,\u201d which refers to a weapon from Chinese folklore that guarantees a small combatant victory over a larger, more powerful opponent.<\/p>\n The article described goals including \u201celectromagnetic combat superiority\u201d that would allow for \u201cnaval victory,\u201d and \u201ctactical laser weapons\u201d that would \u201cbe used first in anti-missile defense systems.\u201d They also discussed jamming and destroying radar and various communications systems, and the use of computer viruses.<\/p>\n In time, Pillsbury began seeing the term \u201cAssassin\u2019s Mace\u201d with regularity in Chinese documents.<\/p>\n In the military context,\u201d he writes, \u201cAssassin\u2019s Mace refers to a set of asymmetric weapons that allow an inferior power to defeat a seemingly superior adversary by striking at an enemy\u2019s weakest point.\u201d<\/p>\n At first, Pillsbury writes, he considered these statements aspirational. But as US intelligence analysts translated documents over time, he came to see otherwise. The Assassin\u2019s Mace, he came to believe, was part of a cunning and much broader strategy, a 100-year-long effort to overtake the US as the world\u2019s superpower.<\/p>\n The point of Assassin\u2019s Mace \u2014 which, Pillsbury learned, the Chinese were already spending billions of dollars to develop \u2014 was to \u201cmake a generational leap in military capabilities that can trump the conventional forces of Western powers,\u201d but to do so incrementally, so that by the time they achieved their goal, it would be too late for the US to respond to, much less reverse.<\/p>\n In a sense, the new book \u201cThe Hundred-Year Marathon\u201d is Pillsbury\u2019s mea culpa. He readily admits that, as a key influencer of US government policy toward China for the past four decades, he had long been one of many in the federal government pushing the US toward full cooperation with China, including heavy financial and technological support, under the belief that the country was headed in a more democratic, free-market direction.<\/p>\n \u201cLooking back, it was painful that I was so gullible,\u201d he writes.<\/p>\n Pillsbury notes that he and many other China experts were taught early on to view China as \u201ca helpless victim of Western imperialists\u201d and that as such, assistance should be provided almost unquestioningly.<\/p>\n Now, he says, he has come to consider this view \u2014 which he now believes came about as a result of intentional deception and misdirection on the part of the Chinese \u2014 as \u201cthe most systemic, significant and dangerous intelligence failure in American history.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe believed that American aid to a fragile China whose leaders thought like us would help China become a democratic and peaceful power without ambitions of . . . global dominance,\u201d he writes.<\/p>\n \u201cWe underestimated the influence of China\u2019s hawks. Every one of the assumptions behind that belief was wrong \u2014 dangerously so.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFor decades,\u201d Pillsbury adds, \u201cthe US government has freely handed over sensitive information, technology, military know-how, intelligence and expert advice to the Chinese. Indeed, so much has been provided for so long that . . . there is no full accounting. And what we haven\u2019t given the Chinese, they\u2019ve stolen.\u201d<\/p>\n Part of what Pillsbury sees as America\u2019s naivet\u00e9 on the issue derived from fundamental misunderstandings about the nature of Chinese culture.<\/p>\n Pillsbury now believes that since the time of Mao Zedong, China has been engaged in an effort to establish China as the world\u2019s premier superpower by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the Communist Revolution.<\/p>\n The reason this has been so little known, he says, is that the Chinese consider physical battles just one minor aspect of warfare. China\u2019s main weapon, he says, is deception \u2014 the constant appearance of achieving less than they really have and needing our help more than they actually do.<\/p>\n Pillsbury believes this philosophy\u2019s origins derive from a book \u2014 the title of which translates to \u201cThe General Mirror for the Aid of Government\u201d \u2014 that Mao brought with him on his long march in the 1930s. Described as \u201ca statecraft manual with lessons from history that have no Western counterpart,\u201d one section of the book \u201ccenters on stratagems of the Warring States period in China, and includes stories and maxims dating as far back as 4000 BC.\u201d<\/p>\n Included in these are lessons on \u201chow to use deception, how to avoid encirclement by opponents and how a rising power should induce complacency in the old hegemon until the right moment.\u201d<\/p>\n Mao, it turned out, read this book many times while ruling China, as did subsequent leaders. Chinese students even use passages from it in their writing lessons.<\/p>\n Pillsbury believes that China\u2019s actions since just after World War II are derived from this book and that they\u2019re working just as intended.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the biggest mistakes made by American experts on China was not taking this book seriously,\u201d Pillsbury writes, noting that \u201cit was never translated into English,\u201d and that the US didn\u2019t begin grasping its possible importance until the 1990s.<\/p>\n Pillsbury believes China has strategically positioned itself as a nation in great need of our help since the 1960s, noting that contrary to popular belief, President Richard Nixon\u2019s opening to China in the \u201970s was initiated by China, not the US.<\/p>\n During early meetings between Mao and Nixon, Mao pushed for the two countries to work together against the Soviet threat, with Mao urging the US to \u201ccreate an anti-Soviet axis that would include Europe, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and Japan.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA counterencirclement of the Soviet hegemon was a classic Warring States approach,\u201d Pillsbury writes. \u201cWhat the Americans missed was that it was not a permanent Chinese policy preference, but only expedient cooperation among two Warring States.\u201d<\/p>\n The late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, on a billboard in Shenzhen, China.Getty Images Believing that China had erred in following the Soviet economic model and that the country had \u201cfailed to extract all they could\u201d from the Soviet relationship, \u201cDeng would not make the same mistake with the Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe saw that the real way for China to make progress in the Marathon was to obtain knowledge and skills from the United States,\u201d Pillsbury writes. \u201cIn other words, China would come from behind and win the marathon by stealthily drawing most of its energy from the complacent American front-runner.\u201d<\/p>\n In the decades to come, Pillsbury believes, America helped build China\u2019s economy and military while unknowingly following the Warring States script. (He admits that it was he, in a 1975 article in Foreign Policy, who first \u201cadvocated military ties between the United States and China,\u201d and that the idea had been proposed to him by officers in the Chinese military.)<\/p>\n Following a Warring States philosophy of tricking your opponent into doing your work for you, Deng knew that technology would be the driver for building the Chinese economy and \u201cbelieved that the only way China could pass the United States as an economic power was through massive scientific and technological development. An essential shortcut would be to take what the Americans already had.\u201d<\/p>\n Meeting with President Jimmy Carter in 1978, Deng arranged for what would become 19,000 Chinese science students to study here, and Deng and Carter reached an agreement for the US to provide China with \u201cthe greatest outpouring of American scientific and technological expertise in history.\u201d<\/p>\n Under President Ronald Reagan, for whom Pillsbury served as a foreign policy adviser, the Pentagon agreed to \u201csell advanced air, ground, naval and missile technology to the Chinese to transform the People\u2019s Liberation Army into a world-class fighting force,\u201d later including \u201cnuclear cooperation and development . . . to expand China\u2019s military and civilian nuclear programs.\u201d Reagan also assisted in China\u2019s development of industries such as \u201cintelligent robotics, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, lasers, supercomputers, space technology and manned spaceflight.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBefore long,\u201d Pillsbury writes, \u201cthe Chinese had made significant progress on more than 10,000 projects, all heavily dependent on Western assistance and all crucial to China\u2019s Marathon strategy.\u201d Similar assistance has continued to this day.<\/p>\n All along, Pillsbury writes, China secretly continued to view us as a tyrant, so much so that \u201cstarting in 1990, Chinese textbooks were rewritten to depict the United States as a hegemon that, for more than 150 years, had tried to stifle China\u2019s rise and destroy the soul of Chinese civilization.\u201d<\/p>\n In time, Pillsbury would come to believe that, despite a great amount of American assistance to China over the years, the Chinese people never saw or read anything positive about America.<\/p>\n Two days after 9\/11, Pillsbury writes, \u201ctwo [Chinese] colonels were interviewed for a Chinese Communist Party newspaper and said of the attacks that they could be \u2018favorable to China\u2019 and were proof that America was vulnerable to attack through nontraditional methods.\u201d<\/p>\n Looking ahead, Pillsbury quotes a RAND Corporation study as saying that China will have \u201cmore than $1 trillion\u201d to spend on their military through 2030. This \u201cpaints a picture of near parity, if not outright Chinese military superiority, by mid-century.\u201d<\/p>\n The Warring States strategy advises the underdog to keep its intentions secret until sufficient power against the hegemon is both strong and irreversible. Then it should show its teeth.<\/p>\n Pillsbury says that China\u2019s rapid economic rise has led to the beginnings of this stage. He cites how in 2009, when President Barack Obama attended a climate change summit in Copenhagen, there was \u201ca significant shift in the public tone of Chinese officials\u201d that included \u201cuncharacteristic rudeness,\u201d including the organization of a secret meeting with other countries about blocking US initiatives that excluded the president. (He and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Pillsbury says, crashed the meeting.)<\/p>\n During visits to the country over the past three years, Pillsbury says, he has seen a stark shift in China\u2019s attitude toward the US. Chinese scholars he\u2019s known for decades, he says, have long denied any sort of \u201cChinese-led world order.\u201d Now they are showing a sudden brash willingness to admit to what Pillsbury believes is China\u2019s true intent. \u201cThe hard truth,\u201d Pillsbury writes, \u201cis that China\u2019s leaders see America as an enemy in a global struggle they plan on winning.\u201d<\/p>\nChina duped us<\/h3>\n
A superpower by 2049<\/h3>\n
Demonizing America<\/h3>\n
\nAs Deng Xiaoping came to greater power in China in the late 1970s, America rejoiced, believing him a reform-minded moderate. Pillsbury, though, says that behind the scenes, he was far more hard-line.<\/p>\nBaring their teeth<\/h3>\n