Michael Pillsbury’s The Hundred Year Marathon dispels this delusion. Pillsbury points out that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) never intended to become more democratic. Instead, it intended to maintain power at all costs, and replace the United States as the world’s superpower.
Earlier, Michael Pillsbury, particularly known for his work with the U.S. Department of Defense, made a similar, more detailed argument. Last year Rush Doshi, formerly of the Brookings Institute, now with the Biden National Security Council, also argued that the PRC has employed multiple “strategies of displacement” against the established hegemon, the U.S. and the order established by the latter.
Michael Pillsbury, an analyst who has advised nearly every U.S. president since Richard Nixon, told an international conference in South Korea on Friday that Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Japanese Communist Party both believe they can use the Abe assassination — and the gunman’s claimed grievances with the Unification Church — to smear the church‘s reputation, denigrate Abe‘s legacy, and compromise religious freedom in Japan and across the region.
The venerable China hand Michael Pillsbury of the Hudson Institute calls this competition “The Hundred-Year Marathon,” and while it has been underway for decades, the race has reached a critical moment.
Michael Pillsbury appears on Fox and Friends to discuss China’s nuclear buildup. Source: https://www.hudson.org/arms-control-nonproliferation/china-growing-nuclear-arsenal-fox-news
As Michael Pillsbury wrote in his book, The Hundred Years Marathon, this had always been the aim of China’s leaders from the very beginning of the rapprochement with President Nixon. But the Chinese had kept their ambitions secret, until now. Having become the number two economy of the world, with a well-equipped and sophisticated modern army and enough funds to launch an ambitious belt and road initiative to spread Chinese influence around the world, President Xi Jinping is ready to take on the task of making China the foremost world power.