Has China Won by Kishore Mahbubani

There are many China experts talking about China, but most do not really understand China. Kishore Mahbubani is one of the few I would like to recommend who can talk about China with some understanding. His most recent book “Has China Won” generate quite a stir in Western academic circles and there were a few debates with other experts you can access in YouTube. He is a retired Singaporean diploma and was head of delegation to UN.
As you can see from the title he thinks China is winning the war with West and analyzing the event before the Corvid pandemic, and the recent conversations and debates he further accentuate China’s advantage versus West. He is generally friendly with China although critical in the perspective of liberal thinkers in general. He agrees with Professor Zhang Weiwei and consider China from the perspective as a civilization with more than 2,000 years of unbroken history and various philosophies shaping the present course rather than the normal critics as authoritarian or even Marxism.
Though he thinks China made a mistake in overplaying her hand and being arrogant and triggering the attacks by Trump Administration rather than continue to play Deng’s strategy of hiding her strength. And the fact of alienating the U.S. business community and causing overwhelming negative reaction from U.S. populace. I think he is wrong in that analysis as negative reaction was inevitable as China climb the ranks from way down to near the top. The Bush administration was ready to cut down China to her size as the spy plane incident developed, but was sideswiped by 9/11 and Bin Laden. Obama was ready to encircle China with Pacific Rim agreement and was cancelled by ignorant Trump. Islamic terrorism although damaging in Xinjiang did gave China 15 more years of breathing room with U.S. pressure and sanctions as Huawei and China is now on semiconductors.
Professor Mahbubani is correct on China’s defensive nature and diplomatic policy. He is too optimistic on whether West can rise to China’s challenge and he is rare among the Western experts being seeing China clearly.