


He sees the Chinese government as being perhaps the most meritocratic in the world, and certainly the most successful in China’s long history. With his trademark candor, Mahbubani delivers impartial and incisive insights on the strategic stakes and mistakes in this new great game. Mahbubani is at his most vociferous in defending China’s authoritarian governance. Otherwise, the start-up nation, barely two hundred and fifty years old, with only a quarter of China's population, cannot expect to defeat the world's oldest continuous civilization. American policymakers must shake off their complacency and launch a major strategic reboot of both domestic and foreign policies that have weakened the nation's social foundations and global standing. The global rise of China and the relative strategic decline of the US presents a political challenge that the US has never faced before. To many it is no longer the indispensable nation but an awkward interloper. Meanwhile, America has seen the power of its economic model badly damaged by the 2008 financial crisis.

Chinese society is now infused with innovation and dynamism. Most critically, the Chinese people have regained their cultural confidence. Who will win this contest? What is at stake? And who will judge the winner? In this book, Kishore Mahbubani evaluates the two sides, and shows how China has been thinking on a global scale, launching ambitious initiatives under some of the world's most pragmatic and competent leaders. American congressmen and businessmen are cheering their government's public attacks on China. American and Chinese naval vessels are having close encounters in the South China Sea. The twenty-first century's great geopolitical contest has begun.
