For far too long, the United States and its allies failed to take seriously the Party’s unwavering determination to crush opposition, build national power, and fulfill its ideological and geopolitical ambitions.
The West’s strategy of engagement with China has failed. More than three decades of trade and investment with the advanced democracies have left that country far richer and stronger than it would otherwise have been. But growth and development have not caused China’s rulers to relax their grip on political power, abandon their mercantilist economic policies, or accept the rules and norms of the existing international system. To the contrary: China today is more repressive at home, more aggressive abroad, and more obviously intent on establishing itself as the world’s preponderant power than at any time since the death of Chairman Mao. What went wrong?
Put simply, the democracies underestimated the resilience, resourcefulness, and ruthlessness of the Chinese Communist Party. For far too long, the United States and its allies failed to take seriously the Party’s unwavering determination to crush opposition, build national power, and fulfill its ideological and geopolitical ambitions. In this timely and powerfully argued study, Aaron Friedberg identifies the assumptions underpinning engagement, describes the counterstrategy that China’s Communist Party rulers devised in order to exploit the West’s openness while defeating its plans, and explains what the democracies must do now if they wish to preserve their prosperity, protect their security, and defend their common values.
Related Event
Please join AEI’s Aaron L. Friedberg as he traces the development of the engagement strategy, details China’s counterstrategy, and outlines a better path forward for the US and its allies and partners.
“Friedberg throws into sharp relief the flawed reasoning that justified the failed decades-long policy of engagement. He also clarifies those elements of China’s conduct and its intellectual sources to which attention must be paid in getting China right.”
Peter Berkowitz
RealClearPolitics“Getting China Wrong is a concise, readable, and compelling look at the failure of United States’ engagement with China. Written with expert knowledge and experience, it never strays into hyperbole or partisanship, and stands out from comparable titles by managing to be immensely reasonable yet still packing an unequivocal punch.”
Bookish Asia
“As a piece of analysis, Getting China Wrong is first class. As a prescription for strategy, it is just a beginning. But it ought be read as widely as possible in Australia.”
Paul Monk
The Australian“Friedberg argues in crisp, compelling prose that it got most of its calculations of Chinese behaviour just plain wrong over the past 30 years.”
Rana Mitter
The Critic“…makes for chilling reading in the light of events in the Ukraine.”
Bloomberg
“a compact, well-argued critique of U.S. policy.”
Foreign Policy
“This groundbreaking book chronicles the many misperceptions that American leaders have held about China in recent decades and subjects them to withering scrutiny . . . an important milestone in redirecting American thinking about China.”
James Mann
Author of The China Fantasy and About Face: A History of America’s Curious Relationship with China“Aaron Friedberg delivers the definitive history of America’s failed strategy of ‘engagement’ with the Communist regime in Beijing. But Friedberg doesn’t abandon his readers in a cold bath of disillusionment: he illuminates a path towards a winning strategy for America and other free nations.”
Matt Pottinger
Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution and former US Deputy National Security Advisor“There is simply no better assessor of China’s power and its consequences for the international order than Aaron Friedberg. This book should be used as an operating manual by everyone crafting US policy on how to deal with China.”
Kori Schake
Director of Foreign and Defense Policy at the American Enterprise Institute“In this careful and detailed study, Aaron Friedberg astutely explores how and why America’s decades-long strategy of ‘engagement’ with China came asunder — and he provides a clear and sophisticated policy roadmap for revamping US and Western policies in order to deal with a more assertive and potentially threatening China.”
David Shambaugh
George Washington University and author of China’s Leaders: From Mao to Now“A telling account of how and why policy-makers, academics, and business embraced a form of engagement with China that proved to be a sincerely optimistic but hopelessly wrong gamble. A trenchant and accessible foray into the geopolitics of our time and our future.”
George Magnus
Research Associate, China Centre, University of Oxford and SOAS“In Getting China Wrong, Aaron Friedberg lays out a balanced and practical approach for managing relations with China. Most compellingly, he argues that liberal democracies must begin by taking their own side in this rivalry, making clear the stark differences of a future defined by the Chinese Communist Party. This book is essential reading for anyone seeking to navigate a multipolar world order.”
Admiral John Richardson
USN (Ret.), 31st Chief of Naval Operations“Friedberg’s Getting China Wrong nails down half a century of mistaken American assumptions about China’s future path. This essential non-partisan primer highlights the increasingly bold strategy of the Chinese Communist Party to defeat Western expectations.”
François Godement
Senior Advisor for Asia at Institut Montaigne, Paris“A decade ago, Aaron Friedberg courted unpopularity with A Contest for Supremacy, a book anticipating the imminent failure of engaging China at any price. His warnings were demonstrably worth heeding. Now in Getting China Wrong he makes the case that the United States and other democracies still underestimate the struggle ahead. But this is no counsel of despair: instead, Friedberg articulates a multi-layered action agenda, arguing that the best form of defense could well involve a willingness to impose costs.”
Rory Medcalf
Head of the National Security College, Australian National University, and author of Indo-Pacific Empire“A splendid book with deep insights into the nature of the Chinese Communist Party dictatorship and an urgent message about the need to uphold and expand the liberal international order in Asia.”
Nobu Kanehara
Former Deputy National Security Advisor to PM Abe of Japan“The go-to explainer of the Chinese government and the challenge it poses to Western democracies … Getting China Wrong makes a critical contribution to the debates over the nature of the CCP.”
Law and Liberty
”Aaron Friedberg’s Getting China Wrong examines the past few decades to understand how we got here. It is grim but essential reading.”
Free Beacon
