The Hidden Dagger

In this highly anticipated follow-up to the bestselling The Hundred-Year Marathon, the influential China expert and presidential advisor decodes China’s unique history of deception and reveals how Beijing’s secret race for domination has entered its final, decisive turn. The Hidden Dagger is a gripping, insider’s account that explains as never before how China’s ancient culture of political and military deception shapes its modern grand strategy—and why a complacent Washington keeps getting played by an opponent that prizes cunning, patience, surprise, indirect conflict, psychological warfare, and intelligence gathering superiority. Informed by a famous Chinese proverb—“hide a dagger in a smile”—and drawing on decades of newly declassified top-secret files, clandestine briefings, smuggled military documents and books from Beijing, and rare access to Chinese military and political elites and defectors, Michael Pillsbury reveals how Chinese leaders mine their own history for methods to outmaneuver the West, while pretending to be a cooperative partner to the world. In The Hidden Dagger you will discover: How Chinese strategic culture—from Sun Tzu to Xi Jinping—is influenced by classical Chinese art, language, and literature that elevate trickery and subterfuge as virtues of statecraft. The epic tales of ancient power struggles guiding today’s planners in Beijing—and what they signal about China’s intentions toward America. The secret intelligence coups and planted spies that let China penetrate U.S. technologies, neutralize our advantages, and mask its true ambitions. A new and surprising interpretation of U.S.–China relations—drawn from newly declassified documents—revealing how Mao trapped American forces during the Korean War and deceived Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger into “opening” China.