The Contest of the Century

November 25, 2013
China and the United States will wage an all-important, yet rather vague struggle for the competitive edge, according to this unfocused but illuminating treatise. Financial Times journalist Dyer surveys facets of China’s foreign relations, arguing that the 21st-century world order will center on Sino-American jousting for a loosely defined global influence. In the military sphere, he argues, China’s swelling navy will try to shoo the American fleet from nearby waters and monopolize local maritime resources; geopolitically, China’s efforts to woo the world with “soft power” may be undermined by its dour authoritarianism and national chauvinism; on the economic front, China’s alleged goal of replacing the dollar with the renminbi as the global reserve currency will require it to overturn its state-dominated economic model. Dyer’s invocation of traditional great-power rivalry feels overstated, since neither country wants war and both benefit from a liberalized global economy; America can “win” the contest, he contends, with nothing more combative than accommodating diplomacy and sensible budgetary policies. The competition he describes is really between China’s own conflicted impulses—and here Dyer’s lively prose, vivid reportage, and long experience reporting on the country really shine, making this one of the most lucid, readable, and insightful of the current rise-of-China studies. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, Wylie Agency.

January 1, 2014
It's in all the headlines: China and the United States are increasingly at loggerheads. As Financial Times journalist Dyer notes, it's likely to get more heated in years to come. "Beijing is starting to channel its inner great power," writes the author. In so doing, it is shifting from a reactive to a proactive international stance, seeking to shape the world according to its national interests. And in doing that--exercising, most recently, something like a Chinese version of the Monroe Doctrine--it is increasingly coming up against the U.S., which has long had a controlling interest in many parts of Asia. Australia, writes the author, has been tied to the U.S. strategically for generations, but increasingly, its economy is dependent on trade with China; when dollars begin to trump diplomacy, Australia's relations with the U.S. are likely to loosen. Interestingly, writes Dyer, China is taking a page from long-forgotten American naval doctrine in developing a blue-water military force to expand and maintain its sphere. Whether this means that a military collision with America is inevitable depends, in a curious way, on whether the ruling Communist Party retains its power. Its "most vulnerable flank is from the nationalist, populist right," which is longing to assert Chinese power, and a "party that loudly claims the mantle of national salvation cannot afford to look weak in the face of perceived slights." Dyer counsels that instead of reacting with the usual China-bashing, with all its thinly veiled racially tinged codes, the U.S. would do well to "roll out the red carpet for Chinese investments that do not have clear national security implications," becoming partners in a two-way economy rather than mere consumers. Somewhat more optimistic than Harry Dent Jr.'s The Demographic Cliff (2013), insistent that the key to Western influence-shaping lies in economic housecleaning. All bets are on as to whether that can happen.

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October 15, 2013
After decades of dominance in world geopolitics, the U.S. is now facing a growing rivalry with China that will be the major factor in world politics in the coming decades. But that rivalry is not likely to be as intense and bitter as the Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union. Instead, it will be characterized by a constant balancing of power and shifting coalitions, according to Dyer, economics correspondent for the Financial Times. Dyer focuses on three phenomena: the rising Chinese challenge to U.S. power in military might in Asia, nationalist policies on the world stage, and the challenge to the U.S. dollar by the strengthening Chinese currency. Dyer places the current rise of China in the broader context of changes in the Chinese Communist Party, including reform of its image since the Tiananmen Square massacre and more expansive economic, if not political, policies. Finally, Dyer addresses fatalistic views of the rise of China, arguing that the U.S. can continue to exert enormous influence if it stabilizes its own economy and neither confronts China nor isolates itself. A thoughtful, insightful look at changing geopolitics.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)