For those who are not deep China nerds but want a somewhat approachable lowdown, I can highly recommend Bill Bishop’s newsletter Sinocism (enough free issues to be worthwhile) and his podcast Sharp China (the latter is a bit more approachable but requires a subscription to Stratechery).
I’m not a China expert so I won’t make strong claims, but I generally agree that we should not treat China as an unknowable, evil adversary who has exactly the same imperial desires as ‘the west’ or past non-Western regimes. I think it was irresponsible of Aschenbrenner to assume this without better research & understanding, since so much of his argument relies on China behaving in a particular way.
For those who are not deep China nerds but want a somewhat approachable lowdown, I can highly recommend Bill Bishop’s newsletter Sinocism (enough free issues to be worthwhile) and his podcast Sharp China (the latter is a bit more approachable but requires a subscription to Stratechery).
I’m not a China expert so I won’t make strong claims, but I generally agree that we should not treat China as an unknowable, evil adversary who has exactly the same imperial desires as ‘the west’ or past non-Western regimes. I think it was irresponsible of Aschenbrenner to assume this without better research & understanding, since so much of his argument relies on China behaving in a particular way.