Rating: 
Summary: Shrill and sometimes inaccurate
Review: The rapid collapse of the Soviet Empire should have taught us two things:* Heterogeneous communist empires are extremely fragile and can easily break up.
* Watchers of those societies will be describing their power and how much of a risk they are right up to the point of their collapse. A few months ago, I read a collection of stories, some of which were written in the early 1980's and the focus was on how powerful and dangerous the Soviet Union is. In retrospect, it is astonishing how inaccurate those writers were.
These two thoughts went through my mind as I read this book. The authors seem bent on presenting the Chinese leadership in the most unfavorable light possible, even to the point of falsehood and extensive exaggeration. In my opinion, the most absurd case is on page 133, where there is the statement, ". . . a surprise attack is the PLA's favorite weapon- used against Tibet, against U. S. forces in Korea, against India, even against the PRC's former ally the Soviet Union and against another ally, Communist Vietnam." The entry of the PRC into the Korean War was not a surprise to anyone other than General Douglas MacArthur and those who blindly believed in him. The Chinese had made it clear in many ways that if the UN forces moved near the Korean-Chinese border, then they would enter the war.
When China invaded Vietnam, China and Vietnam were not allies, in fact Vietnam had just invaded China's ally, Kampuchea. The attack was not a surprise, as the Chinese had issued many warnings to Vietnam regarding their invasion of Kampuchea. The border battles between China and the Soviet Union were not surprise attacks either. They followed months of increasing tension over where the border should be, and the Soviet Union had no trouble in stopping the Chinese forces from advancing.
While the PRC stealing secrets from the U. S. is a serious national security issue, the fact that they spy on this country hardly makes them unique in the world. Nations have always spied on each other, even the staunchest of allies engage in it. Their description of China's program in information warfare(IW) is so overblown as to be unbelievable. All nations are studying how to disable each other's computers and how to prevent it. The descriptions of the PRC launching successful cyber attacks that generate widespread destruction are difficult to believe.
Furthermore, there is the statement on page 198, " . . . the Clinton-Gore administration has: permitted the sale of hundreds of supercomputers to the Communist Chinese, exposing America to the threat of destructive information warfare." This is absurd, as one does not need supercomputers to carry out IW attacks. The computer viruses and worms that have been so destructive in the past ten years have been launched by single persons using only a personal computer and software tools available for free over the Internet.
While it is true that the PRC is the most likely nation to achieve superpower status alongside the United States and is therefore a potential threat, it is one that should be approached in a sensible manner. The shrill and emotional tone of this book adds very little that is constructive to how that threat is managed.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Chinese reaction
Review: This book is not objective scholarship but China conspiracy trash in the tradition of Mosher, Gertz, Timperlake, Bernstein and Munro. First, it is not written by a so-called China expert but by a ultra conservative journalist who has jumped on the China bashing bandwagon in the wake of the Cold War. Second, it appears that many journalists have capitalized on the "China Syndrome" because it sells and makes for some interesting world possibilities. The reality is that despite China's ascent, China (the PRC) will never be fully accepted into Western world so long as they remain an authoritarian or a socialist free market economy state. With that mind, save your hard earned money and buy books from reliable sources on world affairs like RAND or the Brookings Institution. You'll thank me later.
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