About the Author

Richard Bernstein has been a reporter, culture critic, and commentator for more than 30 years. He was a foreign correspondent in Asia and Europe for Time magazine and The New York Times, and was the first Beijing bureau chief for Time. He is the author of many books on Chinese and Asian themes, among them The Coming Conflict with China and Ultimate Journey, the latter of which was a New York Times Best Book of the Year. He is also the author of Out of the Blue: A Narrative of September 11, 2001, which was named by The Boston Globe as one of the seven best books of 2002. He lives in New York.

Writer and scholar, Ross H. Munro is the coauthor of The Coming Conflict with China, the first major book to argue that the People's Republic of China had emerged as a true rival to America. The New York Times recognized it as one of the most notable books of 1997, and it has been translated into over five languages.  Munro has been a recognized expert in China and Chinese culture since the mid-70's, when he was the bureau chief of the Toronto Globe and Mail.

Reviews

The United States and China in the early 1990s became global rivals, an antagonism that will dominate the early decades of the 21st century, according to this farsighted, chilling report. The authors disclose internal Communist Party documents portraying the U.S. as China's archenemy and revealing Beijing's goal of becoming Asia's dominant power, partly by seizing control of the South China Sea, its islands and its oil-rich outcroppings almost as far south as Indonesia. They show that China's aggressive trade policy includes highly protectionist barriers, as well as the creation of numerous companies operating in the U.S.-indirect subsidiaries of the Chinese army, established for military technology transfer and backdoor access to financial markets. Blasting the Clinton administration for its inconsistent policy toward China, the authors unmask Beijing's intensive lobbying activities, which have led Washington to back down on almost every threat to take action against China for violations of international norms. Fueled by virulently aggrieved nationalism, the dictatorial People's Republic, which has sold nuclear weapons technology and missiles to Pakistan and Iran, is well on its way to becoming the world's second strongest military power, assert the authors, who put the size of China's military spending at 10 to 20 times official estimates. With a view to fostering a stable, more democratic China while protecting U.S. interests, they outline measures designed to reduce our trade deficit with China, to oppose human rights violations, to deluge the Chinese mainland with information. This hard-hitting critique sounds a wake-up call. Bernstein, New York Times book critic, formerly Time's Beijing bureau chief, wrote Dictatorship of Virtue, an analysis of multiculturalism. Munro, director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute's Asia Program in Philadelphia, was Beijing bureau chief for the Toronto Globe and Mail. 50,000 first printing. (Feb.)

The alarming sound of this book's title rings the second coming of the Cold War. Bernstein and Munro, both seasoned journalists, predict an inevitable conflict with China, which has become the world's second most powerful nation since the Soviet Union's collapse. With detailed documentation and analysis of Chinese foreign and domestic policies as well as the Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1996, the authors argue that China is no longer a strategic friend of the United States but a formidable enemy. China's intention to play a more active role in Asian affairs is presented here as a threat to U.S. political and economic interests. The book raises important concerns about the direction of China's rapid development and America's lack of a clear and consistent policy toward Sino-American relations. Recommended for academic libraries.‘Mark Meng, St. John's Univ. Lib., New York