The World Turned Upside Down

America, China, and the Struggle for Global Leadership

By: Clyde Prestowitz

Narrated by: Paul Heitsch

Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's summary

An authority on Asia and globalization identifies the challenges China's growing power poses and how it must be confronted.

When China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, most experts expected the WTO rules and procedures would liberalize China and make it "a responsible stakeholder in the liberal world order". But the experts made the wrong bet. China today is liberalizing neither economically nor politically but, if anything, becoming more authoritarian and mercantilist.

In this book, notably free of partisan posturing and inflammatory rhetoric, renowned globalization and Asia expert Clyde Prestowitz describes the key challenges posed by China and the strategies America and the Free World must adopt to meet them. He argues that these must be more sophisticated and more comprehensive than a narrowly targeted trade war. Rather, he urges strategies that the US and its allies can use unilaterally without contravening international or domestic law.

©2021 Clyde Prestowitz (P)2021 Tantor

If you are interested in China

This it my third book on China. By far the most important. Detailed analysis of Chinese policy towards the rest of the world historically and in the Contemporary world. very good!

A must listen

Free world needs to learn about Chinas manipulation of other countries including our own.

How We Turned China Into An Existential Threat

First, an education into the history of China.
Second how we had many, many opportunities to defeat the CCP and missed every one until it is almost impossible now.
Third what steps we can take now that the CCP has become so powerful and so threatening to the existence of the free world. And how critical each step is.

Informative and engaging

A well-written analysis of the China threat and the missteps the U.S. has taken in its policy with China. What sets this book apart is that Prestowitz also offers a clear strategy and plan for the U.S. to face China and protect western democracy. The introduction starts strong with an overview of how China has already succeeded in being able to weaponize its imports, infiltrate, and control foreign governments, fund/control global infrastructure projects. From there Prestowitz makes it clear had the U.S. had more foresight and taken a closer look at Chinese culture it would be evident that becoming a supreme world leader is engrained in their culture. He shares eye-opening examples that leave the reader surprised, if not worried, and very much welcoming Prestowitz's strategies to confront this threat head-on.

An eye opener on America’s economic past and future

An interested and very compelling history of how America became wealthy after WWII, but almost immediately started to allow other nations to take advantage of its generosity.

The corporations, politicians, and moneyed few benefitted greatly from this largess, but the bill for it all is now massive, and is coming due.

We can choose to continue our negligent largess, in particular to China, and pay much greater consequences later, or we can learn from our past mistakes and steer a new course designed to benefit the American people rather than just its tech and corporate giants, plus their donation recipients.

The future is still ours, but even that situation will not last long unless we change course very soon.

a "Must Read"

If you want to truly understand how the relationship between  the United States and China got to where it is  today, this is the book to read. 

Well written and nuanced, it explains the naivete of the USA in the past and the self interest of corporate leaders, presidents of universities,  and members of Congress  in keeping their profits from China flowing.  Prestowitz’s conclusions and recommendations  on where to go from here are well thought out and make sense.