Asia's Reckoning

Asia's Reckoning

The Struggle for Global Dominance

Summary

'Stunningly good' Michael Burleigh, Evening Standard, Books of the Year 2017

The dramatic story of the relationship between the world's three largest economies, one that is shaping the future of us all, by one of the foremost experts on east Asia


For more than half a century, American power in the Pacific has successfully kept the peace. But it has also cemented the tensions in the toxic rivalry between China and Japan, consumed with endless history wars and entrenched political dynasties. Now, the combination of these forces with Donald Trump's unpredictable impulses and disdain for America's old alliances threatens to upend the region, and accelerate the unravelling of the postwar order. If the United States helped lay the postwar foundations for modern Asia, now the anchor of the global economy, Asia's Reckoning will reveal how that structure is now crumbling.

With unrivalled access to archives in the US and Asia, as well as many of the major players in all three countries, Richard McGregor has written a tale which blends the tectonic shifts in diplomacy with the domestic political trends and personalities driving them. It is a story not only of an overstretched America, but also of the rise and fall and rise of the great powers of Asia. The confrontational course on which China and Japan have increasingly set themselves is no simple spat between neighbors. And the fallout would be a political and economic tsunami, affecting manufacturing centers, trade routes, and political capitals on every continent.

Reviews

  • A shrewd and knowing book
    Robert D. Kaplan, Wall Street Journal

About the author

Richard McGregor

Author of the acclaimed bestseller The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers, Richard McGregor has reported from Asia for two decades. Formerly Chief of the Washington Bureau of the Financial Times, he has won numerous awards for his journalism. He has also contributed articles and reports to the BBC, the International Herald Tribune and the Far Eastern Economic Review. In 2015 he was made a Fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington.
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