Chapter 19
The Hundred-Year Marathon Just Awakens from a Dream

The book The Hundred-Year Marathon was published in 2015, yet very few decision-makers have understood it, and even fewer have implemented any countermeasures.

This is because Roosevelt’s terrible example caused presidents generation after generation to remain unaware — 80 years of Communist disaster continued without end, starting from Roosevelt, passed down from one president to the next, and still unawakened today. In 2021, President Biden again refused to hold Xi Jinping accountable for creating and spreading the pandemic, instead shaking hands and making peace with Xi. In 2022, Biden tacitly accepted Xi’s illegal third term after ten years of autocratic rule. In 2023, Xi caused an incident to kill off Li Keqiang, attempting to eliminate future troubles.

The reason the CCP’s “Hundred-Year Marathon” succeeded is clearly due to the strong support of international forces. Politely put, Western politicians were deceived; more harshly, the “pro-Communist gate” fifth column has run rampant!

I. Veteran Spy Reveals Inside Story

People say espionage work cannot be separated from disguise. It is hard to imagine any spy openly admitting mistakes, misjudgments, and the losses brought to their own country. But there are exceptions: one veteran spy wrote a book recounting the errors and being fooled in his espionage career. This book is The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower by Michael Pillsbury, whose Chinese name is Bai Bangrui.

In 1969, 24-year-old Pillsbury was recruited as a spy by the CIA and FBI. At that time, he worked in the office of the UN Secretary-General. This office gathered staff from all over the world, and Pillsbury was the only American there. His first task as a rookie spy was to try to approach Soviet colleagues in the office to get the Soviet leadership’s views on China. This assignment was given by then National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger to help plan secret outreach to China. From that day, Pillsbury began his more than forty-year espionage career focused on China. Starting in the 1990s, he visited China almost every year, widely engaging with the military, academia, and government officials at various levels. The Chinese side knew what he was doing but still opened up some sensitive information inaccessible to outsiders and introduced him to some politically sensitive Chinese people. This gave him unique insight and connections on China. Pillsbury speaks fluent Chinese and understands Chinese culture, making him a truly China expert in the US intelligence community. His views and advice on China are highly valued by the US government. His public roles have spanned politics and academia, serving administrations from Nixon to Obama. Pillsbury has held senior posts in the US Department of Defense, worked with Senate committees, been an analyst at the RAND Corporation think tank, and a researcher at Harvard University. He is currently director of the China Strategy Center at the Washington-based Hudson Institute and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

With such complete credentials, rich experience, and Chinese expertise, how could Pillsbury make mistakes?

In US government and society, opinions on handling US-China relations divide into dovish “panda-huggers” and hawkish “dragon-slayers.” Pillsbury admitted in his book that he was once a staunch “panda-hugger,” repeatedly advising the US government to help China technologically and militarily because he believed China’s economic development would lead it to democracy, becoming like the US. Even after the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, his dovish stance did not change. In 1997, Pillsbury was invited to Dongguan, Guangdong Province, to observe grassroots village democratic elections. Speaking directly with villagers in Chinese, he realized these so-called democratic elections were merely a show. After this, the US Department of Defense and CIA commissioned him to draft a report on how China deceives the US. Pillsbury accessed top-secret intelligence and internal documents and spoke with defected former Chinese officials. Only then did he realize: he had been fooled by the Chinese all along. The openness of confidential files and introductions to military and intelligence figures were part of a deception plan aimed at influencing US policymakers through him.

Why would the Chinese Communist Party deceive him?

In The Hundred-Year Marathon, Pillsbury outlines China’s history and goals of strategic deception toward the US and the West. He believes China has had an ambitious plan since Mao’s era starting in 1949: to surpass the US and become the world’s dominant power. To achieve this, China must gain assistance from the US and Western countries to grow economically, technologically, and militarily, so it must hide its true strategic intentions, endure hardships quietly, keep a low profile, and surpass the US by 2049. This is the origin and central theme of the “Hundred-Year Marathon.”

However, in my view, first, Pillsbury himself is a Marxist, which is why he believes the nonsense that “economic base determines superstructure.” Secondly, Pillsbury does not understand that the “Hundred-Year Marathon” was not originally created by the CCP but is a consistent dream of Chinese nationalism known as the “Hundred Years of National Humiliation.” To obscure his Marxist stance, Pillsbury equates the CCP with China and thereby also “gives Taiwan’s Republic of China to the CCP” — which is typical of the “panda-hugging” approach.