A wonderful book about the state of American national security; thanks for creating an interest to explore further.

At this time it may look to most people of the world that the 21st century will be the "Chinese Century". Over the last thirty years, The PRC (The People' Republic of China" has expanded its' economy to be the second largest in the World and as per Chairman Xi, it will surpass the US to be the biggest and strongest in the world. In many ways the PRC has surpassed the US in the production and manufacturer of middle size manufactures and thereby made that production to be uneconomical. As these industries have been shut down in the US and moved overseas, our ability to manufacture many products has been damaged.

So what can the US do to prevent China from moving into that position? Taiwan is the manufacturer of 90% of all the advanced silicon chips in the world. But China has been stealing 'Intellectual properties for years and is currently beginning to produce lower level "chips" and planning on upgrading their production to advanced chips. The "Belts and Roads" (B&R) initiatives have built roads, high speed train rails and deep water container ports. China knows that these third world countries will never be able to repay China for these facilities and the longer the money is owed, the more control China accumulates.

There is though a set of problems for the PRC/CCP (Chinese Communist Party). Most of these countries understand that along with the infrastructure assistance comes other agencies that are run by the MSS (Ministry of Security Service). The MSS spends its; time working its' way in to bureaucracy of whatever country they're in, spying on the governments and people of the country while creating double agents and collaborators who feed info to the MSS. There is no way of knowing what information is compromised by the MSS.

Some countries that have accepted the largess of the PRC have begun to complain about the quality of the infrastructure that have been built by the B&R and that promises of the transfer of/ and education for their people has not been forthcoming. Things are built that at this time can only be run by the B&R people. But China is facing a problem that even they can't fix quickly.

Like every country that has created a large middle class they find that the number of young people needed to be educated to take over critical systems in the future are lacking. Because of the one-child policy the CCP instituted from 1979 to 2015, their ‘young’ cohorts are skewed to males, leaving less women to give birth to the next generation. Also, this new generation of women doesn’t want to waste their educational opportunities by having children and being forced out of the workforce.

This ‘lost’ generation will also make it difficult for China to fill quotas for the military and the CCP itself.