“China ate your lunch, Joe,” was Donald Trump’s one-liner in his televised debate last month against challenger Joe Biden.
As the temperature rises in the run-up to the US presidential election on November 3, the world can expect more of such taunts. Trump’s view is clear: China is a global villain that has visited a “plague” upon the world while stealing US jobs and intellectual property. Biden, for his part, has called Xi Jinping, China’s leader, “a thug”.
What is lost as China is used as a blunt rhetorical instrument to win American votes is any sense of how Beijing sees its own historical mission as the world’s emerging superpower. These three books, each of which is excellent in its own way, help to redress this imbalance.