Stealth War: How China Took Over While America's Elite Slept Kindle Edition

To be more precise, the book is about how the Communist Party of China (CCP) took over while America’s elite slept.Let’s state some facts about the CCP first:• Fifty to one hundred million people perished under its 70-year rule.• It claimed to be anti-dictatorship and pro-democracy while fighting for power in the 1940s, but produced the most brutal dictator and ruthless regime soon after it took over China.• Today, numerous dissidents have been jailed, and more than one million Uighurs are placed in modern concentration camps. People are jailed for reasons as absurd as not supporting watching National Day Parade.Spalding is the right person to write this book to wake up the civilized world. China watchers can be largely grouped into the following categories:1. Corporatists/globalist/financiers who have vested financial interests in Mainland China. The concepts of liberty, equality, country are novel to them. They have mansions all over the world and support whatever generating profit for them. They lobby for the CCP all the time.2. Western scholars in the pockets of CCP. Their careers rely on field trips to China which visa requires self-censorship. The CCP put them in their pockets by providing VIP treatment – free tours, adjunct professorships, gifts, lavish dinners…3. Principled China experts who know the CCP, Chinese people, Chinese culture deeply (often speak fluent mandarin, and have extensive first-hand interactions and connections with Chinese people) and firmly hold their conviction of freedom, liberty and democracy. The author and people like Perry Link, Yu Ying-shih are in this category. Spalding’s various recent China related positions in two US administrations make him stand out in dissecting the CCP with unique knowledge.You often get parroting of CCP narratives from the first two categories, but get enlightenment from the third. This book is indeed enlightening. Because of the author’s reputation, I pre-ordered the book 3 months in advance, and red it over the first weekend after its release.If you are unable to read the entire book but want to get a quick understanding of the issue addressed by this book, please spend a few minutes reading the excellent introduction that is essentially a summary. It clearly points out the mother of all issues: the CCP regards the American core values – rights of free speech and freedom of religion – as the threats to their existence, so they have to fight America, not necessarily with traditional military weapons, for their survival. They have been gaining in all fronts with the help of elites and general complacency.The book is highly readable. It does not enlist any abstract theories or obscure anecdotes to make the arguments. It uses telling stories out the author’s own experience or investigation to convince people. It starts with a startling story about how a once highly respected American think tank censored its project to align with the CCP’s interests and many other organizations’ fear of antagonizing the funding sources related to the CCP. The CCP’s influencing web covers law firms, NGOs, legislators as high as the senate leader, current and former government officials of both political parties. America’s loss in all fronts can be attributed to something described by two words: Unrestricted Warfare. If you wonder how all of this is related to ordinary people, here you go: “Simply put, 3.4 million US jobs vanished between 2001 and 2017 due to our trade relationship with China”. The book connects frequently discussed d CCP’s regular rule violation, intellectual property theft with tangible things for ordinary people such as $37 billion per year income reduction for impacted American workers. “This book is for and about the men and women of America who yearn for the better life they had before their elites welcomed their enemy into the WTO and into their lives.”.Chapter 2 is a remarkable succinct history of China and Sino-US relationship as related to this book. This is great for those who are interested in the topic of this book but have had very limited exposure to Chinese history. It shows that America’s complacency with the CCP started from the first high level meeting between the CCP and the US government to normalize the relationship - Kissinger’s trip to China in 1971. I would even trace it back to the 1940s when some US officials were deceived by the CCP disguised as a pro-democracy, anti-dictatorship political party.The economic front is where the US suffered by far the most damage incurred by the CCP. Chapter three uses solid evidence to show how the CCP uses piracy, espionage, hacking, counterfeit, taking advantage of obsolete treaties to advance on the US. It also paints a clear picture of the giant Ponzi scheme like Mainland economy that scams innocent US investors to help keep it going, and the gigantic real estate (called unreal estate by the book) bubble. “China had three times the amount of money in circulation than the United States did, while generating $4 trillion less in GDP.”The military gain of China over the US while the US was fighting prolonged counterproductive wars costing trillions of dollars eventually is alarming. As a former Brig General working for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the author saw everything, fought his best to fend off the unconventional CCP assault assisted by American elites. The CCP has gutted the US manufacturing so much that some military operations could be paralyzed should the CCP decides to cut the supply.On the digital front, the CCP is taking full advantage of the US openness while closing Mainland China with its notorious Great Firewall. It employs a two-million strong cyber army (so-called “public opinion analysts”) to troll the internet. PLA Unit 6139 keeps launching sophisticated attacks on all kinds of organizations in the US (government, companies, NGOs…). “a media lab at Beijing’s Tsinghua University receives the entire feed of data from China’s popular Weibo platform—that is, the posts, images, videos, memes, and metadata of its 450 million-plus users—to analyze.” You can imagine what a surveillance police state PRC is.Chapter 5 on 5G is most fascinating. As the author of a proposal for the National Security Council on the nation’s strategy for 5G, Spalding can speak authoritatively on this topic. This chapter can be used as a reference for a quick understanding of 5G and its potential ubiquitous impact on the society. Ironically, the author was forced out of the White House due to this proposal opposed by powerful telecom industry lobbyists. This is where the grace of the author shines. Many people in his situation would hold grudges against superiors and/or colleagues, and badmouth them in talks, books. He does not. On the contrary, he tries to shine a light on the bright side. I believe it is a blessing for him to be forced out because otherwise we would not have this great book and author’s tireless eloquent talks in front of different cameras to wake up American people.As a former member of two administrations, the author reveals how the CCP has managed to change the diplomatic behavior of the US: “the instructions from the Obama administration were loud and clear: we are not going to do anything in public to antagonize China, as the relationship is too significant financially.” The book details a case of self-censorship for the CCP by American taxpayer funded Voice of America. The CCP’s influence and infiltration are holistic and multipronged. Politicians and their families, academics, government officials are all their targets.Though the author is apparently not recommending doing business in China, the book’s chapter 8 would be highly valuable for anyone who chooses to do so. It uses specific cases to advise you on how to protect your interests in a very uncertain environment where everything is under the control of the CCP.One cannot leave the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) out when talking about the influence of the CCP. The book has an incisive dissection of this CCP’s grand scheme with the help of Nadège Rolland, a veteran French defense analyst.The gem of the book is the action plan for us – the last two chapters. If you cannot find the time to read the whole book to understand the author’s systematic reasoning, but are willing to take his words at face value, read the last two chapters and take any actions you can to combat the massive international cancer CCP.It starts with revealing stories about how the US brought down the USSR of which I had never heard. Since the CCP survives and grows by getting around rules, cheating, stealing, bribery. Enforcing laws and rules forcefully is a common sense based effective approach to combat them. The book lists different areas for such actions largely for the government to take. However, ordinary people can urge government officials, their representatives, their fund managers to do the right thing. The book concludes with 4 basic concepts: 1. Lead with principles based on the 4 freedoms. 2. Strengthen America by rebuilding the national infrastructure. 3. Organize to compete by helping and protecting our own innovation. 4. Rebuild the international order.This book’s timing couldn’t better. We are at a historic juncture where people will determine whether the world will allow the CCP to cause disasters like that created by Nazi Germany last century.The book is quite thorough about the threats from the CCP. However, I wish the author could take this opportunity to explain a highly relevant truth often forgotten by people – a totalitarian system is bound to have conflicts with democracies regardless of who are in the system. This will help dispel the common illusion of a benign totalitarian regime peacefully coexisting with democracies with the help of some internal reforming forces as advocated by the infamous open letter China is not an enemy.I can understand that it is better to overestimate the strength of an enemy than to underestimate it when devising a plan to combating it. I would like to point out that totalitarian regimes often grossly exaggerate its power and achievements at all levels. Let me use the Korean War as an example. The PLA troops were mostly battle-hardened veterans fresh from the civil war ended a year earlier. Equipped by the USSR with their guns, tanks, fighters, they were not nearly as outgunned by Americans as many people believe. Most American troops were young kids who had never been to a battlefield. The result is a casualty ratio of 9:1 (China:US). The CCP troops often had whole divisions collapsing rapidly. The CCP troops are the best in parades with goose-stepping.Considering the author has spent most of his career in the US military, a model of meritocracy, I suspect it is hard for him to imagine the ubiquitous nepotism or anti-meritocracy of the CCP’s regime. Xi, a middle school dropout, being at the top of the hierarchy is the norm. There is an estimated implicit price list for military ranks.I disagree with the widely accepted notion echoed by the book: the CCP achieved “the most mind-boggling growth in the history of the world.” Many use “miracle” to describe it. The Mainland living standard has just reached that of Taiwan and S. Korea in the 1980s based on GDP per capita adjusted for inflation, so the PRC took twice as much time to achieve the same as some other counties. It is true that the CCP is producing billionaires faster than other countries, but 400 million or so Mainlanders live under $5.5 per day, the poverty line for upper-middle-income ($3,956 and $12,235 GDP per capita) to which the PRC belongs now. To me, the disparity is mind-boggling, not the growth.I noticed two minor errors:• P.26 Zhou Enlai was the premier, not the foreign minister when he met Kissinger.• P.26 “ba” is usually translated to hegemony, not tyrant.This is a superb book. I will recommend it to anyone with potential interest in this topic. I have recommended it to our local library and will send it as holiday gifts.

Just finished reading ‘Stealth War’ by Robert Spalding. Must admit I opened the book with a great deal of skepticism. I have no problem admitting when I’m wrong because I always welcome a challenge. About 1/3 of the way through I was like, “I surrender”. By the time I finished, my head was spinning a little and it became clear that the experience, knowledge and research Spalding put into this book was a labor of love for the freedoms that come with being a truly democratic nation. Ideally, the United States will one day become truly democratic. Until then, I challenge you to read this book from beginning to end and finish without a profound change in the way you view China’s place in the global playing field as well as a change in view towards the United States’ current role in enabling China to become the next global superpower. Spalding manages to make 235 pages “succinct” (if that’s possible) without any superfluous words and without any stone left unturned.”

This brilliant book should be mandatory reading for every U.S. citizen, politician, and member of the media. I read extensively on the China threat and this book very adroitly spells out the end of the U. S. as we know it unless we can wake-up and make immediate and dramatic changes. That includes counterespionage, counter-cyber, treating warfare as being economic in nature, and expelling numerous Chinese from the U.S. who are here to spy, steal, sway, and deceive us. We are not educating 350,000 Chinese; we are giving them unfettered access so they can destroy us. China is not our friend and buying cheap stuff has been far more harmful than beneficial. It’s undercut our workforce, capabilities, and economy. Read this book and learn what mainstream media and many of our leaders have ignored.

Do not buy this book. There are no citations in the entire book! In the Preface Robert Spalding rationalizes his decision to exclude endnotes because he wanted to make the book "user-friendly" and because many of the "hundreds of interviews" require confidentiality. In the same Preface, he describes the importance of documenting facts, without realizing that he in fact has not documented anything. Instead of including documentation and simply omitting classified interviews within this documentation, Robert Spalding decided to choose the easier wrong and ignore his civic responsibility to document anything. Spalding's lack of sources is cowardly and reflects the same kind of cowardly behavior that he accuses politicians and think-tanks of in this book. I sincerely believe the anecdotes within the book regarding China's corrupt influence on America's elite...but that's all this book is: anecdotal information. No solid research can come from this book.

What an eye opener! Clearly demonstrated are American naivete and Chinese culture and strength of purpose. Surprising is that almost all of the large American corporations dove into the deep end of the pool without any consideration of the possibility of things going sideways. Unfortunately, by the time the stockholders are made aware of the danger, it will be too late. As is made clear in the book, the economic strength supersedes military strength. China is doing to us as we did to the Soviets. China just doesn't let laws get in the way.

This book is really revealing of what the Chinese are doing to eat our lunch. What is so disturbing is that our politicians, military high command and corporate CEO's are mostly blind to the truth of this threat. Money is influencing too many of our leaders and nobody cares.

A very thought provoking book that re-enforces and explores in more detail thoughts I had/stories encountered before reading this book. Whilst I don't doubt there is a large element of truth to a lot of what is written here about China, i can't help but feel slightly skeptical about the extent of some claims given the lack of evidence to support throughout. The author has first hand experience and so no doubt has a personal connection to most of the topics discussed. There are some very interesting examples in here that at the very least provide good conversational topics.The book certainly makes you think about China in the real world and a lot of this is supported by media around the world so I have no doubt that some of what is written is certainly going on. I would certainly recommend to anyone wanting to understand the current state of play in global order and the complacency America has taken in recent years putting historic norms at risk...

This book provides a detailed and wide-ranging description of the multi-decade effort by the CCP (the Chinese Communist Party) to establish an unassailable totalitarian empire within its own territory while undermining all rival powers and potential sources of resistance.The author, who lived and worked in China for many years and speaks Mandarin fluently, is careful to distinguish between the Chinese government (the CCP) and the Chinese people at large, most of whom are blameless for the crimes committed in their name. As the author puts it, the officials of the CCP are "exquisitely trained" in deception, and have succeeded in convincing most people in the West that both China and its government are essentially benign and pose no threat to the rest of the world. In reality the CCP has spent the last three decades waging a stealth war against both domestic dissidents and the West, particularly the USA as its only serious rival for global power.The book describes how the CCP has waged this stealth war across six key areas: the economy, the military, diplomacy, technology, education, and infrastructure, giving specific and detailed examples for each of them.In summary, this book provides an urgently needed 'wake up call' for the people and governments of the Western world, and indeed everyone who currently enjoys life beyond the reach of the Chinese Communist Party. As of 2019, the CCP exercises ruthless totalitarian control over its population of 1.45 billion people, and represents by far the greatest threat to global security and freedom as it attempts to gain supremacy as a world power, destroying any who might oppose it. This book explains how we reached this point and what can be done to counter the existential threat that the CCP now poses to all of us.

General Spalding has first-hand experience with the Chinese. He speaks fluent Mandarin and has lived in China with his family. While he has great love and respect for the people he is very critical of the CCP.This is a short book, very well written and straight to the point. A must-read for anyone in business. I also recommend reading, " Rise of the Red Dragon" by Dr Michael Salla, after you have read this. The two books connect very well and show you the real picture, helping connect the dots.

A great book, well written and a must for patriots worldwide. As John D Rockefeller put it, competition is a sin. As Edward Bernays taught them how to change public opinion, with his book Propaganda. And Gustave Le Bon with The Crowd, showed them how to use control group thought and Sun Tzu in the art of war, showed it was possible to conquer a nation, without firing a shot.As Albert Pike claimed, there will be three world wars, who would believe that W3 has been raging for a couple of decades...As well as the above, I highly recommend seeking the books of Gary Allen, Peter De Rosa, Zygmund Dobbs and Michael De Semlyen. It's unfortunate that the author hadn't.

I’m a massive CCP hawk, and this is an interesting personal view, but it’s more like an over dinner/beers discussion than a genuine study. There are no references, and when you are making accusations of this magnitude you really have to provide evidence if you want to bring people with you