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Dr. Michael Pillsbury

Distinguished Defense Policy Adviser; Senior Fellow for China Strategy, The Heritage Foundation; International Best-Selling Author of The Hundred-Year Marathon

Dr. Pillsbury is a Senior Fellow for China Strategy at The Heritage Foundation. He is a fluent in Mandarin and has served in senior national security positions in the U.S. government for the past four decades, with years of contact with the “hawks” in China’s military and intelligence agencies.

Dr. Pillsbury has written three books on China. The most recent one, The Hundred-Year Marathon, is an international bestseller and was number one on the Washington Post‘s list among other recommended reading lists. On September 26, 2018 U.S. President Donald Trump described Michael Pillsbury as “the leading authority on China.” Dr. Pillsbury was also named one of Washington DC’s 500 Most Influential People of 2023.

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As author of The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower, Dr. Michael Pillsbury describes the contrasts in Chinese strategy in business and foreign policy. Illustrating how Chinese thinking differs from Western approaches, Pillsbury discusses how you can improve your ability to think strategically.

In this riveting address, Dr. Michael Pillsbury describes how the CIA and the Pentagon learn from their failures and shares techniques from the secret units that study intelligence failures. As winner of the CIA Director’s Exceptional Performance Award, Pillsbury informs and engages audiences worldwide on these unique tactics.

Biography

Washington veteran, Michael Pillsbury is a fluent Mandarin speaker who has served in senior national security positions in the U.S. government for the past four decades, with years of contact with the “hawks” in China’s military and intelligence agencies. He quietly became a key figure behind former President Donald Trump’s confrontational China policy, to the dismay of Beijing—and some fellow China experts.

Pillsbury is the author of the best-selling books, The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower (2015), China Debates the Future Security Environment (2000) and editor of Chinese Views of Future Warfare (1998). His most recent #1 national best-seller, The Hundred-Year Marathon, reveals China’s secret strategy to supplant the United States as the world’s dominant power, and to do so by 2049, the one-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic. Foreign Affairs called it  “pungently written and rich in detail, this book deserves to enter the mainstream of debate over the future of U.S. Chinese relations.”

During the Reagan administration, Dr. Pillsbury was the Assistant Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning and responsible for implementation of the program of covert aid known as the Reagan Doctrine. While an analyst at the RAND Corporation, Michael Pillsbury published articles in Foreign Policy and International Security recommending that the United States establish intelligence and military ties with China. The proposal, publicly commended by Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, and James Schlesinger, later became US policy during the Carter and Reagan administrations.

Under President George H. W. Bush, Pillsbury was Special Assistant for Asian Affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, reporting to Andrew W. Marshall, Director of Net Assessment. Michael Pillsbury is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Pillsbury now serves as Senior Fellow for China Strategy at The Heritage Foundation.

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The leading authority on China..

President Donald J. Trump

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The Hundred Year Marathon outlines the scale and patience of Chinese aspirations. It is a must read for anyone who would better understand China.

Newt Gingrich

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The Hundred-Year Marathon looks at the critical issues of who is making policy in the Chinese capital and, as a result, it will be read, analyzed and debated for years. Think of Pillsbury as our time’s Paul Revere.

Gordon Chang, The National Interest

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Pillsbury’s scholarship is buttressed by an eye-popping amount of declassified material….

The Weekly Standard

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The Hundred-Year Marathon is without question the most important book written about Chinese strategy and foreign policy in years.

Robert Kagan, author of The World America Made and Of Paradise and Power

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