Kishore Mahbubani, Has China Won.

- This is an exceptionally good book and well worth your time and effort, especially as we all confront Covid-19 and the tensions between the West and China that have been manufactured around it. 

- To see the stupidity of Trump and his phony war with China, not just on the origin of the virus but on trade and tariff issues, is painful. And to see Australia's Foreign Minister, the usually respected and competent Marise Payne, so lazily suck up to to the US by parroting Trump/Pompeo's call for a formal inquiry into the virus's origins in Wuhan, is insulting. And to witness the now fashionable branding by conservative politicians and their media lackeys (including our own Dutton) of the Chinese government as the 'Chinese Communist Party Government' is sickening because it is so ignorant. 

- Which is why Professor Mahbubani's superb book is so welcome. It's a tonic and the vaccine against stupidity we now need.

- Mahbubani has a great gift for writing with clarity and lucidity. (I first encountered him in his 2018 book Has the West Lost It and my note to myself was: I’ll read this clear, cut-through little book - which reads like a wise man's passionate and persuasive homily - many times over the next few years). His Asian perspective enables him to be very objective. He is a Distinguished Fellow at the Asian Research Institute at the National University of Singapore, and was for ten years Singapore's ambassador to the UN.

- The one major reason this book is so compulsive is that Mahbubani doesn't hold back. He unleashes whenever necessary. He's not anti-American, just clear-eyed and honest and ferocious when necessary. Its perspective is so sane, sensible, and founded on deep research and experience. He is also very up to speed with Australia and its place in the world. His advice to Australia is sound: 'The country that will have to make the most difficult geopolitical choice will be Australia...If Australia were to heed the extreme American voices calling for US allies to decouple themselves from the Chinese economy, it would commit national economic suicide'. 

- Everyone interested in today's world and its political, economic and social challenges, should devour this gem of a book. Especially politicians, and idiots.