- This new book by David Brophy, a senior lecturer in modern Chinese history at the University of Sydney, is such a refreshing read. It is highly intelligent and informed, and full of facts and insights that so urgently need to be circulated and debated in these hyper-charged times.
- It would be a mistake to characterise it as 'balanced', a rather meaningless cliche. It aims high, not low, thoroughly destroying anti-China posturing from the usual suspects on the left as well as the right. It names names and doesn't hold back. Clive Hamilton, Peter Hartcher and Hugh White are frequent targets. As is the defence and national security establishment.
- Brophy's principal contention is straightforward: I see as dangerous any efforts to uphold a flagging American hegemony in Asia, which is now of an almost exclusively military nature. I worry at the visible rise in anti-Chinese racism we see here. And I worry at the worsening levels of state repression in China.
- Heather Rose’s highly lauded fantasy novel Bruny (2019) about a Chinese takeover of Tasmania is judged ‘a deeply problematic narrative’, indulging as it does in tired racial stereotypes. I read this book when it first came out and considered it dreadful. Thankfully Brophy destroys it.
- The Conclusion addresses an important question of today: what should Australia do if China attacks Taiwan? We should oppose it in the same way we oppose America's wars: with demonstrations, strikes and coordinated international action, but not by calling for war on China ourselves.
- These reviews on the preliminary page of the book are spot on:
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