Dragon Strike

China is raping our country
US President Donald Trump

If war is what the US wants… we’re ready to fight till the end
Chinese government statement

Dragon Strike‘s international and strategic insight is formidable
The Spectator

The roar of engines from twelve Russian-built SU-27s rip through Vietnamese airspace. Within minutes, burning phosphorus, shrapnel and delayed action mines are falling on Vietnam’s main naval base. Operation Dragon Strike has begun. The Indo-Pacific is at war, plunging the world into crisis. Four days later, American satellites detect Chinese nuclear missiles being prepared for launch. This is an authentically and authoritatively constructed thriller in which the United States, Asia and Europe become dramatically and unavoidably enmeshed in war. Alarmingly, China was far less aggressive and powerful when Dragon Strike was first published in 1997.  Back then, it had no aircraft carriers or hypersonic missiles. Its economic writ did not extend to every corner of the Earth.  But the fundamentals that led to war in this account are stronger and more embedded today. Dragon Strike has the page-turning quality of best-selling fiction. Yet, the events here construct a scenario which horrifies defence planners.

Reviews

The authors know their stuff, and their timing is impeccable. Humphrey Hawksley of the BBC and Simon Holberton of the Financial Times, both old Asia hands, have constructed an ingenious thriller based on the premise that a resurgent China – soon to become the largest economy on earth – will clash with that other great Pacific Power, America.
Christopher Lockwood, Telegraph

In the end this perceptive book is really about what is now being called the China Problem. Is China on the verge of becoming the ham-fisted bully of Asia? And if so, what should – or can – the rest of the world do about it. The alternatives suggested in Dragon Strike are not appealing.
Barry Hillenbrand, Time

Dragon Strike is a cracking read by two fine journalists who know what they are talking about. Realistic and gripping, it goes to the heart of some of the most worrying issues with which the world will be grappling in the millennium.
Chris Patten, Chancellor, Oxford University, and last governor of Hong Kong

After the absolutism which the Cold War threatened, and the cataclysmic and cathartic wars which have erupted since, this return to the notion of calculation in war is strangely chilling. Dragon Strike‘s international and strategic insight is formidable.
Allan Mallinson, Spectator

The central theme comes through loud and clear: The United States has little idea why it is still in the Western Pacific (other perhaps than Korea). As events every year since 1992 have shown, it has no policy towards China’s seawards expansionism, instead taking naïve comfort in the benefits of “engagement” with a China whose goals have been stated and are unlikely to be changed by smiling faces. Hawksley and Holberton may be too close for comfort.
Philip Bowring, International Herald Tribune

These are two experienced and highly respected journalists, who work for the BBC and Financial Times respectively. Their depiction of China under the post-Deng leadership as a threat to its neighbours and as willing to take risks in challenging western interests is graphic and, in its own terms, realistic. The (Dragon Strike) scenario contains many finely judged and ingenious episodes, not least of which tells how a Chinese military man manipulates the international financial markets to raise sufficient funds to underwrite the costs of the war.
Michael Yahuda, Financial Times