THE AVOIDABLE WAR: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping's China.

• Author: Hoadley, Stephen

THE AVOIDABLE WAR: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping's China

Author: Kevin Rudd

Published by: Hachett Australia, Sydney, 2022, 421pp, $40.

This is a book defined as much by the eminence of its author as by the lucidity of its content. In this reviewer's opinion, Kevin Rudd is the best qualified living analyst of China in the Western world.

Who is Kevin Rudd? His qualifications include the following:

* graduate student at the Australian National University, Taiwan Normal University, Oxford University and Harvard University's Kennedy Center;

* learned Mandarin and completed an honours thesis on Xi Jinping Thought;

* policy officer in the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade;

* minister of foreign affairs of Australia;

* prime minister of Australia (twice);

* chief executive officer of the Asia Society;

* president of Asia Society Policy Institute;

* praised by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Admiral James Stavridis and Harvard professors Joseph Nye and Graham Allison.

Since 1986 Rudd has met or spoken (in Mandarin) with Xi Jinping over a dozen times as each man moved up his career ladder to the top. Rudd found Xi, now president of China, to be 'an impressive, knowledgeable, engaging interlocutor' who 'speaks his mind directly and forcefully'.

This is not to say that Rudd and Xi agree on each other's foreign policy outlook. Rudd is clear in his book that the Chinese world view diverges sharply and deeply from that of the West, and will not converge in our lifetimes. The Sino-Soviet split of the 1970s and the open policy reforms of Deng Xiaoping in the 1990s, on which Western analysts pinned so much hope for East-West co-existence, were tactical, not fundamental. Following the 'Century of Humiliation', China's leaders have pursued a nationalist course that arguably began with Sun Yat-sen, was augmented by Marxism-Leninism and Maoism, was energised by China's economic success and growing military might and is now firmly guided by Xi Jinping Thought and the Chinese Communist Party.

It is sobering to read in Rudd's book that China's leaders regard Western commitments to democracy, human rights and international co-operation and humanitarianism as hypocrisy. China's leaders believe that the West, and particularly the United States, is in reality seeking global hegemony at the expense of the Third World. To achieve dominance, the United States is 'containing' China, as it did the Soviet...