David K. Schneider — China's Legalist Revival

Backgrounder. Many good comments, too.

The National Interest
China's Legalist Revival

David K. Schneider | associate professor of Chinese at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a Wikistrat senior analyst

See also

How China Sees World Order
Richard Fontaine, Mira Rapp-Hooper

A rant, but it makes a point. The US had industrial and population superiority over Nazi Germany and Japan, but it doesn't relative to China. China has about a billion more people than the US and it is the "world's factory." In addition, China strategy emphasizes swarming.

One Big Reason America Isn't Ready for World War Three

Peter Navarro | Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine

Is America Willing to Wage War Against China to Save the Status-Quo?

Hugh White | Professor in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at The Australian National University

Kimball Corson — China's Developing Thoughts on Statecraft

A short summary of the Chinese history of statecraft and governance from ancient times to Xi Jinping. This is a should-read unless you are up to date on it already. It's short. I think that Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are pretty close on this. The US leadership not so much.

 Having studied Chinese martial arts and strategy for some time, I believe that Kimball gets it basically right. Kimball observes that the Chinese integrate various traditions into an ideology and worldview suitable for the contemporary context. Understanding this gives insight into their way of thinking.

Western people tend to adopt a single ideology based on a preferred historical view that they then interpret in contemporary terms. 

This makes Westerners seem simple to the Chinese, and the Chinese "inscrutable" to Westerners. A basic rule of strategy in the martial arts is to understand the opponent so that one knows what he is likely to do, whereas one should be invisible to the opponent, so that he does not know what you are likely to do. Hence, the Chinese have an advantage over Westerners in this regard, since Westerners send signals whereas Chinese don't.

While I am less familiar with Russian strategy, people who are familiar with it say that it is more similar to the Chinese than the Western. Additionally, Vladimir Putin has been a judoka for many years, so he presumably understands this very well.

Wandering the Oceans
China's Developing Thoughts on Statecraft
Kimball Corson