Book review: breaking the engagement: how China won and lost America

In Breaking the Engagement: How China Won and Lost America, David Shambaugh tracks the US-China relationship, from the early Cold War origins of engagement to a more confrontational relationship after 2012 when Xi Jinping took power. He argues that with Xi’s China becoming more illiberal at home and revisionist abroad, the rationale for US engagement disappeared. Gray Sergeant comments that the changing relationship between the US and China discussed in the book mirrors Shambaugh’s own with China.