Red Dragon Rising: Communist China's Military Threat to America [Hardcover]

Edward Timperlake (Author), William C. Triplett II (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1999

Timperlake, a former Marine fighter pilot and Triplett, a former Republican counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, characterize the Chinese government as a brutal, expansionist regime that has targeted America and its democratic allies with the most modern weapons of mass destruction. They also mention, in this election year, that the Clinton-Gore administration helped the Communists achieve their military ambitions and received campaign contributions from them.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

As it flexes its diplomatic and military muscles, China is becoming an increasingly powerful player on the world stage. Richard Bernstein and Ross Munro's flawed but important The Coming Conflict with China analyzed the implications for American policymakers. Edward Timperlake and William Triplett also believe that a confrontation between China and the U.S. is inevitable. In Red Dragon Rising, they describe a series of worst-case scenarios, such as a bloody invasion of Taiwan. If the situation is as dangerous as they indicate, however, they have done America a disservice by the extreme political spin they give their arguments. They attempt to associate the Clinton administration with every evil of which China's unsavory Communist regime is capable. Photographs of Clinton and Gore talking with Chinese leaders are illustrated to prove their complicity with butchers--but what should we make of photos of Bush doing the same? A reference to Chinese New Year as Tet, a purely Vietnamese term, suggests the parameters of the authors' experience. In a disclaimer on the cover, they state that their details of the Tiananmen massacre are necessary to show the true nature of Communist China's government, but their lurid descriptions are gratuitous. This work is not balanced analysis or serious contemporary history but party-political poison. Red Dragon Rising is a cheap book, full of cheap shots (it is simplistic to hold China, for all its faults, responsible for "two million Cambodians killed"), whose political bias cheapens its important subject. Right-wing conspiracy theorists will love this book; others will not. --John Stevenson

Product Details

• Hardcover: 271 pages
• Publisher: Regnery Publishing; First Edition edition (October 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0895262584
• ISBN-13: 978-0895262585
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,331,499 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

72 of 85 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars At long last, the awful truth about the PRC's PLA, October 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Red Dragon Rising: Communist China's Military Threat to America (Hardcover)

Being a student of the People's Liberation Army, I must commend Timperlake and Triplett for a long overdue effort to present the painful truth about the key enforcing pilar of power in the PRC today. As did the Cox Report earlier this year, RED DRAGON RISING presents a wake-up call for a country who's gaze has been averted by a corrupt administration and a national security bureaucracy that would rather salute and ignore a growing threat to America. They present for the first time in greater detail than anywhere else: the PLA export of nuclear and missile technology to Pakistan; how the PLA has long used North Korea as a front for proliferation; how the PLA CAN win the future war for Taiwan and begin to chase the US out of Asia; and how the PLA's investment in asymetrical warfare, namely information warfare, could lay low the United States.

Read this book for your kids. Really. You need to be informed about the wars we are blundering into, so that you can choose leaders today who can try to ensure that your kids don't have to march off to that awful future conflict.

53 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Among the most important books on America's future ., November 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Red Dragon Rising: Communist China's Military Threat to America (Hardcover)

Red Dragon Rising takes its place among the most important books that deal with America's future and the military challenge posed by communist China. It is must reading for both Asia and U.S. national security scholars. The book's photos and graphic naratives prove, beyond any doubt, the horrendous extent of the massacre of pro-democracy students and activists at Tiananmen Square and documents the current positions of the Chinese military commanders of the massacre. Triplett and Timperlake show that, unfortunately, a number of those brutal Tiananmen generals -- who now control China's nuclear arsenal aimed at the United States -- have been treated as guests of honor at the Clinton White House and at the Pentagon. Red Dragon Rising is a riveting clarion call to understand the peril we face and the need to rebuild America's military and counter-intelligence systems in the wake of the Clinton Chinagate scandals.

68 of 82 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An absorbing account of the PLA's brutal history, November 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Red Dragon Rising: Communist China's Military Threat to America (Hardcover)

Year of the Rat, a frightening portrayal of an administration willing to sell out their country for their own financial gain, was only part of the story. Now Red Dragon Rising tells about the military that bought our administration.

Over the past 50 years the history of the PLA proves power does come from the barrel of a gun. Triplett and Timperlake show the atrocities Communist Chinese are willing to commit in order to keep control of their own citizens and neighbors, and what the Clinton administration is willing to do to curry favors from these murders. The generals, who ordered the Tiananmen Massacre, later were received with full honors at the Clinton White House. The students were only seeking freedom and the US repaid their memory by giving the Chinese government access to our weapons technology and military training. This administration continues to ignore undeniable proof of China's weapons proliferation to rouge nations, the theft of our nuclear secrets and hostile threats against its neighbors. The lack of a coherent foreign policy now upsets balance of power in Asia. China's growing military strength will be an issue all Americans will have to face in the next millennium.