The cover of U.S. economist David P. Goldman’s latest work, You Will Be Assimilated: China’s Plan to Sino-Form the World, depicts a golden dragon statue wearing earbuds against a menacing Commie-red background. It’s at least a modernized twist on the motif; most books about the threat of China just tend to slap a dragon on and be done with it. The visual cliché notwithstanding, no one can accuse Goldman of being uncreative: At one point, he tells us the “Chinese have few friends”—thanks to the absence of “political friendship in Aristotle’s sense.”
