This essay explores the strategic logic underpinning China’s Hundred-Year Marathon—its long range plan to surpass the United States as the preeminent global power by the centenary of the People’s Republic in 2049, or later. Drawing from Michael Pillsbury’s, et al., analysis and ancient Chinese statecraft, the essay argues that China’s objectives encompass economic and information superiority, regional, information, and cognitive superiority, and military dominance, ideological primacy over democratic capitalism, and the construction of a multipolar monetary and political order shaped in its own image. Central to this strategy are the classical concepts of shi (grand, long-term dearest) as well as deception, patience, and asymmetric “Assassin’s Mace” [asymmetric capability or killer application—more discussion laterin the essay] capabilities designed to exploit U.S. vulnerabilities in our elements of national power, e.g., technology, information systems, economy, railroads, et cetera. The essay details how American cognitive and bureaucratic failures—wishful thinking, groupthink, bias, and neglect of cultural understanding, and so on— allowed China to advance its aims unnoticed. To respond, the paper calls for a comprehensive transformation of U.S. strategic thought, combining whole-of-government integration, long-term planning, intellectual reform, and the recognition of cognition and information as warfighting dimensions. It concludes that victory in this century-long contest depends not only on matching China’s methods of deception or control, but on developing superior ways of thinking, organizing, and using technology to sustain American power and purpose across generations. The essay identifies mistakes and what America has not done well in its foreign affairs with China, the thinking errors we have committed since 1980 up to today. But the essay does not simply point out errors; it also provides fixes to our shortfalls–policy, long-term outlook, mental acuity, organizational design, and technological enhancements. The essay argues for a moral revitalization and a willingness to think long term, to shirk the political and corporate inclination to make money at any cost, and to realize the importance of America as a country, the best conceivable way of life, and the highest moral standards in the world’s history. All will take much effort and work to level our listing ship not in the next decade, but the next century and beyond—America’s version of a hundred-year marathon race to the swift! 1