China is all over the news. Tariff exposure. Supply chain rerouting. Hormuz and Malacca shipping math. Taiwan contingency planning. AI and semiconductor export controls. Rare earths concentration. Capital flow restrictions. Global executives are fielding harder questions about China than at any point since Nixon went to Beijing, and most are answering them based on headlines and cable news talking heads.
Headlines are not a strategy. They are weather reports. Strategy requires depth, the kind that comes from reading the people who spent careers inside the country, inside the Party, inside the deal rooms, and inside the supply chains.
I initially crafted this list in December 2020. Six years on, the environment has shifted dramatically. Xi has consolidated power. Trump has returned. The PLA has been purged, with roughly 20 Chinese generals removed since March 2023. The Belt and Road has changed shape. American sentiment on China has hardened across both parties. AF1 has landed in Beijing under a second-term president working with a weaker hand than he played in 2018. But the books on this list still work. They explain how China got here, how the Party actually thinks, how the economy functions beneath the official statistics, and how Beijing engages the rest of the world.
This is not a list for graduate students. It is for the senior executive who has to answer a board question on Tuesday, a customer question on Wednesday, and a reporter question on Thursday. It cannot answer any of them with a press release.
Three on the Party itself and how it runs the country:
The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers by Richard McGregor. Still the best opening text on how the CCP operates inside the state. Read this first.
The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State by Elizabeth C. Economy. The Xi consolidation thesis was written before most analysts had caught up.
China Goes Global: The Partial Power by David Shambaugh. A disciplined assessment of how much China actually projects abroad versus how much it claims to.
Four on the economy beneath the headline GDP number:
Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China's Extraordinary Rise by Carl Walter. The plumbing. Painful, technical, essential. The book that made the Evergrande story predictable.
The China Strategy: Harnessing the Power of the World's Fastest-Growing Economy by Edward Tse. The operator's view of the inside of the multinational China strategy.
Dealing with China: An Insider Unmasks the New Economic Superpower by Henry M. Paulson Jr. The dealmaker's memoir. Useful for understanding how senior Beijing relationships were actually built during the engagement era.
Beijing Jeep: A Case Study of Western Business in China by Jim Mann. The original cautionary tale. Every foreign CEO entering China should read this before getting on the plane.
Three on China going global:
China's Second Continent by Howard French. Chinese migration, investment, and influence across Africa. The book that reframes the Belt and Road conversation.
China's Silent Army: The Pioneers, Traders, Fixers, and Workers Who Are Remaking the World in Beijing's Image by Juan Pablo Cardenal. Reporting from the field across the developing world. Where the New Silk Road actually touches the ground.
Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power by Robert D. Kaplan. The maritime theater. If you do not understand the Indian Ocean, you do not understand Chinese energy security or American national security.
Four on the American policy conversation, in its own words:
Obama and China's Rise: An Insider's Account of America's Asia Strategy by Jeffrey A. Bader. The Pivot to Asia from inside the Situation Room. Useful for tracing the origins of the current China policy.
On China by Henry Kissinger. Necessary context for the diplomatic logic that built the engagement framework. Read it knowing the framework has evolved.
The World America Made by Robert Kagan. The case for American primacy. The intellectual scaffolding under the current China hawkishness.
Blaming China: It Might Feel Good, But It Won't Fix America's Economy by Benjamin Shobert. The contrarian read from a one-time Brigadoon Utah speaker. Sharpens your thinking by attacking the easy narrative.
Four on the long view:
The Penguin History of Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power, 1850 to 2009 by Jonathan Fenby. The single-volume history. Start here if you are starting at zero.
Will China Dominate the 21st Century? by Jonathan Fenby. The companion analytical volume. Useful even if the answer has shifted since publication.
The Dragon and the Foreign Devils: China and the World, 1100 BC to the Present by Harry Gelber. The deepest historical lens on the list. Reminds you that China was a great power long before it was a developing one.
When America First Met China: An Exotic History of Tea, Drugs, and Money in the Age of Sail by Eric Jay Dolin. The earliest chapter of the US-China commercial relationship. Useful for executives who think the relationship started with Nixon.
Four on China at street level:
Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos. The best single book on what Chinese citizens actually believe and want. Won the National Book Award. Earns it.
China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power by Rob Gifford. Route 312 across China. The country at ground level.
The Forbidden Game: Golf and the Chinese Dream by Dan Washburn. China, through the lens of an industry that the Party officially banned and unofficially built. Better business reportage than most business books.
Brave Dragons: A Chinese Basketball Team, an American Coach, and Two Cultures Clashing by Jim Yardley. The cultural collision compressed into one season. Funny, useful, and a faster read than anything else on this list.
Two on the trade and supply chain frame:
Next Asia: Opportunities and Challenges for a New Globalization by Stephen S. Roach. The Morgan Stanley view of regional economic integration. The framing still maps onto current supply chain conversations.
The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade by Pietra Rivoli. The single best book on how global trade actually moves through a real product, and a foundational text from my GWU class on Globalization and American Politics. If you have one tariff conversation this year, read this first.
Working through the list takes about a quarter if you push it, and about two quarters if you read it like a normal executive. The investment is small. The strategic return is significant. Board members will notice. So will customers, regulators, and journalists who continue to call about your exposure to China.
Caracal Global provides fractional Chief Geopolitical Officer services to Fortune 1000 companies and private equity portfolio firms navigating tariff volatility, China exposure, supply chain disruption, and a US political environment that is reshaping regulatory frameworks on a quarterly basis. Four service tiers, Advisory, Representative, Senator, and Presidential, are calibrated to how deeply you need geopolitical intelligence embedded with your leadership team.
Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.
-Marc.
You can always reach me @ marc@caracal.global.
Trump's poor hand for dealing with Xi
Trump arrives in China tomorrow, it will be evening Beijing time when AF1 lands, with the worst political hand any American president has brought into a state visit to China.
His job approval sits at 36%. Inflation sits at 3.8% and is rising due to higher prices for gasoline and groceries. A war in Iran that the administration cannot end and is preparing to rename. A Supreme Court ruling unwinds tariff revenue. A coalition cracking on Hispanic, Black, and young voters. A British ally whose government is disintegrating. A European bloc is fragmenting into national-level Russia diplomacy. A Gulf order that just disclosed covert strikes on Iran from the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
Xi Jinping has done none of this. He has only watched and waited.
Beijing did not engineer Trump's vulnerability. The Iran war did. But Beijing will most certainly take advantage of it.
Here is what to expect when Trump and Xi meet.
Big purchase announcements. Hundreds of Boeing aircraft. Agricultural commodities. Possibly LNG and crude. Trade gestures designed to give Trump a victory narrative for the flight home. Carefully ambiguous language on Taiwan that Beijing will read maximally and Washington will read minimally. A request from Xi, both public or private, for the United States to soften arms sales to Taipei.
A possible Chinese signal of cooperation on Iran, calibrated to extract the maximum concession for the minimum delivery, because Beijing is Iran's largest trade partner and the top buyer of its oil, and will not sell that leverage cheaply.
What you will not get from the summit is a structural reset.
Nomura's chief China economist called this meeting more of a risk-management exercise than a relationship-building one. The Council on Foreign Relations called the summit relationship stabilization, not resolution.
Both are right.
Three things this means for global boardrooms:
First, treat any announcement from Beijing as a 60-day political product. The American blue-chip CEO delegation tagging along with Trump, which includes Cook, Musk, Fink, Schwarzman, Fraser, Solomon, Ortberg, et al., is the audience to watch, helping prop up the US-China relationship. The deliverables will be timed for the news cycle, not the operating cycle.
Second, watch the Taiwan language. Any drift from "does not support" Taiwanese independence to "opposes" it is the most consequential commercial signal of the year. That is the shift Xi asked Biden for in 2024 and will ask Trump for this week. It reprices defense procurement, semiconductor sourcing, and Asia-Pacific insurance markets in a single sentence.
Third, the Connected Vehicle Security Act is the commercial reality for Trump. Senators from the Global Great Lakes, Slotkin (D-MI) and Moreno (R-OH), introduced a bill with a matching House companion to enact a Chinese auto ban in the US, regardless of any positive business news from Beijing. Legislators representing auto workers and companies telegraphed their red line in advance of Trump's visit. Your government affairs team should be making the same calculation in your sector this week. What Chinese business opportunities cannot live without?
The Caracal Global scope
This is the moment when intelligence, strategy, and communications stop being three separate functions and become one. Caracal Global provides fractional Chief Geopolitical Officer support for exactly this kind of week. Four tiers. Advisory, Representative, Senator, Presidential. The conversation we should be having starts with how the Beijing summit reshapes your operating environment.
Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.
-Marc.
You can always reach me @ marc@caracal.global.
*****
Caracal Global is your fractional Chief Geopolitical Officer. We monitor geopolitical signals daily: tariff announcements, military movements, policy shifts, trade negotiations, export control changes, and competitive positioning. We translate those signals into what they mean for your business. And we help your board move from reaction to strategy.
Michigan-born, DC-based, operating at the intersection of globalization and American politics. Intelligence, Strategy, and Communications — for Fortune 1000 companies and PE portfolio firms that need geopolitical capacity without the overhead of a full-time hire.
Learn more at caracal.global.
*****
The Sporting Caracal Global | May 9, 2026
The biggest sports story of the week was not a game. It was a set of empty hotel rooms.
Six weeks before kickoff, World Cup host cities across the United States are reporting bookings far below projection, with FIFA itself canceling significant inventory. The narrow reading is operational. The wider reading, the one the White House and Silicon Valley care about, is a soft-power referendum on the country hosting the tournament, and the data is in before the kickoff.
That is the lens I want to bring to sport every week.
Today I am launching The Sporting Caracal Global — a Saturday-morning weekly memo applying the Caracal Global expertise and insights lens to sport.
Not box scores. Not hot takes.
Sport at the intersection of globalization, soft power, governments, and commerce. Written for executives, investors, and fans who read their teams the way they read their portfolios.
Sports media is crowded and bombastic. Sports media that connects the dots between diesel prices, sovereign wealth, soft-power politics, betting markets, and what actually happens on the pitch is not.
That is the aperture of The Sporting Caracal Global.
Issue one covers the World Cup hotel collapse, the NBA's $3 billion bet on European basketball, F1 quietly bringing the V8 back, the sports betting integrity crisis going federal, and the inaugural Person of the Week.
If you have ever wished someone would write about sport with the rigor the FT writes about energy or The Monocle writes about diplomacy, this is for you.
-Marc
Want to receive by email? Send your favorite email address to marc@caracal.global, and I'll get you signed up.
The Sporting Caracal Global
May 9, 2026
Sport at the intersection of globalization, soft power, governments, and commerce. Here's what a Chief Geopolitical Officer with an athletic perspective and smooth three-point shot is reading this weekend.
The lead: The World Cup is six weeks out, and the rooms are empty
The story of the week in sport is not a game. It is a set of empty hotel rooms.
The American Hotel and Lodging Association confirmed this week that bookings across most US World Cup host cities are running far below projection, with FIFA itself canceling significant inventory it had previously held. Six weeks before kickoff, the host country cannot fill its hotels.
There are two readings of this. The narrow reading is operational: pricing was too aggressive, FIFA over-blocked, and the market is correcting. The wider reading is the one that matters.
Foreign visitors are not coming because the dollar feels expensive, the entry experience feels hostile, the news cycle is dominated by an Iran war that has put California gasoline 36% above the national average, and the global consumer is tired. The Wall Street Journal spoke with Kraft Heinz CEO Steve Cahillane, who said, “Consumers are literally running out of money toward the end of the month,” which helps explain the empty rooms in Kansas City.
This global gathering is a soft-power referendum on the United States, and the data is in before the first kickoff. The 2026 World Cup will happen. It will produce great football. But the assumption that hosting a global tournament is automatically a positive-sum exercise for the host country is one of the early casualties of the Team Trump era. Plan accordingly.
The NBA bets $3 billion that Europe is undervalued
The Financial Times reported this week that the NBA is offering up to $3 billion to seed a new European basketball league, with potential team owners reportedly skittish about the slow path to profits.
The skittishness is the wrong frame. The right frame is this: Adam Silver and the league office have looked at the European basketball market, one that is fragmented, federation-dominated, and undercapitalized relative to its talent base, and concluded that there is a global opportunity here. The NBA already has the European player pipeline - Doncic, Jokic, Wembanyama, Giannis et al. What it has not had is the venue, calendar, and broadcasting-rights structure to capture European audiences and revenue on NBA terms.
Can the MLS be the world's best when it is not even a regional best?
MLS executives keep telling the press they want to be one of the world's best leagues, yet Nashville and LAFC both lost in the Concacaf Champions Cup semifinals—twenty-five years of MLS, one regional trophy. Mexico has 22 in the same window. Costa Rica has two. The American sports establishment loves to talk about going global. The NBA, or as I call it, the No Boundaries Association, is the only one with the institutional patience and the capital to make it happen.
F1 is bringing the V8 back, and that is a cultural story
The Athletic reported this week that Formula 1 is seriously discussing a return to V8 engines from 2030. The technical pretext is competitiveness, but the actual story is that the all-in electric future the sport sold to its audience between 2021 and 2024 ran ahead of where consumers actually are.
Read it next to Honda walking away from its CAD$11 billion Ontario EV plant this week, the second major Canadian EV cancellation since PM Mark Carney built his national industrial strategy around the segment. Read it next to BMW and Mercedes losing the Chinese luxury-EV fight to homegrown brands, per Nikkei. Sport, like industry, is a leading indicator. F1 is the most aesthetically conservative audience in motorsport, and they are the ones who voted with their ears. Race promoters are belatedly listening.
The takeaway for anyone making capital allocation decisions adjacent to mobility: the EV-only narrative of 2022 has officially cracked. Sport saw it first.
The sports betting integrity crisis is going federal
The Tim McCormack profile in New York Magazine this week, the one on the addict who got swept into the Jontay Porter scandal and was waking up at 3 am to bet $7,000 on Korean baseball, is one of the most important sports stories of the year. Read it alongside the Puck reporting that the federal government has filed fraud charges over insider trading on a prediction market. For the first time, insider sports betting is being treated as a federal crime.
The sports bet legalization wave that swept the United States after the 2018 Murphy decision was sold to the leagues as a revenue opportunity. It has been one. It has also created an area that the leagues' compliance functions are not built for, and the feds are now stepping into the gap.
If you are a commissioner, a team owner, or a sportsbook executive, the right reading move this week is the federal docket, not the box scores. The sports betting business is moving away from entertainment and into the courtroom, and the leagues that get ahead of it will save themselves a decade of pain.
The rest of the pitch
Detroit will get a PWHL team for the 2026-27 season at Little Caesars Arena, the league's ninth franchise. Women's hockey now has the network density to function as a real league rather than a touring exhibition.
Paris Saint-Germain knocked Bayern out of the Champions League and will face Arsenal in the final. The Hollywood screenwriters have their movie: a stylish team owned by Qatar Sports Investments versus the most institutionally English football club still in the tournament.
Michigan + UConn are finalizing a neutral-site basketball game at TD Garden on November 6. Look for more and more of these types of showcase college games. Blue-chip college basketball is migrating toward the marquee neutral-site model the way college football has, and the regular season just got more valuable.
Golden Tempo, the Kentucky Derby winner, will skip the Preakness. This is the sixth time in eight years that there is no Triple Crown on the line by the second leg. American thoroughbred racing's structural problem is no longer a debate. Following what pro golf has done, the big races need to move to a month-by-month competitive schedule.
The NCAA officially expanded the Division I men's and women's basketball tournaments to 76 teams, effective in 2027. The bracket math will be ugly, like, when will you actually need to submit your bracket? The television revenue math is the only math that matters.
Bank of America's Global Research department, polling 65 of its own analysts, predicted France will win the upcoming World Cup, beating Spain in the final, with Mbappé as top scorer and Yamal named player of the tournament. File this in the cabinet of analyst predictions you should follow at exactly the level of seriousness that BofA Global Research follows its own.
Person of the Week: Adam Silver
The honest answer to "who is playing the most strategic chess in American sport right now" is the NBA Commissioner. The European league move is not a side bet. It is the centerpiece of a multi-decade thesis that basketball is the most globally portable American sport. The NBA is decidedly more portable than the NFL. Silver knows the window to capture European audiences is open right now, while soccer's TV economics are wobbling and European basketball federations remain undercapitalized.
Silver also runs the league with the most exposure to the China question, to Saudi capital, and to the betting-integrity crisis described above. He has, so far, navigated all three without an unforced error of consequence. That is not luck. The next twelve months — Europe, China, integrity — will tell us whether he is the most consequential American sports executive of his generation or merely the most active.
Place a bet on him being the most consequential league executive.
Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.
— Marc
Marc A. Ross | Founder + Chief Geopolitical Officer @ Caracal Global | The Sporting Caracal Global is published on Saturdays.