The U.S.-China relationship can be conceptualized as a dance in which the United States is most often leading with China following, at some points the two are perfectly in sync, but at other times the United States comes on too strong and China pushes back, and the U.S. feels rejected, describing what Shambaugh calls the oscillating pattern of engagement, disillusionment, and re-engagement.

During the 2008-2010 period in China, there was an incredibly vibrant civil society with a lively internet, protests, entrepreneurs and human rights lawyers meeting in salons to discuss democracy, with entrepreneurial groups visiting Taiwan to observe Chinese democracy, and approximately 180,000 protests in 2010 around issues like environment and pensions, along with non-party-affiliated individuals running for local elections.

The turning point in China's trajectory was Xi Jinping's ascension to power, after which he immediately began cracking down on media and eliminated editorials discussing the future of political reform, representing a deliberate reversal of the liberalizing trajectory visible in the 2008-2010 period.

The 2017 foreign NGO management law in China cut the number of foreign NGOs working in China from over 7,000 to under 500, eliminating the opportunities for engagement and cooperation that existed previously.

Wang Yizhou, a Chinese scholar, stated in a 2018 Financial Times interview that for over 200 years the US has maintained consistent strategic goals of free flow of goods, capital, information and values, and that China's actions—not US policies—have caused the relationship shift, suggesting this Chinese scholar agrees with Shambaugh's argument.

Elizabeth Economy views Shambaugh's book as 'analytically rigorous,' offering a 'fresh perspective and distinctive argument' that is 'engagingly written,' cutting through contemporary noise to provide deeply researched scholarship grounded in facts and informed analysis

The book is 'two books in one'—the first part is a richly detailed history of the U.S. approach to China focusing on the missionary impulse and the ongoing battle between containment and engagement narratives, while other books have covered this history but Shambaugh uniquely elevates the continuities through detailed quotations and historical moments across both U.S. and Chinese responses

Despite reduced access and constrained visibility into Chinese civil society under Xi, underlying desires for liberalization persist among the urban middle class, as evidenced by small-scale research by scholars like Jennifer Pan on urban middle-class Chinese attitudes, which shows they still desire rule of law, freedom of assembly, and free speech.

The book's second part provides exposition of all the actors and interests shaping U.S. policy, how the Chinese respond, and the disillusionment that follows, showing how China alienated both the national government in Washington and American society outside Washington, causing China to lose America across multiple sectors and constituencies

Despite reduced visibility of dissent and civil society due to stricter controls, different opinions and desires for political liberalization still exist within China, particularly among the urban middle class; research by scholars like Jennifer Pan shows that urban middle-class Chinese still express desire for rule of law, freedom of assembly, and free speech

In the 2008-2010 period, China exhibited an incredibly vibrant civil society with an internet alive with protests, entrepreneurs, human rights lawyers, and scholars meeting to discuss China's democratic future, with approximately 180,000 protests in 2010 around issues like environment and pensions, and individuals unaffiliated with the party running for local elections

Elizabeth Economy argues the book is both analytically rigorous and engagingly written, offering a fresh perspective and distinctive argument that cuts through noise and opinion with real scholarship, and serves both as a richly detailed historical account and as a contemporary guide to policy and understanding

The transition from liberalization to crackdown under Xi Jinping was marked by the cessation of newspaper editorial mentions of political reform; whereas pre-2012 China showed dynamism in civil society, from the moment of Xi's accession editorial content shifted, eliminating discussion of the future of political reform

The 2017 foreign NGO management law reduced the number of foreign NGOs operating in China from over 7,000 to under 500, dramatically curtailing the civil society engagement mechanisms that were central to the engagement strategy

Economy asks whether the book presents inevitable conflict between US and China, distinguishing this from structural realist analyses (Allison, Mearsheimer) and ideological conflict analyses (Pottinger, Doshi), and wondering how Shambo positions himself against these other frameworks.

Elizabeth Economy adds that engagement to change China was not a continuous policy and that different tactical approaches (cooperative versus coercive) can elicit different Chinese responses, so even with constant expectations, the method of pursuing those expectations matters—Jay Ross Brown and Berlingame exemplify how tactical choices affect outcomes.

Elizabeth Economy offers a counterpoint: Wang Jisi, a prominent Chinese scholar, stated in a 2018 Financial Times interview that for 200 years the U.S. has maintained a consistent strategic goal of free flow of goods, capital, and information/values; while the Chinese should criticize the U.S., they should recognize that 'China's own actions have changed Sino-U.S. relations and U.S. perceptions of China' and that 'if we are looking for the cause, it was the change in China's policy that led to adjustments in U.S. policy'