An expert on China's growing digital empire provides an urgent look at the battle to connect and control tomorrow's networks.

'One of the most interesting and original thinkers about the rise of China' - Peter Frankopan

A Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2022

A Guardian Best Paperback of July 2022

Its vast infrastructure projects now extend from the ocean floor to outer space, and from Africa's megacities into rural America. China is wiring the world, and, in doing so, rewriting the global order.

As things stand, the rest of the world still has a choice. But the battle for tomorrow will require America and its allies to take daring risks in uncertain political terrain. Unchecked, China will reshape global flows of data to reflect its own interests - and the lives of countless individuals enmeshed in its systems.

Taking readers on a global tour of these emerging battlefields, Jonathan E. Hillman reveals what China's digital footprint looks like on the ground, and explores the dangers of a world in which all routers lead to Beijing.