Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2022. xi, 292 pp. (Tables, figures, maps.) US$32.00, cloth. ISBN 9781509537495.
This volume offers a well-researched and forceful argument on China’s external relations and the implications for the world, especially the US and her allies, by a leading American expert on China. Elizabeth Economy is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and was a senior advisor (for China) in the US Department of Commerce (2021–2023). Written mainly from an American perspective—especially concerns for American national interest and liberal democratic values—the book offers a provocative and critical analysis of China’s global initiatives, which pose major threats to the US-dominated world order. In the first chapter on the COVID outbreak in 2019, Economy shows how China under Xi Jinping used the pandemic to advance its “ambition, influence, and impact” (21). The following five chapters in turn examine Xi’s assertion of soft and sharp power to extend Chinese influence, the forceful scheme for national unification of Hong Kong and Taiwan, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s striving for global technological leadership, and China’s challenge to the rules of the game in global governance under American sponsorship. Her conclusion gives policy advice on resetting American policies to cope with an increasingly assertive China taking advantage of American weakness or neglect.
Six key arguments are advanced in the book. First, sovereignty and social stability are considered Xi’s primary goal and national unification the longer-term objective. Second, China is “exporting elements of its authoritarian political model” (25), especially through her efforts at influencing the development path and governance of other countries through the BRI as well as the values and norms of international organizations through assuming their leadership positions. Third, while some of China’s near-term efforts have been successful, such as the promotion of Chinese technology in the Global South, its “state-centered model has limited the credibility and attraction” of its endeavours (26). Fourth, and perhaps more significantly, Chinese actions in the Asia Pacific have prompted more US responses in strengthening security alliances (e.g. with Australia, Japan, South Korea, and key European allies) to counterbalance China. Fifth, although not aiming to upend the US “as the world’s sole superpower” (27), in managing global problems such as public health, trade, and climate issues, China has attempted to undermine American dominance in these regimes and institutions. Sixth, the Chinese framing of its ascendence as a zero-sum rivalry with the US is considered “misleading and serves China’s interest” (28). China is threatening the rule-based world order and the UN system, hence the rest of the world should be alert to this eminent challenge.
Although this volume is aimed at the general reader, practitioners, and policy communities, it is an important contribution to the growing academic literature on China’s ascent and its global ramifications. However, it would be more useful if this study could directly and systematically engage in the academic debate about whether assertive Chinese external behaviour is the result of a rising power seeking to advance its national interest as predicted by structural, realist arguments (as Chinese engagements in economic, diplomatic, technological, and security domains are becoming global), or an inevitable outcome of an emerging state challenging the existing hegemon, as examined in the study of the Thucydides Trap by Graham Allison. There are also other cultural, historical arguments, namely that China’s efforts aim to restore her historical position of honour and strength. Yet a more powerful China does not necessarily mean transformational threats to the existing world order; rather, what Xi has been attempting to achieve is only reclaiming China’s position as a great nation, where its regional sphere of influence and global position would be duly respected by other great powers, especially the US.
Further, there is no chapter on China’s military modernization and defence policies and how this poses a critical challenge to the US and her allies. Another omission is an analysis of China’s daunting domestic socio-economic and political problems because these difficulties may hinder Xi’s ambitions in achieving his global agendas and steering national development in a perilous international environment. The recent economic slowdown and structural problems shown in local government debts, meltdown of the real estate market, and sluggish consumer sentiment in late 2023 suggest China’s “national rejuvenation” cannot be a smooth sail. Different chapters in this book describe China’s actions and success in competing against the US in various policy domains, and then argue that China’s advances are not always successful (or would backfire), and the countries affected by such actions would “push back.” Perhaps a more systematic and rigorous assessment of the successes and failures of China’s active global initiatives and a scrutiny of the key factors explaining the balance sheet of such endeavours would be more effective in helping readers to evaluate Chinese conduct in a more balanced and thorough manner.
Several recent works complement this volume with more in-depth explanations of the rationale underpinning China’s global behaviour. For instance, in China’s Strategic Opportunity: Change and Revisionism in Chinese Foreign Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2022), Deng Yong’s thesis about China’s pursuit of strategic opportunities is a more realistic counterargument to Economy’s portrait of a China pursuing a comprehensive, aggressive foreign policy. Similarly, Bates Gill’s Daring to Struggle: China’s Global Ambitions under Xi Jinping (Oxford University Press, 2021) better explains Xi’s pursuit of strategic objectives, the most fundamental of which is preserving and strengthening the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party, aside from sovereignty, wealth, power, leadership, and ideas. And Susan Shirk’s Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise (Oxford University Press, 2023) provides a more nuanced analysis of the internal political dynamics affecting China’s ascent.
This richly packed volume, drawing on extensive documentary data and indepth interviews with informed policy players, is required reading in the bourgeoning literature debating the evolution of China’s external relations. However, more sophisticated and methodical analysis of both Chinese intent and power capabilities, internal and external constraints influencing her rise, and different future trajectories would be most useful in understanding the changing domestic and global dynamics shaping China’s unprecedented emergence in the turbulent twenty-first century.
Peter TY Cheung
Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong