Lanham; Boulder; New York; London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018. iii, 331 pp. US$45.00, paper. ISBN 978-1-5381-0534-4.
This third edition of the acclaimed book by veteran US-China specialist Robert G. Sutter is a timely publication about the world’s most consequential relationship as it experiences severe challenges under Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. Both leaders accentuate their respective national interests at the risk of potentially pushing their bilateral relationship towards a collision course on trade, maritime security, intellectual property, Taiwan, and other issues.
Most observers of Sino-US relations have become pessimistic as tensions between the two countries continue to rise in the Trump-Xi era. Increasingly people believe that the two countries may not be able to avoid the so-called Thucydides’ Trap—the structural conflict associated with power transition in the international system. Yet few people have a thorough understanding of this complicated relationship from a historical perspective.
Sutter delves into the storied past of the US-China relationship and offers an insightful perspective on the complexity of the relationship as well as predict its future trajectory. The book contains twelve chapters with chapter 1 highlighting the key challenge facing the two powers: how to balance their converging and diverging interests and values. Chapters 2 through 7 look at the historical development of the relationship while attempting to discern historical patterns and determinants that are relevant to the relationship today. Chapters 8 through 11 examine four major aspects of the bilateral relationship: security, economic and environmental issues, Taiwan and East Asian maritime disputes, and human rights, all of which are difficult to manage given the two countries’ conflicting interests. Chapter 12 offers an outlook of the relationship as Trump revamps US foreign policy and Xi becomes more assertive both at home and abroad.
The purpose of the book is to convey the “perspective of experienced policy makers and specialists on both sides” who understand that perceived advances or setbacks in Sino-American relations involve only part of the multifaceted relationship. It seeks to examine the complex relationship “in balanced context” (10). The author employs contextual analysis methods to assess major historical and contemporary determinants that explain the uncertain situation prevailing in contemporary US-China relations.
One such determinant is the diverging interests and values between the two countries. For example, Sutter discusses exceptionalism in both the United States and China and how it leads policy makers on both sides to fault the other for all the problems in the relationship. In the US, American exceptionalism prompts policy makers, backed up by public opinion, to see their actions in morally correct terms while tending to downplay or ignore any negative implications of their actions on Chinese interests. On the other hand, Chinese exceptionalism, together with the state-fostered “victim mentality,” nurtures a view that China is always morally correct in its foreign decisions (7). Exceptionalism on both sides clearly limits the ability of national leaders and elites to take the other’s interests into consideration.
Sutter is a master in chronicling US-China relations from the century prior to World War II to the contemporary era. Strong American interest in commercial, missionary, and strategic access to China led early American elites to emphasize the positive features of US policy towards China, such as supporting China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and promoting literacy and education in rural China while ignoring negative features such as the racist Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Sutter traces the transformation of the relationship from World War II and the Chinese Civil War to the Cold War. Despite tremendous changes in domestic politics and the international environment, certain features in the relationship remain unchanged, in particular, the US intention to shape China’s future development and maintain a dominant presence in Asia, and China’s priority on stability and growth at home.
Indeed, one of China’s key interests has been to consolidate security at home and focus on domestic growth. In Sutter’s view, only under extreme circumstances is military conflict between the two countries possible, but more likely Chinese policy makers and strategists “will continue incremental efforts and adjustments in order to overcome existing and future obstacles as they seek to improve Chinese influence, interests, and status” (282). In the near future China will unlikely be in a position to challenge and confront the United States in Asia, let alone globally.
The thick description of the book is informed by international relations theories. Sutter starts out by suggesting that the multidimensional US-China relations cannot be explained by any singular international relations theory. Instead, various aspects of the relationship can best be understood with different theories. For example, deepening strategic competition and a massive security dilemma between the two countries underline forces and phenomena best understood through a realist lens. Meanwhile, America’s stress on open trade and investment, its deepening engagement with China on all levels, and China-US cooperation on regional and global issues, seem best assessed through a liberal perspective. The US missionary impulse to shape China’s policies and practices and turn China into a country “more like us,” and China’s resistance to US political and diplomatic pressure illustrate a fundamental gap in the national identity and values between the two countries, which can best be evaluated by constructivism.
Overall, Sutter’s analysis of the relationship is sober and balanced and his observations penetrating and insightful. The book makes a very useful contribution to better understanding this vitally important but difficult relationship through learning from its tumultuous past.
Zhiqun Zhu
Bucknell University, Lewisburg, USA