China Rising

Despite its increasingly secure place in the world, the People's Republic of China remains dissatisfied with its global status. Its growing material power has simultaneously led to both greater influence and unsettling questions about its international intentions. China also has found itself in a constant struggle to balance its aspirations abroad with a daunting domestic agenda. This authoritative book provides a unique exploration of the complex and dynamic motivations behind Beijing's foreign policy. The authors focus on China's choices and calculations on issues such as the ruling Communist party-regime's interests, international status and image, nationalism, Taiwan, human rights, globalization, U.S. hegemony, international institutions, and the war on terrorism. Taken together, the chapters offer a comprehensive diagnosis of the emerging paradigms in Chinese foreign policy, illuminating especially China's struggle to engineer and manage its rise in light of the opportunities and perils inherent in the post-cold war and post-9/11 world.

Throughout the past three decades East Asia has seen more peace and stability than at any time since the Opium Wars of 1839-1841. During this period China has rapidly emerged as a major regional power, averaging over nine percent economic growth per year since the introduction of its market reforms in 1978. Foreign businesses have flocked to invest in China, and Chinese exports have begun to flood the world. China is modernizing its military, has joined numerous regional and international institutions, and plays an increasingly visible role in international politics. In response to this growth, other states in East Asia have moved to strengthen their military, economic, and diplomatic relations with China. But why have these countries accommodated rather than balanced China's rise? David C. Kang believes certain preferences and beliefs are responsible for maintaining stability in East Asia. Kang's research shows how East Asian states have grown closer to China, with little evidence that the region is rupturing. Rising powers present opportunities as well as threats, and the economic benefits and military threat China poses for its regional neighbors are both potentially huge; however, East Asian states see substantially more advantage than danger in China's rise, making the region more stable, not less. Furthermore, although East Asian states do not unequivocally welcome China in all areas, they are willing to defer judgment regarding what China wants and what its role in East Asia will become. They believe that a strong China stabilizes East Asia, while a weak China tempts other states to try to control the region. Many scholars downplay the role of ideas and suggest that a rising China will be a destabilizing force in the region, but Kang's provocative argument reveals the flaws in contemporary views of China and the international relations of East Asia and offers a new understanding of the importance of sound U.S. policy in the region.

China's dramatic economic growth since the 1970s has seemed inexorable. The resulting rise in international profile has provoked a lively argument regarding the fundamental economic and strategic challenges to the rest of the world that China now presents. China Rising examines the extent to which that country's future foreign policy stance may be shaped by its own agendas and constrained through interdependence and interaction with the outside world. In the process it also questions the extent to which the rest of the world can attempt to shape that future to non-Chinese interests with any chance of success. Most debates regarding China's future international position tend to be polarised between those advocating containment and those wishing to see Beijing given a much freer hand. China Rising provides a refreshing alternative to both.

Where the last three decades of the 20th century witnessed a China rising on to the global economic stage, the first three decades of the 21st century are almost certain to bring with them the completion of that rise, not only in economic, but also political and geopolitical terms. China's integration into the global economy has brought one-fifth of the global population into the world trading system, which has increased global market potential and integration to an unprecedented level. The increased scale and depth of international specialisation propelled by an enlarged world market has offered new opportunities to boost world production, trade and consumption; with the potential for increasing the welfare of all the countries involved. However, China's integration into the global economy has forced a worldwide reallocation of economic activities. This has increased various kinds of friction in China's trading and political relations with others, as well as generating several globally significant externalities. Finding ways to accommodate China's rise in a way that ensures the future stability and prosperity of the world economy and polity is probably the most important task facing the world community in the first half of the 21st century. The book delves into these issues to reflect upon the wide range of opportunities and challenges that have emerged in the context of a rising China.

CHINA RISING, the latest book by the author of 44 Days Backpacking in China: The Middle Kingdom in the 21st Century, with the United States, Europe and the Fate of the World in Its Looking Glass, one of the most engaging political travelogues in recent memory, is a comprehensive, absorbing, eye-opening guide to China in the 21st century, a volume which in 700 pp packs it all: history, personal memory, sociology, political analysis. and above all a fair dose of invaluable first-hand information designed to detoxify the Western reader's mind from the constant lies served by the Western media in support of Washington's global imperial agenda. The result is a thorough rectification, a "deprogramming" of just about everything we, as Westerners, have been "taught" to believe about China, allowing us to see the Chinese people and their leaders as they really are—ordinary human beings just like us with dreams, foibles, defects and a proud history extending millennia, a people that in a century have overcome just about every scourge known to man: famines, massive drug addiction, civil wars, invasions, grinding poverty and humiliation, to become one of the great powers of this century, perhaps the greatest, and which today, much as a result of its success, is facing the undying hostility of the world's hegemon, the United States, itching for a confrontation to reassert imperial control. It is thus indispensable for Westerners and Asians to know the truth of the situation, what their governments are doing (led by the USA) behind their backs, if the planet is to be spared a nuclear conflict of incalculable horror.. For, as Brown indicates, China will not back down this time, and neither will Russia, her strategic ally, who faces the same type of constant harassment and bullying by the West, also for having the audacity to defend her sovereignty and set her own foreign policy course. The truth therefore must come out about key events, from the so-called "Tiananmen Massacre", organized by the CIA, to who Mao Zedong really was and did, a role for which he earned the love of his countrymen to this day. It's a big job, but the author, an American fluent in Chinese, a teacher by profession, and with 15 years residence in the Middle Kingdom, and a cosmopolitan background, is eminently qualified to meet the task. Andre Vltchek, himself a truth-teller of distinction, and a man who, like Jeff Brown knows China well, has endorsed CHINA RISING as a unique instrument of mind liberation. Vltchek words are worth heeding: "The Western public should learn and remember one essential thing about China: no matter what European and North American propaganda barks about the People’s Republic, China is much more “democratic” than the West. It is democratic in its own way. For thousands of years, it developed its own political system. Its rulers, no matter who they are, are given a conditional right to govern by the people. In the past, but even now it is called a “Heavenly Mandate”. If the rulers fail to respect the will of the people, they get deposed. And the Communist Party of China is greatly respectful of the desires of the majority of the Chinese people. When they want liberal reforms, they are delivered. When they want more Communism and an epic fight against corruption, like now, China’s government immediately reacts. It is powerful and democratic, although it is a very specific and complex arrangement. And now, the Chinese people are outraged and they are sending clear signals to Beijing: “do not succumb to the West.” “If you do, our nation will suffer immensely, and the rest of the world will turn to ashes.” The fate of the world hangs in the balance and only truth can prevent a global catastrophe.

This major new study examines the nature of Chinese power and its impact on the international order. Drawing on an extensive range of Chinese-language debates and discussions, the book explains the roles of different actors and interests in Chinese international interactions, and how they influence the nature of Chinese strategies for global change. It also gives a unique perspective on how assessments of the consequences of China’s rise are formed, and how and why these understandings change. Providing an important challenge to scholars and policy makers who seek to engage with China, the book demonstrates just how far starting assumptions can influence the questions asked, evidence sought and conclusions reached.

A critical analysis of David C. Kang’s China Rising, which is a fine example of an author making use of creative thinking skills to reach a conclusion that flies in the face of traditional thinking. The conventional view that the book opposed, known in international relations as ‘realism,’ was that the rise of any new global power results in global or regional instability. As such, China’s development as a world economic powerhouse worried mainstream western geopolitical scholars, whose concerns were based on the realist assumption that individual countries will inevitably compete for dominance. Evaluating these arguments, and finding both their relevance and adequacy wanting, Kang instead turned traditional thinking on its head by looking at Asian history without preconceptions, and with analytical open-mindedness. Producing several novel explanations for existing evidence, Kang concludes that China’s neighbors do not want to compete with it in the way that realist interpretations predict. Rather than creating instability by jockeying for position, he argues, surrounding countries are happy for China to be acknowledged as a leader, believing that its dominant position will stabilize Asia, and give the whole region more of a hand in international relations. Though critics have taken issue with Kang’s conclusions, his paradigm-shifting approach is nevertheless an excellent example of developing fresh new conclusions through creative thinking.

No nation on Earth is as newsworthy as 21st-century China—and no book could be timelier than Dragon Rising, as world attention focuses on China's all-out effort to present itself as a modern world power and on the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Becker is the ideal guide to the profound changes within China that are reshaping global economic, diplomatic, and military strategies. He weaves analysis with anecdotes to address today's pressing uncertainties: How will China cope with pollution, unemployment, and demand for energy? What form will its government take? Can Shanghai's success with urban capitalism be replicated elsewhere? Each chapter focuses on a specific region and its local issues—minority unrest, poverty, corruption—then places them in the broader context of China society as a whole. Vividly illustrated with photographs that capture the paradox of an ancient culture remaking itself into a dynamic consumer society, Dragon Rising is a wonderfully written, well-rounded, wide-ranging portrait of China's problems and prospects.