cover image An Awkward Embrace: 
The United States and China 
in the 21st Century

An Awkward Embrace: The United States and China in the 21st Century

Dan Blumenthal and Phillip Swagel. AEI, $50 (110p) ISBN 978-0-8447-7235-6

The authors bring their wealth and depth of experience in government to this timely and remarkably jargon-free assessment of the economic and security issues facing the United States in its relationship with China. Blumenthal, current commissioner and former vice-chairman of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, and Swagel, currently a professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy and former assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department, lucidly summarize the two primary ways of understanding China as the “Good China” versus the “Bad China.” “Good China” is an “economic- and business-driven view of China as a ‘rational actor’ ” that recognizes how much it benefits from trade and financial flows and is loath to risk the economic growth “that underpins [its] political stability.” The “Bad China” view argues that Chinese officials prioritize nationalist and security concerns. Analysts who advocate this latter position present a frightening future in which a mercantilist China actively seeks to undermine the current international regime and replace it with a system in which the major gains accrue to China, rather than to the U.S. How is it, ask Blumenthal and Swagel, that “modern China can nurture differing forces that hold great promise for a prosperous future while also portending immense danger to the United States and the existing global economic and security structure”? Unfortunately, the commitment of the authors to the foundations of the “Good China” view prevent them from incorporating the persuasive arguments of “Bad China” into their conclusions. (Nov.)