China’s Search for Security

A fretful—but not too fretful—colossus takes the world stage in this thoughtful, tepid study of China’s foreign relations. Political scientists Nathan (Chinese Democracy) and Scobell (China’s Use of Military Force) survey the threats and quandaries the Chinese government perceives: a crazy ally in North Korea; squabbles with neighbors over oil and gas deposits in the South China Sea; competing territorial claims on the Indian border; restive minorities in Tibet and Xinjiang province; uncertain access to vital overseas resources and sea lanes; the eternal turf battle with Taiwan; a United States that patrols China’s coasts and rings it with bases. Fortunately, these insecurities seem to have produced a fairly unobjectionable Chinese “strategy of trying to stabilize its borders and reassure its neighbors.” The authors’ realist take on international affairs produces a lucid, readable, well-judged, rather dry analysis of China’s concerns and the domestic and external pressures that drive its policymaking. They briefly entertain scenarios of instability and conflict, but their tone is reassuring; as it builds its economy—and the globe’s—China’s ambitions will stay restrained and broadly compatible with those of America and the international community. This measured assessment shows that, compared with Mao’s era of apocalyptic paranoia, China and the world have become safer, duller places. (Nov.)