11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
Conservative, Repetitive, and Narrow but Informative, 2003-12-03
Interpreting China's Grand Strategy is a book about both the history and future of Chinese economic, political and territorial security. Historically, Chinese security seems to be predicated upon cycles of expansion and contraction of Chinese territory as a causal result of the administrative strength or weakness of the presiding imperial bureaucracy. The future of Chinese security, however, relies more heavily upon a variety of factors including a continued expansion of economic growth, military refinement and technological advances, continued foreign/external infrastructure investment, accelerated involvement in international political affairs and economic activities, and finally, the general acceptance of China as an emerging world power. While these conditions present a relatively unambiguous foundation for China's ascent to global preponderance, the venues by which China will utilize these probable resources remains unclear. Will there be a re-emergence of the historical "weak-strong" strategy? Might a continuation of the "calculative" strategy outlined by the authors prevail? Or will China eventually pursue the "assertive" strategy historically adopted by rising powers seeking global hegemony? The central question of China's security strategy mentioned above represents the core issue confronting U.S. policy makers. The authors assert clearly that regardless of the strategy eventually employed by China, the emergence of the PRC as a global power directly threatens U.S. strategic objectives to remain the world's only superpower. In this sense, the U.S. has a critical interest in influencing the means by which China seeks to achieve its economic, political, and security-related ends. The authors offer a "cooperative" strategy for China that should be encouraged by the U.S. both to facilitate yet also limit China's strategic goals.
Considering the historical, cultural, and economic evidence presented in the text, there seemed to be a lack of attention to the significance of resource limitations in determining the future strategies, and subsequent outcomes of China's pursuit of national interests. China's large population, increasing environmental degradation, decreasing availability of arable land and growing dependence on both energy and raw material imports constitute a basic yet immense hindrance to China's goal of achieving the type of industrial and economic development necessary for its emergence as a world power. The "cooperative" strategy fails to address this underlying problem of actual resources available to facilitate the development of China towards an affluent, powerful, and fully modernized society to which it aspires. Can the Earth sustain yet another industrialized and consumption-based economy in a country with a population nearly four times that of the U.S.? Are Americans and other Westernized countries willing to relinquish some of the standard of living increases made in the past few decades to meet the growing resource demands of such international development? These types of conflicts of interests combined with the reality of finite resources threaten to undermine the fundamental premises of the "cooperative" strategy of shared economic prosperity. Ultimately, it is this type of international resource inequality and probable related conflicts that will eventually undermine the goals of all nations with an interest in peace and security.