Rush Doshi

I was enthusiastically looking forward to this book, but once I had the actual item in my hands I was somewhat less impressed. To be fair, someone who has not really been paying attention to the activities of the Chinese government over the last decade will get a crash course in Beijing's foreign policy agenda. However, those of us who have been paying attention will not be that surprised, though Doshi is to be commended for pulling together a lot of policy changes. My main issue with this work is that I don't think it's emphasized enough that what really seems to be driving policy is the determination of the Chinese Communist Party not to wind up in the dustbin of history, in as much as they've convinced themselves that they are indispensable to China's survival as an independent country. Going further, if the world economy is unavoidable, than the international projection of Party authority has become an imperative, so as the Party is not undermined. This means that other national governments will have to respect the Party Line; my expectation is that this will not go well for anyone. Finally, it's all well and good to attach a mini-polemic to the end of this book in regards to overcoming the current round of American "declinism," but you only have to be unlucky once. This is not to mention that it appears a lot of American wannabe authoritarians actually admire the moves of Xi Jinping. The next few years are going to be very interesting; probably in a bad way.… (mer)