Rising to the Challenge: China’s Grand Strategy and International Security (Studies in Asian Security) ebook

Rising to the Challenge is for the most part interesting reading. In fact, for a person even slightly interested in international relations, Goldstein's manner of thoughtfully unfolding each issue related to China lends itself to applicability to other countries as well.

Early on, Goldstein introduces the concept that for every country there is a security dilemma. He argues that in the case of China, this dilemma is particularly important to the international community.

Goldstein describes security dilemmas as arising from the difficult choices that states face because they find themselves in the inherently uncertain and potentially dangerous condition of anarchy. This condition occurs because, different from domestic political systems, the defining feature of international political systems is that there is no government standing above states that can reliably enforce agreements or resolve disputes. Goldstein asserts that each state, therefore, has incentives to hedge its bets against the need to take care of itself and deal with unpredictable adversaries and an unknowable future. The steps that each state faces is the following: should it attempt to ensure its security by arming itself if doing so might provoke a response from others that could wind up increasing the threat originally faced? Or should it eschew actions that others might deem provocative, even if such restraint entails tolerating a degree of vulnerability that a military buildup might reduce, especially when the state cannot be sure whether restraint will be reciprocated?

Goldstein points out that the intensity of a security dilemma depends on a variety of factors, including the nature of military technology, strategic beliefs, and perceptions about the belligerence of the potential adversary. He highlights the U.S.-Soviet Cold War relationship as one extreme of the pendulum, where it was difficult to distinguish offensive from defensive weaponry, when the side to strike first would get an advantage, and when parties view each other as hostile. On the other end of the spectrum are any number of security dilemmas that readily lend themselves to a certain course of action which meets a state's objectives.

The book's discussions flow as follows: China's changing strategic landscape, China's growing capabilities and problems, other countries' worries in relation to China, stimuli encouraging China's adoption of a grand strategy, China's relationships with specific major powers, examination of the durability of China's grand strategy, considerations for the United States in response to China's "grand strategy."

I think Goldstein does a superb job of putting developments in perspective. I've noticed in my other readings on China that many analysts seemed to take an alarmist approach concerning China's growing power. In reading their works, I often felt like I wasn't being given enough information to consider China's growing capabilities in the context of, for one, a comparison to those of its neighbors. I appreciated that Goldstein took a step back and analyzed China's growing capabilities from several points of view; in my mind, it boosted the credibility of his analysis.

There is a great deal of literature on the rise of China. Most of it addresses only an aspect or two, such as industrial growth, technology development, population control, military modernization, international relations, etc. This work by Goldstein takes a stab at coming up with a composite "grand strategy." But for a book which includes in the title "China's Grand Strategy," I don't think Goldstein at one time ever lays out what he thinks China's grand strategy is. Instead, he presents it piecemeal throughout the book, weaving it into carefully-constructed analyses. By the time one completes the book, one does have a good feel for what Goldstein believes to be China's grand strategy. Here is my take: Beijing has adopted a strategy to (1) serve the purpose of protecting its core national interests against external threats and to (2) engineer the country's peaceful rise to the status of a true great power while not provoking preventative responses by the Unites States or its Asian neighbors. China hopes to facilitate eventual movement beyond this era of American unipolarity and help usher in a multi-polar international order in which China is a main player. To reach those ends, over a several-decade span, China will continue to pursue domestically-centered economic growth, military modernization, and bilateral and multi-national engagement with the United States, Russia, India, Pakistan, and ASEAN member states.

Goldstein argues that this strategy, which has been gelling since the mid 1990s, has staying power. He thinks that it (1) has satisfactory buy-in from the elite who most strongly influence China's foreign and domestic policies and (2) is the approach least likely to startle/frighten neighbors who are concerned with China's rising power and uncertain intentions.

The author ends with a chapter dedicated to recommendations for an American response to China's grand strategy. This is where Goldstein's ideology comes shining through. He doesn't advocate a policy of containment (such as was the approach of the current Bush Administration for its first six months) or anything even geared toward that line of thinking. Thus one understands that Goldstein isn't a conservative. He criticizes the open engagement policy of the Clinton administration as naïve and simplistic, indicating that he isn't a liberal. Instead, the approach that Goldstein advocates for America in relation to the Chinese problem is one of a middle ground in which the United States (1) is careful not to base its policies on premature projections about China's future capabilities or assumptions about China's future intentions, (2) pursues a contingent cooperative relationship with China, meaning that it carefully studies this China that is in the process of developing into a great power and cooperates to the degree that it advances American interests, (3) strives to facilitate the development of China into the sort of state whose interests and ambitions the United States can accommodate and with whom it can peacefully co-exist while maintaining a watchful eye for areas to "be corrected" by American assertiveness.

Rising to the Challenge is a great book for those interested in China. Most of it, particularly the section on national security dilemmas, is also educational for any student of international relations.

J Lehnerd

A thorough and engaging overview of China's current strategic interests and likely future actions. The potential impact of China's behavior on international security, as outlined in this book, is eye-opening. Well done...and not too academic, if you know what you are getting into...

I read through this book and found it fairly hard to digest. It seems too "academic" for me. An amateur like me probably won't be able to get anything meaningful out of it.