Pundits who comment on China's future role in the world as a force for stability or instability come in primarily two types. The pessimists, such as Richard Bernstein and Ross Munro in The Coming Conflict with China (Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), Bill Gertz in China Threat: The Plan to Defeat America (Regnery, 2002), and Constantine Menges in China: The Gathering Threat (Thomas Nelson, 2005), emphasize the current and future threat China represents for American national security in zero-sum terms. In contrast, Andrew Nathan and Robert Ross in The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress: China's Search for Security (Norton, 1997), David Shambaugh (ed.) and others in Power Shift: China and Asia's New Dynamics (University of California Press, 2005), Robert G. Sutter in China's Rise in Asia: Promises and Perils (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), and David M. Lampton in his extensive work present more nuanced assessments of China's rise, noting the web of interdependence in which it operates, where rules and norms of behavior constrain state behavior. Joshua Kurlantzick's new book Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power is Transforming the World fits into this latter, nuanced category.

As one whose work has focused on the U.S.-China relationship for several years, including my stint in 2004 on the China desk in the State Department as part of a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs fellowship, I feel qualified to discuss this new book. Its argument is familiar to me, and I am sympathetic to its conclusions. While on the China desk I wrote a paper entitled “China's Prudent Cultivation of ‘Soft’ Power and Implications for U.S. Policy in East Asia”—published in spring 2005 in Asian Affairs: An American Review (vol. 32, no. 1: 25–30)—which made the argument that China's “good neighbor” diplomacy, its economic “lure” in terms of its trade and aid policy, and its rising “soft” power gave it the tools to increase its influence in East Asia and around the globe. These same themes appear in Kurlantzick's analysis of China's charm offensive.

The author argues that China “has created a systematic, coherent soft power strategy, and a set of soft power tools to implement that strategy” (xi). The tools of soft power—that is, China's increasingly sophisticated diplomacy and its growing trade and aid—promote a benign view of China that allows it to push its hard goals. Its tangible goals include obtaining energy resources to maintain is economic growth, building contacts with countries such as Iran and Vietnam that share its noninterference goals, and to be perceived as a responsible power playing by the international rules. Kurlantzick pieces together a web of evidence such as polls that show increased popular approval for China (as perceptions of the United States have slipped), the increase in Chinese language instruction around the world and the increasing number of foreign students in China, and how elites have embraced the opportunity of China's soft power to explain its growing influence. He measures China's success by its ability to secure peace and stability on its borders, to obtain resources to power its economy, to isolate Taiwan, to portray itself as a benign and constructive actor (possibly a model of development), and more generally to get its way in foreign relations.

Kurlantzick asks us to understand the new reality of China's challenge in the twenty-first century. He argues that China's success, in part, is due to U.S. neglect, its unpopular interventionist policies, and declining soft power. No doubt the Bush administration has been preoccupied with Iraq, particularly at the highest levels, but China's more sophisticated diplomacy has not escaped the attention of American policymakers. Regularly scheduled dialogues that have developed, such as the Treasury-led Strategic Economic Dialogue, represent high-level recognition of China's important role and the corresponding need to discuss the strategic and conceptual framework of the bilateral relationship. These meetings cap a rich and multilayered set of dialogues from the working level to the senior level that focus specifically on promoting China as a responsible stakeholder.

Although China has developed a sophisticated foreign policy strategy, there are too many unknown factors to make the claim that it wields the same kind of lasting soft power that helped the United States win the Cold War. First, so much of China's influence depends on factors outside its borders. The interdependence that gives it influence also makes it vulnerable to global economic downturns. Second, while China is the necessary economic engine in Southeast Asia (and increasingly globally), its direct foreign investment and aid are small when compared to the United States or Japan. China is enjoying a honeymoon period, and the expectations it has raised may cause problems if its promises are unfulfilled. Third, through its policy choices, it may squander its gains. Conflict over Taiwan, for example, could shake the region and the trade arrangements with ASEAN that have developed. Fourth, internal problems such as the growing income gap in the country, population pressures, and growing pollution problems represent enormous challenges for China that must be addressed in the near term. Fundamentally, China must decide what it is. Is it the leader of the developing world, that is, “its natural guardian,” or is it a world power? Depending on the circumstances and its audience, it now plays both games.

A further problem with this type of broad analysis is the assumption that China's policy results from a unitary, rational decision-making process. This perspective fails to recognize China as the bureaucratically limited giant that it is. As The Making of Chinese Foreign and Security Policy in the Era of Reform (Stanford University Press, 2001), edited by David M. Lampton, makes clear, policymaking in China is notoriously complex, contradictory, and fraught with disagreement.

With these points in mind, we might not be so confident about China's lasting charm offensive. However, as Kurlantzick points out, the United States would be wise to better understand its influential role in the world and to pay close attention to the United States-China relationship.