Editor David Shambaugh's China and the World is a comprehensive study of China's international relations from the perspectives of leading China scholars. China's increasingly global orientation as it enters the 2020s, marking seventy years since the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC), forms a critical historical context. Through sixteen chapters, the book explores enduring and emerging questions surrounding the PRC's foreign relations, covering the drivers, dimensions, and implications of China's global engagement. The authors affirm the expanding quantity of that engagement while debating its qualitative nature and impact. Intended as an undergraduate and graduate textbook, China and the World is an essential resource for all readers seeking to understand why and how today's China is shaping the world.
Three features of this edited volume make it an appealing update to the existing literature. First, its overarching analytical framework integrates domestic and international aspects of China's external behavior by critically examining the driving forces of foreign policy, and how those forces translate into interactions abroad. The book links domestic and international levels of analysis separated by conventional international relations scholarship, with each section forming a multidimensional account of contemporary China. Second, in addition to their substantive content, the individual chapters are appropriate in number and length for a traditional one-semester course. Each chapter fits well with supplementary journal articles; as a textbook, the volume grounds further reading on specialized topics in China's politics and foreign relations. Third, China's emergence as a global player requires assessment from a global lens. As Shambaugh notes, the book engages US and international scholars for such an assessment. Many contributors complement academic perspectives with rich foreign policy expertise.
The book has six parts: an introductory section, two sections on the historical and domestic sources of China's foreign policy, two sections on its global manifestations by functional issue and geographic region, and a concluding section. All chapters engage current debates under the Xi Jinping leadership. Shambaugh's introduction frames the volume by tracing the trajectory of PRC foreign relations from the 1950s to the most recent decade of “increased confidence and prominence.” In the second section, Odd Arne Westad presents imperial and authoritarian legacies in China's national discourse shaping contemporary relations abroad. Chas W. Freeman Jr. historically reviews the distinct features of Chinese civilization guiding the state's strategic choices. The third section examines Chinese state and societal forces and the domestic institutional mechanisms of foreign policy. Peter Gries focuses on the double-edged sword of nationalism, while Suisheng Zhao identifies key leaders and institutions directing the party-state's policymaking process, noting fundamental shifts since Xi's power consolidation. The two sections contextualize subsequent sections on China's external interactions.
Four chapters form the fourth section on the functional aspects of these interactions, starting with China's integration with the world economy. Barry Naughton discusses the Chinese economy's structural transformation and corresponding global advancements after the 2008 financial crisis. In Shaun Breslin's chapter, this economic weight backs the state-led projection of Chinese culture abroad. Katherine Morton assesses Beijing's active turn in global governance under Xi at an important juncture in international rulemaking hinging on Chinese normative influence. Phillip C. Saunders reviews China's expanding military and security presence overseas, including its military modernization as a driving factor.
In six chapters, the fifth section examines China's interactions with major powers, Asian neighbors, developing regions, and multilateral institutions, the key counterparts identified in the PRC's official foreign policy discourse. Robert Sutter uncovers major developments in US-China relations amid a recent “hardening” of US policy and China's shift between assertive and defensive positions. In Alexei D. Voskressenski's account, pragmatism underpins the progression of China's post-Soviet partnership with Russia. China's increasingly multifaceted ties with Europe feature European realism and Chinese skepticism according to François Godement, confronting persistent frictions over rules and values. Like the European case, the United States’ role cannot be ignored in China's post–Cold War engagement with Asian subregions, as Michael Yahuda details. Joshua Eisenman and Eric Heginbotham's lay out China's expansive strategies in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, pointing to new problems facing the Xi leadership. China's envisioned multipolar world order informs Srikanth Kondapalli's examination of Beijing's growing activism leading new “regional multilateralism with Chinese characteristics.” Shambaugh concludes the volume by identifying seven challenges in China's foreign relations over the next decade.
Together, the chapters offer three takeaways on China's foreign relations. First, they draw attention to alternative interpretations of power, namely the relationship between material and ideational forms of Chinese influence. This relationship is clear when analyzing China's rising economic and military power and the relatively less penetrating “indirect cultural consequences of the growth of material resources” (Breslin, p. 138). National constructs of history and identity inhibit the “compromise” required for China to extend its influence abroad (Westad, p. 34). While such constraints surface saliently in Asia, the impediments to “mutual compromise” in Europe are largely normative concerns (Godement, p. 268). Despite China's promising material contributions, the developing world is not yet contemplating “an attractive political alternative to the Western liberal order” (Eisenman and Heginbotham, p. 306). In China's quest for global governance leadership in line with national priorities, whether “power” translates into “responsibility” remains in question (Morton, pp. 158–60). As Shambaugh concludes, China's continued “selective multilateralist” approach (p. 360) and soft power projection abroad are two obstacles to its global engagement moving forward.
A second point of debate concerns the relationship between state and nonstate forces of external behavior. As many contributors suggest, China's global power projection targets domestic and international audiences. From the volume's outset, Shambaugh stresses the need to “bring society back in” to international relations analysis, including domestic historical and institutional contexts (p. 3). The pluralization of foreign policy actors has generated dynamic internal debate on China's role in the world as Beijing navigates a difficult “two-level game” responding to other states and domestic groups (Gries, p. 81). These pressures have only intensified with the transition from Deng's “low-profile” diplomacy to Xi's “strongman rule” at home and “nationalistic power politics” abroad, during which “the chance of mistakes in China's policymaking process has increased” (Zhao, p. 106).
Third, this book reinforces two central points of change and continuity in China's external orientation. First, as a range of quantitative indicators suggest, “China's global footprint will only expand and exert a greater impact on world affairs” (Shambaugh, p. 348), underscoring its successful transformation since the isolationist 1950s. Especially in the economic domain, post-2009 policy initiatives have diverged from earlier developing country cases and most economists’ expectations (Naughton, p. 113). Second, despite this extraordinary transition, China on the international stage remains the same “partial power” Shambaugh presented in China Goes Global eight years ago,Footnote 1 perpetuating the distinction between China's global “presence” and “influence” (pp. 4–5). The functional and geographic scope of Chinese power embodies this distinction, featuring hard power limited largely to Asia and soft power concentrated in the developing world.
The most important change in the global context of China's own assessment is a shift to multipolarity. Whether China will fully transition to a global power depends on three factors extending this volume's significance. One decisive variable is the outcome of current China-led multilateralism at regional levels as “an interim arrangement in China's drive to acquire regional and global dominance” (Kondapalli, p. 334). The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership's recent signing fortified China-centered integration in Asia and raised anxieties over the United States’ economic and security position. But as Yahuda indicates, China's regional initiatives still incite ambivalence in Asia, where the variety of proposed multilateralisms amplifies existing strategic dilemmas. Beijing's multilateral push may only elevate future challenges of managing relations with major powers and Asian neighbors.
Second, the success of China's power transition depends on closing the gap between official rhetoric and practice. Aligning words and action is especially important for converting power into influence. The critical test is Xi's Belt and Road Initiative, another future challenge that could make or break China's global image as a “caring superpower” (Shambaugh, p. 359). In China's increasingly asymmetrical relationships, declarations of “strategic partnership” lack substantive results, only signaling “mutual support of ruling elites” in the China-Russia case (Voskressenski, p. 249) and producing a “mutual crisis of expectations” in China–European Union relations (Godement, p. 267). Even in the developing world, “empty MoUs” and China's domestic grievances are sources of emerging skepticism (Eisenman and Heginbotham, p. 305).
The third variable is China's domestic politics, which leads Shambaugh's forecast of challenges ahead. Many of the contributors emphasize China's economic challenges, now magnified by post-pandemic pressures and tensions with Washington that are expected to continue. While China's expanding global presence is clear, internal developments will shape the character and consequences of that rise, and address the ongoing question on Beijing's global leadership: “would others follow its lead?” (Shambaugh, p. 361).
This new compilation presents a dynamic and multilayered view of contemporary China and the world, illustrating state and societal forces of change inside China, and material and ideational forces of change extending outside it. While many chapters rely on primary sources, further integration of Chinese scholarly perspectives would enrich future editions. The book's contributions will grow in relevance as Beijing marks the Chinese Communist Party's one hundredth founding anniversary this year, and declares a new stage of socialist modernization. To be updated every five to ten years, this collaborative work is a promising addition to university syllabi and broader reading lists.
