“China’s rise” has been the source of a great deal of debate and concern. Much of the rising China literature focuses on China’s growing engagement or aggression in regional and international affairs. Such projections are based on continuation of China’s long period of extraordinary economic growth and the realist principle that China is converting its economic power into military might (e.g., see Aaron Frieberg, A Contest for Supremacy, 2012, and John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 2001). Daniel Lynch’s China’s Futures and Yongshun Cai's State and Agents in China address issues that may undermine China’s rise, if not the Chinese Communist Party’s capacity to continue its rule. Lynch examines internal (neibu) Chinese publications that analyze China’s present challenges and future development trajectories to reveal the range of projections and potential blind spots in the discourse on international affairs and domestic issues. Cai takes up the issue of how China’s regime handles cases of officials’ corruption and innovations that break the law or violate policy directives. Corruption and the regime’s uneven management of it encourage further corruption and undermine the Party-state’s legitimacy in the eyes of citizens.

In China’s Futures, Daniel Lynch marshals theoretical material and substantive analyses published by party organs, think tanks, professors, and others to elaborate the variety of elite perspectives on China’s future development. By analyzing the ideas of various strands of Chinese theorists, including realist, rationalist, new left and, even, liberal schools of thought, Lynch reveals the pluralism and parameters of debate that exist within Chinese political and academic circles. In order to focus the discussion of China’s trajectories, Lynch addresses the following set of key subjects that will likely prove (and already are proving) significant challenges for the regime to manage: a middle-income growth trap, societal pluralism and calls for democratization, social media and the development of a network society, multipolarity and Chinese international relations, and soft power competition.

The core argument of China’s Futures is that the way China discusses its future shapes the way in which the future, in fact, develops (p. 254). Lynch rejects linear or teleological projections of China’s future development, instead offering a version of chaos theory that is nonlinear and, at least partly, unpredictable. According to Lynch, Chinese elites’ patterns of discussion about the “images of the future” act as “attractors” that bend the country’s trajectory of development toward those predictions (pp. 17–18). While Chinese discourse does have a plurality of views on various aspects of its future, Lynch points out that there are also limitations on (or self-censorship of) liberal arguments, at least in public discussions (p. 99). While some elites and citizens are attracted to aspects of western models of development such as democracy, internet freedom, and economic liberalism, limitations on liberal discourse should diminish that ideology’s potential “attractor” effect.

Giving short shrift to liberal analyses and critiques of China’s present predicaments, however, may harm China’s future development. In an excellent chapter on Chinese economists analyses of national economic challenges, Lynch shows that declining population, weak consumer demand, asset bubbles, shadow financial institutions, and weak elasticity of employment (GDP growth results in very poor employment generation), among other problems, are endemic to China’s current economic model and must be addressed (pp. 63–64). Liberal economists make that case most forcefully, but many officials and strategists do not heed such cautionary advice. China’s poor economic modeling, which has come into sharp perspective in the last year, affects China’s strategic considerations. Based on the China’s growing economic strength, Chinese realists and nationalists have pressed for growing regional and international assertiveness. According to Lynch, those strategists are leading China to overextend itself in the region and hubristically challenging others because they have not listened to liberal analyses of China’s coming economic turmoil (pp. 159–161). The disconnect between Chinese liberal economists’ pessimism about the future and the realists’ optimism, which may lead China to act more aggressively in international affairs than its economy can support, is one of the author’s most important insights.

China’s Futures provides an eye-opening analysis of pluralism in Chinese discourse, as well as the hubris of some of the participants in the discussion. The competing analyses of China’s potential future trajectories reveal the depth and difficulty of some the current challenges facing the Chinese regime, such as managing economic reform and a society that is increasingly pluralist and connected online. The book has many strengths, but it also has two problems. First, Lynch’s discussion of varying approaches to the analysis of China’s future reveals the breadth of discussion, but the author does not give much indication of the relative weight that the ideas carry in Chinese discourse. Liberalism is noted to be somewhat muted, but the sway of particular authors is not always clear. That makes it difficult to decipher the potential attractiveness of particular ideas. Second and related, the theoretical framework is underdeveloped. If Chinese discourse shapes the future and the discourse contains so many competing frames, the future is impossible to predict. That is the point that Lynch seeks to make related to chaos theory, but such an approach calls for some guidance from the author as to which ideologies or lines of analysis are more attractive. The (surprising) relative absence of path dependent theory (buried in one footnote, p. 258 n36) is also a lacuna in the discussion of China’s future development trajectory and capacity to objectively analyze its current predicaments. Path dependence theory could offer a theoretical understanding of how discourse shapes perception of plausible paths to follow, for example.

In State and Agents in China, Yongshun Cai hones in on a single difficulty for China’s regime: how to discipline agents within the regime, especially those who engage in malfeasance. The author addresses different forms of corruption (seeking personal gain and duty-related malfeasance), how the regime variously disciplines different types of malfeasors (state and party officials, central and local perpetrators, and the level of violence or amount of resources involved in the corruption), mechanisms to avoid discipline, and the process of innovation led by local officials. Cai draws from official statistics and news reports to compile a data set on disciplinary actions taken against corrupt agents. The underlying argument of State and Agents in China is that the regime differentially responds to corrupt officials, which “undermines the credibility of discipline” (p. 4) and “gradually removes [the regime’s] legitimacy” (p. 8).

In this volume, Yongshun Cai weaves together summarizing statistics on disciplinary actions (no formal statistical analysis is presented) and specific examples of corruption and regime responses. The book gives an excellent overview of the range of the types of corruption that occur in China as well as analyses of particular events to reveal how troublesome and deeply embedded corruption can be in the Chinese bureaucracy. Readers unfamiliar with events in China are sure to learn a great deal about the violent nature of conflict between low-level officials and citizens, especially in the countryside, over corruption. The detailed accounts also lay bare higher officials’ complicity in covering up some corruption and inability to enforce discipline among the regime’s rank and file. Political pressure to “maintain stability” (p. 79) can lead officials to suppress protesters of corruption (pp. 144–146), cover up corruption (p. 138), and avoid formal investigations of corruption that lack consensus on how to conclude the matter (p. 116). Cai notes that corruption among state officials can be handled in a variety of ways, but that corruption is also against the law. Legal action against corrupt officials, however, tarnishes regime legitimacy and can end careers, so investigators must act carefully in determining which cases of corruption to pursue in order to protect regime interests (p. 132). Malfeasant officials seek out networks with other officials and party members to protect themselves from potential discipline, and well-connected corrupt officials are disciplined less severely than officials with weaker networks (pp. 155–156).

State and Agents in China provides a fascinating account of corruption, politics within the regime, and the dilemmas that the regime faces in trying to sustain its rule. Yongshun Cai provides a convincing account of why the regime selectively disciplines corrupt officials and how selective discipline undermines the authority of disciplinary organs and regime legitimacy. Chapter Seven, which focuses on innovation and reform at the local level, is a bit of an outlier in the volume but provides a theoretical link to the issue of sustainability of Chinese Communist Party rule. Cai argues that local officials are the source of economic and political reforms in China, but that higher officials’ limited tolerance of such reform efforts makes China’s officials relatively conservative (p. 159). Indeed, some local reformers are punished with dismissal or transfer to a different post. The shift from early chapters’ analyses of regime measures to discipline officials for duty-related violations and corruption for personal gain to Chapter Seven’s discussions of innovative reform is jarring. Most of the chapter deals with disciplinary measures taken against local reformers, analogous to earlier chapters on regime handling of corruption. Only at the end of the chapter does Cai clarify its implication: Limited tolerance for local reformers is deterring the introduction of flexibility in the political system that might help save it (p. 180). This is an important point, but it emerges late in the chapter, and the chapter as a whole is not particularly well integrated in the volume. The criticism, as well as that raised above against China’s Futures, detracts little from the important contributions of the two volumes.

Returning to theme of the rise and sustainability of China’s regime, the two volumes under review offer different perspectives on Chinese vulnerabilities. While Lynch reveals how limitations on discourse may lead Chinese leaders to pursue policies that may overextend their power abroad and fail to take necessary political and economic reforms, Cai demonstrates how corruption undermines regime legitimacy and, implicitly, how boundaries placed on discipline and reform, in the name of stability, may undermine the regime’s long-term viability. What emerges from a comparison of these two books is the clear implication that China needs to continue reforming, even as the regime is reticent to pursue such measures.