The study of economic statecraft, the “use [of] economic instruments to pursue foreign policy goals” has been dominated by the study of economic sanctions and foreign aid from the perspective of the sender country, and the most commonly studied sender country in the Cold War period has been the United States. Shu Guang Zhang of Macau University of Science and Technology has written a detailed history of China's economic statecraft during the Cold War, notably its use of aid, trade and sanctions to achieve its goals. What makes this book particularly noteworthy is Zhang's use of relatively newly available archival materials from Chinese sources including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs covering the period 1949–65, as well as provincial-level archives.

The book begins with a study of China's efforts to evade the consequences of the US economic embargo on the new Communist government in 1949 which was then tightened further during the Korean War. Chapters two to five then cover China's aid relations during the Cold War, both as a recipient of Soviet aid and as a dispenser of modest but influential amounts of aid to developing countries, neighbours, and after the Sino-Soviet split in 1960–63 to other communist governments such as North Korea and Albania, trying to counter Soviet influence. Chapter six deals with China's aid to North Vietnam during the Vietnam War; this aid policy involved multiple competing goals for the Chinese, especially after 1971 when US–China strategic relations became much more cooperative against the Soviets. The last two chapters deal with China's economic statecraft during the period of economic reforms in China, and Chinese efforts after June 1989 to deal with the international sanctions that followed the Tiananmen Square massacre. A brief discussion of contemporary implications of the Chinese use of economic statecraft concludes the book, along with a very useful chronology and index.

This is a book anyone who is writing on the relations between China and the Soviet bloc will want. Although it does not revise our broad-brush understanding of the Cold War, it does add an extraordinary amount of detail to our understanding of China's alliance with the Soviets, the breakdown in that relationship, the competition between the Soviets and Chinese for favour among North Korea, Mongolia and Albania, and China's early foreign aid in the Third World. Zhang's delving in the archives of China reveals the frequent bureaucratic reorganization of China's foreign aid establishment, and the Chinese efforts to maximize the leverage of their small amount of aid. Chinese leaders sought to make their aid distinctive and more generous than that coming from the Soviets or from the Western bloc. China also used its access to hard currency through Hong Kong, its strategic minerals such as tungsten and its natural rubber to demonstrate its value to Moscow, even as it was becoming uncomfortably dependent on Soviet loans and technology. Zhang's research also changes our understanding of China's involvement in the Tanzania–Zambia Railway, China's largest and best-known piece of foreign aid during this period. China was approaching Zambia well before Rhodesia unilaterally declared independence in November 1965.

Zhang's book also confirms what most scholars already sensed: the dominant role of Premier Zhou Enlai in economic statecraft until his death in 1976. Zhou in turn delegated most foreign aid responsibility to Fang Yi, and the book details many other leaders tasked with responsibility for aid. At times, the detail in the book borders between the astounding and the stultifying. In discussing Chinese aid to Viet Cong soldiers, Zhang details that each was to receive “…three suits of clothes and three pair of shoes, and a daily ration of 800 grams of rice, 30 grams of salt, 80 grams of meat, 30 grams of fish, 30 grams of peanuts or sesame seeds, 30 grams of beans, 30 grams of lard, 10 grams of soy sauce, and 30 grams of sugar … China was to provide … 8,000 toothbrushes, 11,100 cases of toothpaste, 24,700 cakes of soap, and 109,000 cartons of cigarettes” (p. 220). Almost every aid package is detailed here, factories to be built, equipment to be supplied, but it seldom examines whether the projects were actually carried out.

The most important underdeveloped element in Zhang's book is the core question in all economic statecraft studies: did it work? Did the use of economic instruments advance China's foreign policy goals? Zhang's answers tend to be cursory, a few sentences where paragraphs would seem to be needed. Another missing element that is ripe for exploration is the competition between the PRC and ROC for diplomatic recognition; the subject is only passingly mentioned but is arguably one of Beijing's greatest triumphs in economic statecraft. The volume does not seek to measure Beijing's success systematically and thus the contribution of the book to a broader political science literature on economic statecraft is somewhat modest. As a detailed history of China's efforts to use economic instruments in the Cold War, however, this book is superb.