This volume is one of the most up-to-date examinations of China's changing policy toward the developing world, or third world. It consists of nine excellent chapters, plus an introductory note by editor Lowell Dittmer. Chapters 2 and 3, by Mel Gurtov and David Zweig, respectively, explore the macro political and economic dimensions of China's new and revised role vis-à-vis the developing world. Chapter 4 by Jörn Dosch, chapter 5 by Lawrence Saez and Crystal Chang, and chapter 6 by Niklas Swanstrom examine China's relations with its immediate neighbors in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and greater Central Asia, and chapter 7 by George Yu, chapter 8 by Yitzhak Shichor, and chapter 9 by Nicola Phillips analyze China's relations with developing countries in other regions, including Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. In the last chapter, Dittmer discusses how China deals with the developing world in the context of its overall foreign policy, particularly in the United Nations framework.
Editors Dittmer and George T. Yu have organized these chapters to reflect China's changing relations with developing countries at different levels. The first level is China's neighborhood, where China has great geopolitical and security interests. The second level is China's relations with developing countries that are more geopolitically removed from China. Understandably, China places more emphasis on security and stability dimensions for the first group of countries and on trade and commerce for the second group. The third level is China's relations with the developing world at the international level. At this level, one sees how China deals with the developing world in the context of its relations with the developed world, mainly the West.
Readers are presented with several themes and arguments throughout the volume. First is China's changing “developing world” identity. China continues to identify itself with the developing world, even though it has become a superpower similar to the United States in many aspects. During the Maoist era, China gave the developing world the highest policy priority, and the “developing world” policy was the center of its so-called united front strategy against the United States and Soviet Union. This was reflected in the Maoist theory of the “three worlds.” Despite its rise, China finds its developing world identity useful today because it provides leeway to manage its relations with both the developing and the developed worlds.
Second, China has emerged as a new trading nation in dealing with the developing world. During the 1960s and 1970s, China spent millions of dollars in support of national liberation movements, an ideology that China shared with the developing world in its efforts against the imperial West. In the past three decades, China has been integrated into the West-dominated international system. Accordingly, China has shifted its developing world policy from one guided by ideology to one that focuses on a mutually beneficial economic and political relationship. In this sense, as Dittmer correctly points out, China's relationship with the developing world “has grown in many ways disenchanted, secularized, commercialized” (p. 9).
A third and less explicit theme is China's efforts to balance its commercial interests and its security and strategic interests. For example, while China must focus on strategic issues when it deals with its neighbors, it also has struck a balance between its security and commercial interests. China has found that its security interests can be better served if there is a commercial base. Once China places too much emphasis on its security interests, other powers will become suspicious of China's motivation. This is particularly true in the case of China's relations with Africa and Latin America, where other powers, particularly Western powers, have deeply rooted strategic interests, and China is a latecomer. Over the years, China has developed substantial relations with these regions and is very cautious and aware of security implications for other powers.
The last important theme is the way in which China formulates its developing world policy in the context of its perception of how a rising and responsible global power should behave in world affairs. China has shown its willingness to become a responsible power. This means that China has also to strike a balance between the developing and developed worlds when it decides its developing world policy. As Dittmer's chapter shows, while the endeavor may sometimes be difficult, China has made efforts toward that goal.
There is room for further examination of China's relations with the developing world. The volume identifies some key themes and provides empirically rich case studies. But a conceptual/theoretical framework is still missing. With China's continuous growth and rise, it is playing an increasingly important role on the world stage. So far, China has not been integrated into the mainstream international relations theories. Any international relations theory will be insufficient if it cannot explain China's international behavior. It will be desirable for scholars to develop international relations frameworks that explicitly contribute to the study of China.
