The first of the three books under review is an edited collection examining “China's role in the field of international governance and rule of law under the [Belt and Road Initiative] BRI”, using “alternative analytical frameworks” (p. 1). The collection is structured under subthemes, each exploring a different aspect of the interaction between legal developments within China and the international legal order: (i) convergence of international rules; (ii) development of substantive international rules and China's contribution; and (iii) development of international dispute resolution and China's contribution. Part I provides a macroscopic perspective on how China's ambitious BRI interacts with the processes of legal convergence in the region. Part II focuses on specific areas for co-operation under the BRI, including trade and investment, finance, environment, and space. The final part examines different aspects of dispute resolution mechanisms under the BRI.

The contributors are senior scholars from respected institutions in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, and Germany. Most chapters are strong in their descriptive analysis of the BRI and its emerging features, taking China's initiative BRI on its own terms, rather than adopting a critical perspective. This is both a virtue and a fault. By allowing the reader to explore aspects of China's vision from the inside out, the volume facilitates a deeper understanding of what China is trying to achieve. Yet one is left with the impression that the real work of critical analysis remains to be done, and the original promise of “alternative analytical frameworks” is left unfulfilled. The book remains a valuable resource for scholars of China's BRI, and of the legal, political, and economic institutions being built around it. It also has the virtue that “the extensive coverage of the chapters organised in such a book format is more reader-friendly for scholars, and avoids the time-consuming search for various journal papers published on the theme of the BRI” (p. 3). Yet not all purchasers of the book will find all chapters useful, and the collection remains just that—a combination of stand-alone (and sometimes repetitive) chapters under a single hard cover that never coheres into a critically analytical whole.

A much more satisfying read is the extended essay on “China's Strategic Multilateralism” by three American professors of politics. The question explored is that of China's role as a rising power in the creation and maintenance of global governance regimes, i.e. second-order co-operation, which are the efforts made by a state towards the actual creation and/or maintenance of a multilateral regime, as opposed to first-order co-operation, i.e. its actions taken towards merely obeying the rules of a regime. The authors use case-studies to demonstrate that China's second-order co-operation in international governance has varied considerably across cases and within different regime contexts. China has acted variously as a responsible stakeholder willing to invest in creating and maintaining global governance regimes (as in the creation of the Six Party Talks, a multilateral dialogue directed towards resolving the North Korean nuclear issue); a revisionist state willing to hold up global multilateralism if it cannot restructure international institutions to its own liking (as when it demanded changes to the International Monetary Fund [IMF] voting rights balance); and a passive free-rider, content to accept existing rules while allowing the US and other established powers to do the heavy lifting needed to maintain the regime (such as in the World Trade Organization). Against this background, the authors ask: What exactly are the determinants of China's role in a particular regime context at a particular time?

The central argument of the book is that a rising state's strategy towards multilateralism for any particular issue is shaped by two structural factors: (i) its outside options (i.e. the state's best alternative(s) to regime maintenance), and (ii) the rising power's sense of its own indispensability.

The book is a fascinating read not only because of its central argument, but because of the way that its argument is so carefully constructed, brick by brick, as the authors build their case. In explaining the importance of outside options as a structural factor motivating rising state strategies, for example, the authors point to “[a] classic example of how an outside option—the ability to walk away from an agreement—can give a state bargaining leverage within an ostensibly cooperative arrangement”. The example used is the “empty chair” crisis in the European Commission in 1965–66 “when France resisted a series of proposed changes that would merge a number of existing European institutions under a supranational authority. France withdrew its minister from the Commission—leaving the ‘empty chair’—and demanded a national veto on European policy making to induce it to return. Even though most other members understood that France benefited from the continuation of the European Economic Community, they nonetheless saw themselves as benefiting even more, and so made substantial concessions to France in order the resolve the crisis” (p. 24).

Similarly, China's strategy towards multilateral efforts aimed at restraining North Korea's nuclear weapons programme has varied over the years according to the perceived strength of its outside options. “In the early 1990s, China's outside options were strong … it has reason to free-ride on US [diplomatic] efforts … However, China's outside options worsened considerably during the 2002–2003 crisis, as Beijing … worried … that Washington might exercise a unilateral military option … In this context, the PRC made the decision to invest in building institutions that would facilitate a diplomatic solution” (p. 125).

As an example of indispensability and how it influences a rising state's attitude towards multilateralism, the authors give the evolution of the Lisbon Treaty in Europe. During the final round of the treaty negotiations in 2007, Polish leaders adopted a high public profile, blocking agreement on the new voting system. Poland's size, combined with its preferences (which were distinct from Germany's but resonated with other smaller Central European states) made it indispensable in the negotiations that followed, in which Poland won a voting system better suited to its interests. In a similar vein, the authors demonstrate, China has used as leverage the fact of its (perceived) increasing indispensability in global financial governance to win for itself a more powerful position in IMF decision-making.

An equally sophisticated and nuanced understanding of China's evolving (and contested) positions on issues of governance is provided by Matthieu Burnay. While Kastner et al. provide a strategic international relations perspective, Burnay's lens is that of a lawyer. Like Kastner et al., Burnay takes due account of insights offered by other disciplines, including history, contemporary area studies, politics, sociology, and economics.

China's Perspectives on the International Rule of Law is the published version of Burnay's PhD thesis, completed during his candidature at the University of Leuven. More than that, however, it is the carefully crafted and intensely researched product of a journey begun in 2008 at Peking University, and which is still continuing. Subtitled Law and Politics in the One-Party State, the book represents a major milestone along that journey.

What is China's domestic understanding of the rule of law, and how does that understanding influence and interact with China's perspectives on the international rule of law, international trade, and international security in particular? This is the essential milestone question Burnay's book travels towards. On the way he considers: (i) the rule of law and its meaning both domestically and internationally, (ii) the origins, characteristics, and prospects for the “Socialist Rule of Law with Chinese Characteristics”, (iii) Chinese perspectives on the international rule of law, and (iv) the prospects for the emergence of a consensus on the rule of law and the international rule of law between China and its partners in international trade and security.

Travelling via these four questions, the author tests the extent to which the Chinese perspectives and contribution to the international rule of law reflect China's own domestic understanding of the rule of law concept. Although his conclusions are not unexpected, his readers reach a far deeper understanding both of the import and value of the rule of law concept, and of that equally shifting and nebulous entity known as China.