China's rise (relative to its past and other great powers) for the past three decades has caused anxiety among many people over the world. The opaque nature of Chinese foreign policy and global strategy and newly emerged divisions among the intellectual and political elites have further heightened anxiety. The translation and publication of Ye Zicheng's book is a significant contribution to scholars in universities and researchers in think tanks and policymaking units outside of China. It provides a comprehensive, historical, and critical examination of key issues and competing ideas with regard to China's global ambition and challenges, its strategic thinking for tackling these issues, and the cleavages among Chinese policymakers. As the author states, his book does not represent the official policy, but it certainly reflects it. We can also say that the book represents mainstream thinking in China's foreign policy debates.

Basically, Ye articulates his arguments in the context of being against three other interlocutors. On the aggressive side of the spectrum are the “extreme nationalists” and “militarists” (e.g., the voices from both the New Left and The Global Times); on the passive side the “dogmatic conservatives” (e.g. those who insist on sticking to Deng Xiaoping's policy of taoguang yanghui—“hiding the light and biding the time”). In contrast to the previous two approaches within the current regime, an anti-regime liberal voice (“radical liberals” in Ye's term) is lurking behind, supporting internationalism and universal values. The author chooses an assertive position, the so-called more “rational” and “balanced” perspective, or the middle way. The arguments in the book represent the more progressive and healthy part of Chinese strategic thinking that are tolerated by the regime.

The whole book is organized around this core argument: China has a strategic opportunity, given by world development and created itself, to pursue the goal of a world power and through it the nascence of the Chinese nation. In Chapter 1, Ye divides great powers into three categories: the global superpower, the superpower, and the world power, but does not give an explicit definition for world power. He argues that favorable natural, demographic, economic, historical, and international factors constitute preconditions for China's achievement of world power status around the year 2050. He argues that this ideal “should be the Chinese people's ideology for the twenty-first century” (p. 75).

Chapter 2 reveals that China has been neither a status quo nor a radical power, but rather a revisionist one pursuing a reformist agenda in the current international order. Several contradictory ideas are presented: China should not take the lead but does not recognize U.S. global leadership (p. 84); China will not actively challenge but integrate into the world system, but it will create a “new and different model of civilization” (p. 85); China will not follow the “Western model” essentialized by the author, but “the best of Marxism” is embedded in the “values and concepts of Chinese socialism” (p. 85). The most important message, which Ye does not elaborate on, is that the main challenges to China's ambitions are “domestic.” He does discuss the importance of democratization as one key strategic choice for China's achievement of the world power ideal, but he has failed to convince the reader that a Chinese democracy distinct from Western democracy has been formulated and can be viable. Neither has he realized how divergence over democratic values between China and the rest has been one major cause of the absence of trust between China and the U.S., Taiwan, and other neighboring countries. Overall, Ye writes as a realist throughout the book and puts enormous stress upon interest as a solution to any problem China has with other nations.

In Chapters 3 to 5, Ye demonstrates how China's increasing ability to distribute interest can help it manage relationships with the global and regional powers and its neighbors, and pursue its “peaceful development” both in terms of its own strategy and the global environment. The interest-centric approach extends into the last chapter of the book that deals with the issue of reunification with Taiwan. The author has not examined how China's fetishism of world power status would benefit the average Chinese; as he takes the reunification as a litmus test and quintessential symbol of China's ascendency into a world power, he does not question how and whether it will uplift rather than push down the dignity of the Taiwanese people, either.

Overall, reading this informative book is rewarding. However, it is not an enjoyable experience due to the lack of satisfactory answers and convincing arguments. The author's reception and defense of many of the government's ideological propositions at their face value and his mixing up of descriptive and prescriptive narratives reveal a serious flaw in the scholarship of Chinese international studies.