This volume provides a good survey of the diversity of opinion on foreign policy issues in China, while approximating mainstream thinking about China's situation. Ye lays out Chinese views about the reasonableness and naturalness of China's return to great power status, thereby giving a good sense of the contents of contemporary Chinese nationalism: the quest to restore China's long lost but rightfully deserved position of great power among the nations of the world. China's strategic objective for the next half century, Ye asserts, is to restore China to the ranks of the world's great powers. Ye offers a clear and concise example of the utilization of narratives of China's imperial history and preeminent status in East Asia over many centuries plus a long and dynamic civilization, to construct China's claim to contemporary international greatness.
Ye's typical approach is to describe fairly and in detail the views of “some Chinese scholars” on this and on that side of an issue, and then lay out his own views, which usually lie somewhere between the two extremes. The reader thus encounters contending Chinese views on: whether economic globalization is a good or a bad thing for China; whether China should seek and is able to achieve great power status; what national identity China should adopt during its rise; whether peace and development is possible under conditions of US hegemony and whether China needs to prepare for war with the United States; whether the United States is an enemy and opposed to China's rise; whether the US is declining (or has already collapsed) and the era of multipolarity near; whether war is necessary to recover Taiwan; and, of course, what strategies China should adopt to maximize the likelihood of its successful rise. The book was written in 2002; nine years lapsed before the current volume appeared. It nonetheless offers a good summary of the parameters of debate over foreign policy in post-Cold War China. If one is looking for a good survey of the diversity of Chinese thinking on foreign affairs, this author can think of none better than Ye's book. Unfortunately, Ye does not link these divergent views to specific organizations or interests, or even in many cases to individual scholars. Thus one encounters free-floating ideas not grounded in actual politics of China – to debates over budgets and spending, to particular institutional perspectives and interests, to alignments among leaders and regions, and so on. Still, Ye's half-full cup is very welcome.
Ye places China's relations with the United States at the centre of his analysis of China's international situation. He recognizes frankly the many conflicts of ideology and interest between the two countries. The United States interferes in the internal affairs of China, seeks to impose Western values and institutions on China, and dreams of turning China into a Western-style democracy which will fit nicely into a US-led world. These things are completely unacceptable to China, Ye explains. In terms of interest, the two countries differ over such things as the Japan–US alliance, India, missile defence, naval activities in coastal seas, Taiwan, and “unilateral” US use of force. Nor does China recognize the US right to lead the world, and the US cannot expect China to go along with US policies when those do not accord with China's own interests.
Yet in spite of these multiple conflicts of interests, Ye concludes that there are no fundamental conflicts between the United States and China that might lead to war. The history of Sino-American relations (e.g., the Open-Door policy, support against Japan, Roosevelt's support for China's entry into the Big Four), indicates, Ye says, that the United States is not a threat to China nor hostile to its rise. US policy does not take China as an enemy or major threat, or seek to prevent its rise. “It would be totally wrong to treat the United States as a threat to Chinese national security or as a hypothetical enemy,” Ye writes. In fact, the current open, global economic order created and still upheld by US power profoundly benefits China's rise. Foreign capital, technology, know-how, and ideas flow into China under this global order, while Chinese exports flow out.
The current global order, upheld by the United States, has in fact created a great “strategic opportunity” for China – an opportunity that China must do everything possible to utilize and to maintain. This is the crux of Ye's prescription for China's “grand strategy.” Yet it is unrealistic, Ye argues, to imagine that China could become an ally of the United States. (Here again Ye positions himself between two extremes.) They have no common enemy. Moreover, alliance with the United States would require that China accommodate its own interests to those of the United States and injure its “national identity” as an independent great power. There will be conflicts over interests and ideology between China and the United States, but there need not be a major confrontation – unless the two sides make the wrong choices. China does not, and should not, aspire to drive the United States out of Asia or to replace the United States as world leader, Ye declares. China's strategic objective is to develop its economy to approach the US GDP by 2049, all the while modernizing its society and politics. This cannot be achieved by confronting, rivalling or preparing for war with the United States. That was one of the lessons of the Soviet Union.
Ye's recognition of the complex but fundamentally non-hostile nature of Sino-US relations is a welcome antidote to the simplistic views of co-operation or (far more common) conflict that are abundant in both China and the United States. Regarding China, and as readers of Chinese newspapers and journals know, scenarios of US machinations against China are abundant, with the US being portrayed as scheming to break up China, overthrow its government and return it to a condition of weakness and vulnerability, achieve Taiwan independence, contain and/or encircle China, starve China or choke off its oil imports, or stifle China's military or high-tech development. Ye offers a even-handed rebuttal of these dire Chinese analyses.
Ye warns against Chinese advocates of US decline who believe the vacuum thereby created invites more assertive Chinese policies. The United States has serious problems, Ye says, but also deep strengths: strong science and technology, strong higher education, a large middle class, stable and fully developed legal and political systems, rich resources, a large pool of human talent. The future trajectory of the US role in the world is still uncertain. Ultimately, the outcome will depend on whether the United States is able to solve its problems, Ye writes.
A major theme of Ye's work is that relations between states flow not only, or even primarily, from interests but from the choices made by governments. To a great extent the future of Sino-US relations will depend on the choices made by the governments of the two countries. There exist in the United States, “bellicose anti-China forces” that might rise to power and treat China as an enemy, Ye says. It is also possible that anti-unification forces in Taiwan might make a “desperate error of declaring independence or making nuclear weapons.” Either of these eventualities would lead China to respond in kind, with war in the case of Taiwan. But China's own policies will, to some extent, influence whether or not the “bellicose anti-China forces” come to power in the United States. China can take steps to convince the United States that it is not hostile to the United States or its national interests. Even if the anti-China forces came to power in Washington, China should struggle to minimize conflict and seek out areas of co-operation. China should not help those anti-China forces destroy the great strategic opportunity that underlies its current, successful development drive.
Ye's final chapter deals with Taiwan. Unification of Taiwan with the PRC should occur about 2049, Ye says, by the PRC's 100th anniversary when China's GDP equals or surpasses that of the United States. Meanwhile, expanded cross-Strait co-operation will have generated greater economic prosperity for Taiwan. And China should have demonstrated to Taiwan's people that unification will not entail a sacrifice of their “political freedom.” The practical realities of the situation then should persuade a majority of Taiwanese to accept unification. If not, use of force may be required. If Sino-US co-operation in areas of common interest have grown in the preceding several decades, the importance of Taiwan in US calculations will have diminished. Unification with Taiwan will represent the completion of China's quest for restored national greatness. Other boundaries imposed on China long ago – such as the existing Sino-Russian borders – have long been accepted by China's governments, and are firmly settled.
