The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power

by Thomas J. Christensen

Overview

“A standout . . . a balanced, informative, and highly intelligent guide to dealing with China.”—Fareed Zakaria

Many see China as a rival superpower to the United States and imagine the country’s rise to be a threat to U.S. leadership in Asia and beyond. Thomas J. Christensen argues against this zero-sum vision. Instead, he describes a new paradigm in which the real challenge lies in dissuading China from regional aggression while encouraging the country to contribute to the global order. Drawing on decades of scholarship and experience as a senior diplomat, Christensen offers a compelling new assessment of U.S.-China relations that is essential reading for anyone interested in the future of the globalized world.

The China Challenge shows why China is nowhere near powerful enough to be considered a global “peer competitor” of the United States, but it is already strong enough to destabilize East Asia and to influence economic and political affairs worldwide. Despite China’s impressive achievements, the Chinese Communist Party faces enormous challenges. Christensen shows how nationalism and the threat of domestic instability influence the party’s decisions on issues like maritime sovereignty disputes, global financial management, control of the Internet, climate change, and policies toward Taiwan and Hong Kong.

China benefits enormously from the current global order and has no intention of overthrowing it; but that is not enough. China’s active cooperation is essential to global governance. Never before has a developing country like China been asked to contribute so much to ensure international stability. If China obstructs international efforts to confront nuclear proliferation, civil conflicts, financial instability, and climate change, those efforts will falter, but even if China merely declines to support such efforts, the problems will grow vastly more complicated.

Analyzing U.S.-China policy since the end of the Cold War, Christensen articulates a balanced strategic approach that explains why we should aim not to block China’s rise but rather to help shape its choices so as to deter regional aggression and encourage China’s active participation in international initiatives that benefit both nations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393352993
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	06/21/2016
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Thomas J. Christensen is the William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics and director of the China and the World Program at Princeton University. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Prologue xiii

Introduction 1

Part I Understanding China's Rise

Chapter 1 China's Rise: Why It Is Real 13

Chapter 2 This Time Should Be Different: China's Rise in a Globalized World 37

Chapter 3 Why Chinese Power Will Not Surpass U.S. Power Anytime Soon 63

Chapter 4 Why China Still Poses Strategic Challenges 95

Chapter 5 Global Governance: The Biggest Challenge of All 115

Part II Shaping China's Choices

Chapter 6 The Soviet Collapse and China's Rise, 1991-2000 169

Chapter 7 The Post-9/11 World, 2001-2008 204

Chapter 8 China's Offensive Diplomacy Since the Financial Crisis, 2009-2014 242

Epilogue: The China Challenge 288

Afterword to the Paperback Edition 313

Appendix 327

Notes 333

Index 369

Editorial Reviews

"Can a rising power and an established power cooperate toward mutually beneficial aims? The China Challenge presents a thoughtful analysis of this question through the lens of recent developments in U.S.-China relations."

Henry A. Kissinger

"Christensen is one of the world’s leading China experts, an experienced senior policymaker, and a top-notch international relations theorist. The China Challenge is outstanding, a must-read for anybody interested in China, American foreign policy, or global affairs more generally."

Gideon Rose

"The rise of China is one of the prime challenges for American foreign policy. Thomas Christensen uses his first rate credentials both as a scholar and a practitioner to give a clear and compelling answer to this challenge."

Joseph S. Nye

…[Christensen] is unarguably qualified to make the judgments he does. And when he contends, with the clarity that distinguishes his narrative, that China "is by far the most influential developing country in world history," and emphasizes that it "is being asked to do more at present than any developing country has in the past," I take him seriously…Beijing should pay attention. It is lucky to have in Thomas Christensen someone who can be severely critical about what's going on inside China, but who wants to deal…[The China Challenge is a] powerful and reasonable book…

The New York Times Book Review - Jonathan Mirsky

"Many books are written about China these days. This is a standout. Christensen is a widely respected scholar who served as the Bush administration’s expert on China. He has combined these perspectives to give us a balanced, informative, and highly intelligent guide to dealing with China."

Fareed Zakaria

"Tom Christensen has done us a great service: he has decoded the U.S.-China relationship with the analytical power of a great scholar and the real-world lessons of a policymaker. The China Challenge is lucid, learned, and relentlessly sensible, navigating the great predicament of the 21st century. Christensen is fluent in history but never captive to it. He aims not to prevent China's rise but to shape it with a mix of strength and moderation. Above all, he shows us how to avoid a conflict that he considers possible but, in no way, inevitable. He made a believer out of me."

Evan Osnos

"Tom Christensen has written a book that displays the ideal mix of ''richness, rigor, and relevance.'' Countering naïve neo-conservative and liberal interventionists who seem to think that threats to an adversary's vital interests are all you need to induce compliance, and naïve rationalist liberals who believe economic and institutional engagement will largely contain revisionist preferences, Christensen shows from a careful empirical analysis of Chinese foreign policy how stable coexistence in US-China relations rests on a delicate balance of both deterrence and reassurance. Hopefully future US decision makers will read this book and absorb its message."

Alastair Iain Johnston

"Dr. Christensen gives us a detailed history and critique of recent Sino-US relations, thoughtful evaluations of the views of other scholars and an insider's view of dealing with China on important issues. His balanced judgments on the difficulties and possibilities of Sino-US relations in the future are sobering but eventually hopeful. Anyone seriously interested in one of the most consequential bilateral relationships that will shape the world's future needs to read this book."

Dennis Blair

"There is no one I would rather read on China than Tom Christensen. He has the rare ability to transcend the conventional either/or debates about China and to see the country simultaneously as a power with the potential to disrupt global politics in many negative ways and as a country that the United States must engage as a partner in solving global problems. He also has a deep and much needed understanding of how Chinese domestic politics shape Chinese foreign policy. If you read only one book on China, make it The China Challenge."

Anne-Marie Slaughter

"Christensen addresses a vital challenge—US policy toward China—with an artful blend of scholarship, modern history, and diplomatic experience. He explains skillfully why the United States needs an adroit combination of national strength, international partnerships, and cooperation with China. Christensen's aim: a search for mutual interests, both between the two countries and in support of regional and global systems."

Robert B. Zoellick

"Everything you need to know about the sometimes bewildering, always tricky issues generated by the rise of China is here in Tom Christensen's lucid book. China is something new in the world, a rising authoritarian state that is an economic colossus and very nearly a first-rate military power, which is what makes it the most important strategic challenge we''re going to face for the foreseeable future. Christensen doesn't promise that dealing with China will be easy. It won't be. But he is utterly clear-headed, realistic, persuasive, and, perhaps most important, cautiously optimistic, as he resets the terms of the continuing debate."

Richard Bernstein

"Christensen…[offers] a model of judicious analysis: Carefully deconstructing the economic, military and diplomatic balances between the United States and China, he reveals the magnitude of the latter’s challenge without inflating it."

Ali Wyne

05/01/2015
How should the United States handle China's rising power and influence in international affairs? Christensen (William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War, Princeton Univ.; Worse Than a Monolith) outlines diplomatic strategies that the America can use to encourage cooperation rather than confrontation with China. The first part of this book offers a clear-headed assessment of China's strengths and weaknesses, as well as the potential challenges it poses to the United States. In the second part, the author examines U.S.-China relations from 1989 to 2014 and offers his judgments regarding the diplomatic success and shortcomings of the successive U.S. administrations of that era. The author contends that lessons gleaned from these experiences demonstrate which tactics work and don't when dealing with China. Unlike Michael Pillsbury's The Hundred-Year Marathon, which ascribes sinister motives to China's actions, this work offers rational motivations for the country's international activities and gives U.S. diplomats useful information for building a more productive relationship with this developing nation. VERDICT This expertly researched and convincingly argued work is highly recommended for all readers interested in U.S.-China relations.—Joshua Wallace, Ranger Coll., TX

Library Journal

Many Americans mistrust China’s rise to global power. Christensen offers detailed explanations of how Chinese perceptions of international and domestic events drive the nation’s responses to world affairs. Alan Sklar’s rich narration adds a tone of authority to this somber examination by a veteran State Department official and noted academic. While initially Sklar sounds flat with little expression, his delivery gains momentum, ultimately lending further weight to the material with his professorial tone. Christensen contends that U.S.-China relations are not a zero-sum game but rather a delicate balance that requires a strong U.S. presence in Asia, along with proactive diplomacy. M.L.R. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

AUGUST 2015 - AudioFile

2015-03-11
A readable, balanced approach, situated between the pessimists and the optimists, to determining the answer to a crucial question: is China poised to take over the world? The short answer is no, according to eminent China expert Christensen (Director, China and the New World Program/Princeton Univ.; Worse Than a Monolith: Alliance Politics and Problems of Coercive Diplomacy in Asia, 2011, etc.). In this well-honed study, which skillfully steers between the author's reasoned argument and opposing views by equally accredited experts (e.g., Martin Jacques, Arvind Subramanian, David Shambaugh), Christensen acknowledges the "real" rise in China's wealth, diplomatic influence, and military power since 1978. However, he emphasizes the factors keeping China behind American supremacy for the foreseeable future—namely, relative military weakness, economic structural problems, lack of innovation and independent academic research institutions, corruption, and the strength of the U.S.-Asian alliance network created after World War II. Christensen first explores a historical consideration: why the precipitous rise of China will not destabilize the world in the same dangerous fashion as the rise of modern Germany or Japan—because globalization has rendered economies more tightknit (China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001) and because invasion and territorial expansion are no longer in countries' best interests. (The author does look carefully at the disputed South and East China Sea territorial claims, troublesome strategic hotspots.) Yet in order to embrace its stature as the world's largest economy—necessary for stability and world order—China has to step up in terms of global investment, peacekeeping, and humanitarian aid. In the second part of his useful study, Christensen sifts through Chinese behavior in each of these facets since 1991. While Chinese leadership values stability above all, it can no longer "hide its brightness" and get a pass on environmental pollution and aiding outlaw regimes in North Korea and Iran. Convincing arguments by a thoughtful, cool-headed China expert.

Kirkus Reviews