China Fragile Superpower: How China's Internal Politics Could Derail Its Peaceful Rise

摘要

Susan Shirk has written a book that deserves a wide reading by students, researchers and lay persons interested in Chinese foreign policy, US-China relations and global affairs. For policy makers, she advances prudent policy recommendations for both Beijing and Washington, two of which are notable. The first is "don't build up Japan as a military power" (p. 264) and the second is that Washington should loosen up some self-imposed limitations on what it will talk to Beijing about with respect to Taiwan in order to maintain stability in the Strait. In terms of scholarship, her book's signal contribution is to drill in on the connection between China's domestic politics and its external behaviour and to highlight the disabilities that Beijing faces in crisis management. Shirk's volume should be read along with a recent study on crisis management by Michael D. Swaine and Zhang Tuosheng, with Danielle S. Cohen (Managing Sino-American Crises: Case Studies and Analysis, Washington, DC, Carnegie Endowment, 2006). Shirk's discussions of the role of mass media in China, the Internet and media control are particularly good.