Tracing China's Long Game Plan

• Published in: The National Interest no. 127; pp. 77 - 88
• Main Author: Deal, Jacqueline Newmyer
• Format: Book Review Magazine Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington Center for the National Interest 01.09.2013; The National Interest, Inc; The National Interest Inc
• Subjects: Human rights; International Relations; Peoples Republic of China; Personnel policies; Political activism; Reviews & Essays; Twenty First Century; United States > US; China
• ISSN: 0884-9382; 1938-1573

[...]from the book's treatment of Deng Xiaoping's economic guru, Zhu Rongji, the careful reader may detect how and why Zhu let Western interlocutors deceive themselves into thinking he was a true free marketeer, when in fact he had no intention of abandoning state-sponsored capitalism. Since the emergence of the modern state at the end of the last dynasty, China's leading thinkers and statesmen have set their sights on reestablish- ing the Middle Kingdom as the preeminent power in its orbit, and they have seen this goal as a zero-sum endeavor, requiring them to steal, plot and use force against rivals or even potential rivals and their allies. According to this vision, the plan's final step would be to push out to the blue waters of the Pacific and Indian Oceans under the protection of its new aircraft carriers. [...]the entire Chinese military has been shrinking in size as part of the effort to boost the quality of the force through the acquisition of new technologies, along with improvements in training and personnel policies.