Chinese Foreign Relations: Power and Policy Since the Cold War by Robert G. Sutter

Chinese Foreign Relations: Power and Policy Since the Cold Warby Anonymous

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February 06, 2008: Robert Sutter, after a 33-year career in the US state, is now a visiting professor of Asian studies at the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. He gives an informative and comprehensive survey of China?s foreign relations since 1990, from an official US viewpoint. He examines China?s general foreign policy, priorities, decision-making, role in the world economy and national security policies. Then follow chapters on China?s relations with the USA, with Taiwan, Japan and Korea, with South-East Asia, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, with South and Central Asia, with Russia and Europe, and with the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. China?s current approach stresses good neighbour relations designed to wean states, especially nearby ones, away from potentially balancing coalitions. It uses its growing economic strength to increase dependence on the part of potential rivals, and accommodates the reigning hegemon, the USA, while exploiting dissatisfaction with it to create buffers and guard against its dominance. China tries to keep its borders free from great-power presence. It supports Asia-only groupings of states, so it is playing a larger role in ASEAN Plus Three (China, Japan and South Korea). Looking at China?s relations with the USA, Sutter takes for granted the US state?s `interest in peace?. He writes, ?The Chinese government has resorted to the use of force in international affairs more than most governments in the modern period? - but not nearly as often as the USA ? 47 overseas military interventions since 1989. China and the USA have conflicting interests over the international balance of power, NATO expansion, the US role in East Asia (especially its increasingly close alliance with Japan), the USA?s growing military ties to Taiwan, US hostility to Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Sudan, Serbia, Myanmar, Venezuela, Zimbabwe and Cuba, and US deployment of its missile `defence? system. China opposes the sanctions and other coercive measures that the US state routinely imposes. US policies of isolation and containment of China have failed, but the US state still pursues a hazardous policy of military encirclement of China, especially on its western borders. Yet the USA and China are also becoming mutually dependent as China joins the finance capital club. China depends on the USA for investments and for its growing foreign exchange earnings from cheap exports. The USA depends on China to save key US banks and other firms by buying them up. There is a growing danger of conflicts between states. The EU?s trade deficit with China was $127 billion in 2005, up from $40 billion in 2000. Free trade with low-wage, anti-union China threatens Britain?s industries in particular.