New Directions in the Study of China's Foreign Policy [Hardcover]

This book brings together several generations of specialists in Chinese foreign policy to present readers with current research on both new and traditional topics. The authors draw on a wide range of new materialsarchives, documents, memoirs, opinion polls, and interviewsto examine traditional issues such as China's use of force from 1959 to the present, and new issues such as China's response to globalization, its participation in several international economic institutions, and the role of domestic opinion in its foreign policy.The book also offers a number of suggestions about the topics, methods, and sources that the Chinese foreign policy field needs to examine and address if it is to grow in richness, rigor, and relevance. The authors ofNew Directions, more so than those of earlier volumes, amply demonstrate that rigor and richness are mutually reinforcing the study of Chinese foreign policy. Their theoretically informed chapters are based on extensive use of Chinese sources, interviews, and fieldwork, and those authors who test theory most explicitly (Peter Hays Gries and Alastair Iain Johnston) could not have done so as profitably without a profound knowledge of China and Chinese language ability. Ten outstanding specialists in Chinese foreign policy draw on new theories, methods, and sources to examine China's use of force, its response to globalization, and the role of domestic politics in its foreign policy. All the essays in this excellent volume, which I have assigned to my course on Chinese foreign policy, are produced by highly knowledgeable analysts. The book's applications of Whiting's hypothesis and the author's use of diverse social science methodologies to explore a host of vital issues end up as does informed common sense. The result is a very good book. New Directionsrepresents the state of the art in the field of Chinese foreign policy. Alastair Iain Johnston is the Laine Professor of China and the World at Harvard UniversitlC0