Review: Rising to the Challenge
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200606100320 |
| Date | 01 September 2006 |
| Published date | 01 September 2006 |
| Author | Syed Serajul Islam |
| Subject Matter | Review |
| International Journal | Summer 2006 | 769 |
| Reviews |
RISING TO THE CHALLENGE
China’s Grand Strategy and International Security
Avery Goldstein
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005. 288pp, US$57.95 cloth (ISBN 0-
8047-5138-2), US$24.95 paper (ISBN 0-8047-5218-4)
China is considered to be a rising superpower in the 21st century.
Consequently, a serious interest in studying China is growing among both
academics and politicians. Avery Goldstein has written this book precisely
with this intention in mind. The main purpose of
Rising to the Challenge
is to examine China’s rising economic and military power, the tactics and
motivation Beijing leaders have for their current strategic plan—the “grand
strategy.” The author raises several questions: What are the key elements of
this grand strategy? Why did China’s leaders chose it? What other alterna-
tives were available? Is the current approach yielding the results China
anticipated? What does this grand strategy imply for international peace
and security in the coming years? And, most importantly, can the United
States accommodate China’s rise peacefully?
Goldstein takes into account a wide array of sources for explaining
China’s grand strategy. He does an excellent job of revealing the various
perceptions within the Sino-American relationship. The reader gets
acquainted with this delicate relationship and how, based on circumstance,
events, and reactions, cooperation can be replaced by conflict, and just how
easily this change can take place. Goldstein also provides a historical back-
ground of China’s foreign policy since the 1930s. He then explains why the
logic of China’s previous policy started to lose its importance during the
1980s. He discusses China’s specific long term goal of transforming the
current unipolar system. He explains how China has had to “reconcile its
long term goals and short term limitations” (25).
In order to explain China’s “estimated power,” Goldstein uses quanti-
tative measures that purport to be the “building blocks of international
influence.” These are economic statistics, military spending, and the mod-
ernization of armed forces. He examines some of the benchmarks China
has faced for measuring the significance of its grand strategy. These include
the rival regime of Taiwan, the southeast Asian states making territorial
claims in the South China Sea, and Japan’s claims over the Diaoyu islands.
Goldstein presents how Chinese analysts are especially worried over all the
strengthening bilateral military relations that the US is forming with Japan,
South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, and Thailand—a “five-finger
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