China’s Strategy in the Pacific

Deng Xiaoping at the arrival ceremony for the Vice Premier of China (source, public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

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This newspaper article was published in the Marshall Islands Journal on February 2nd, 2024. Below is the full article, along with the original clipping of the article from the newspaper:

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In the late 1980s, rising inflation and political corruption in China led to increasing public criticism against China’s Communist Party leaders. This would eventually result in student-led demonstrations against the government in Tiananmen Square. Some students waged a hunger strike against the corruption, while others called for a new democratic government.

The then paramount leader of China, Deng Xiaoping, ordered tanks and troops to crush the protestors. The Chinese army fired into the unarmed crowds, while some protesters were crushed by tanks. In all, more than 2,000 died, ultimately destroying the movement for democracy in China.

The following year in 1990, Deng Xiaoping began to step away from leadership of China and left the next generation of Communist Party leaders a set of principles to guide them into the future. This 24-character instruction, as it came to be known, stated the following:

“Observe carefully; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership.” The explanation of this policy was then given in 12 characters, and its circulation was restricted to top party leaders. It read: “Enemy troops are outside the walls. They are stronger than we. We should be mainly on the defensive.”

When I read last week’s edition of The Marshall Islands Journal, I couldn’t help but to shake my head at the news of Nauru’s shifting diplomatic relations from Taiwan to China and to think about Deng Xiaoping’s instructions: “Secure our position… bide our time.” This just about summarizes China’s strategy in the Pacific.

In 2019, the Solomon Islands and Kiribati shifted their diplomatic relations from Taiwan to China. With Nauru now following suit, this leaves only three Pacific nations who still have diplomatic relations with Taiwan: the Marshall Islands, Palau, and Tuvalu.

And as of the time of writing this article, Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Kausea Natano, who favors strong ties with Taiwan, has lost his seat in elections, meaning that new lawmakers will meet within the week to vote for a prime minister. A pro-China prime minster could very well spell the end for Taiwan’s diplomatic relations with Tuvalu as well, making Taiwan’s diplomatic relations with the Marshall Islands that much more crucial.

It’s not just the Pacific islands that are important to China. It’s no secret that since 2013, China has been building and militarizing artificial islands in the South China Sea.

So if China is securing their position and biding their time with both the Pacific nations and with their man-made artificial islands, then this begs the question: “What for?” To answer this, I go back to Deng Xiaoping’s instructions: “Hide our capacities.” It is my belief that China’s desire for access to islands around the world is to harvest nuclear warheads in secret away from their mainland. This way, when China is done biding their time, they will be ready to show their strength to the “enemy troops…. outside the walls.”

Let’s not forget that it was Japan’s strength and occupation of the Pacific that emboldened them to attack Pearl Harbor in 1941 and drag the United States into the Second World War. Thus, Chinese strength in the Pacific could embolden them to do something similar, possibly with Taiwan or otherwise, in the not-so-distant future.

Published in the Marshall Islands Journal, February 2, 2024

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What is Realpolitik?

Public domain cartoon of Bismarck and Pope Pius IX during the Kulturkampf

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I always looked up to Bismarck as the greatest statesman ever—a foreign policy genius who knew exactly what political moves to make, how to calculate each move, and how each move would play out. A part of me read the books in hopes that I would understand the “secret sauce” that made him such a foreign policy genius, and I found it.

The reason why Bismarck was such a foreign policy genius was because he was a man who lacked political principles. As a matter of fact, Bismarck began his political career as a Prussian conservative. A conservative in the 1800s was one who believed in most of the following principles: first, in the obedience to the political authority of a monarch, second, in the opposition to individual rights or elected representatives for governments, third, that revolutions were a political evil, and fourth, that organized religion was crucial to order in society.

Public domain illustration of the execution of King Louis XVI during the French Revolution

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Bismarck believed in the first principle, in the political authority of King Frederick Wilhelm I. But later in his career, he did not care for the other three. It was he who introduced universal suffrage in Germany, it was he who separated church from state and replaced clerical supervision in all public and private schools with state supervision, and it he who went so far as to defend political revolution. Here is Bismarck in his own words:

How many existences are there in today’s political world that have no roots in revolutionary soil? Take Spain, Portugal, Brazil, all the American Republics, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Greece, Sweden and England which bases itself on the consciousness of the Glorious Revolution of 1688…. (Bismarck: A Life, pg. 132)

This lack of principles eventually caused many of his fellow conservatives to distance themselves from him toward the latter half of his career. And it’s this lack of principles that makes Realpolitik possible. Here is a perfect illustration of this:

When Bismarck served as Prussia's envoy to the German Confederation in Frankfurt, he wrote to his conservative friend Leopold von Gerlach that it should be in Prussia’s interest to ally with the revolutionary France of Napoleon III. For a conservative of the 1800s, an alliance with a revolutionary republic—with an “illegitimate” emperor such as Napoleon III—was nothing short of scandalous. Gerlach, representing the Prussian conservatism of the day, wrote the following to Bismarck:

My political principle is, and remains, the struggle against the Revolution. You will not convince Napoleon that he is not on the side of the Revolution. He has no desire either to be anywhere else…. You say yourself that people cannot rely upon us, and yet one cannot fail to recognize that he only is to be relied on who acts according to definite principles and not according to shifting notions of interests, and so forth. (Bismarck: A Life, pgs. 131-132)

Bismarck, being no true conservative as Gerlach hinted at above, did not make decisions by any conservative principles. As a matter of fact, allying with revolutionary France was nothing but a rational calculation, one possible chess move among many for Prussia’s rise to dominance over Austria. And in a game of chess, it’s important for the player to have as many moves open to him as possible. As Bismarck observed years later:

My entire life was spent gambling for high stakes with other people’s money. I could never foresee exactly whether my plan would succeed…. Politics is a thankless job because everything depends on chance and conjecture. One has to reckon with a series of probabilities and improbabilities and base one’s plans upon this reckoning. (Bismarck: A Life, pg. 130)

This kind of cold, rational calculation lies at the heart of Bismarck’s Realpolitik, which has “nothing to do with good and evil, virtue and vice; it had to do with power and self-interest.” (Bismarck: A Life, pg. 130) The power of Prussia and the self-interest of Prussia is, in a nutshell, is how Bismarck conducted his foreign policy. And France was just one chess move among many to increase the power of Prussia and to destroy the power of Austria. As Bismarck wrote to Gerlach:

You begin with the assumption that I sacrifice my principles to an individual who impresses me. I reject both the first and the second phrase in that sentence. The man does not impress me at all…. France only interests me as it affects the situation of my Fatherland, and we can only make our policy with the France that exists…. Sympathies and antipathies with regard to foreign powers and persons I cannot reconcile with my concept of duty in the foreign service of my country, neither in myself nor in others…. As long as each of us believes that a part of the chess board is closed to us by our own choice or that we have an arm tied where others can use both arms to our disadvantage, they will make use of our kindness without fear and without thanks. (Bismarck: A Life, pg. 131)

This is Realpolitik. Whereas a conservative guided by conservative principles would not ally with France, thereby closing a space in a game of chess that would otherwise be open to him, a man who lacks principles has this space open as a possibility, thereby making him a more versatile and dangerous player in the international system.

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Why the Marshall Islands Made the Right Vote on Gaza at the United Nations

Damage in Gaza Strip during October 2023 (source via Wikimedia Commons)

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This newspaper article was published in the Marshall Islands Journal on November 17, 2023. Below is the full article, along with the original clipping of the article from the newspaper:

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In last two editions of the Marshall Islands Journal, many contributors have expressed their disappointment at the RMI government in voting against a UN Resolution for a ceasefire in the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. I want to make the case that the RMI made the right vote.

First, there seems to be this strange idea going around on social media and even in the press that the state of Israel is “occupying” or “colonizing” the Palestinians on their rightful land. But, historically speaking, that is not true.

Map of the Ottoman Empire in 1914 (source via Wikimedia Commons)

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The territory of Palestine in the early 1900s belonged to the Ottoman Empire. When the Ottomans were defeated in the First World War, the victors—Great Britain and France—governed the former Ottoman territories with supervision from the newly created League of Nations. These European nations then created the states of the Middle East that we know today, including Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. The Arabs of these territories didn’t even identify with these newly created borders drawn up by Europeans—the only thing they had in common was that they were all Arabs who were formerly subjects of the Ottoman Empire.

League of Nations mandates after World War I (source via Wikimedia Commons)

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But by 1917, one year before the end of the First World War, Britain’s Balfour Declaration stated its intention to support a national home for the Jews. And it was this declaration that drew the Jews to Palestine. Many Jews who were persecuted in Nazi Germany then fled to Palestine—and who could blame them? By 1939, there were already 450,000 Jews in Palestine. And after the Second World War, the world began to learn about the Holocaust: Hitler’s deliberate extermination of six million Jews by execution squads and death camps. This sympathy for the Jewish plight led the United Nations to divide Palestine into both the Jewish state of Israel and the Arab state of Palestine in 1948.

The Balfour Declaration (1917) (source via Wikimedia Commons)

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Knowing all of this, how can anyone say that the Jews are occupiers or colonizers? They simply took advantage of a situation where the governors of their biblical holy land offered them refuge and the opportunity to settle in the region to have own nation—and they took full advantage of it.

Second, this war is not between Israel and Palestine; it is between Israel and Hamas. Hamas is a terrorist organization, and their main goal is to destroy Israel and replace it with one Islamic Palestinian state. They are supplied with a large number of weapons and money from Iran, whose president in 2005 described Israel as a “disgraceful blot” that “must be wiped off the map.”

Iran’s views have since not changed. After Hamas’ surprise attack on October 7, a day for the Jewish Sabbath and a Jewish High Holiday, the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said: “We support Palestine and its struggles… This attack is the work of the Palestinians themselves, and we salute and honor the planners of this attack.”

And Hamas is to blame for why the United Nations is having such a hard time delivering aid. Israel knows that Hamas will take that aid, especially the petrol, for its military instead of using it on hospitals and water desalinization.

Since taking power in Gaza in 2007, Hamas has shown that it cares nothing for the Palestinian people. In the last 16 years, they have done nothing to alleviate the Palestinians from high levels of poverty and unemployment, and they knew that it would only be a matter of time before they were discredited by their political rival: The Palestinian Authority. The only way Hamas could gain points over their rival was to do something to make it seem as if they were making some sort of progress, and the method they chose was to attack Israel. The result is the ongoing war that has destroyed the lives of innocent civilians on both sides. But that did not seem to matter to Hamas because, to them, political power is more important than the lives of their own people.

Since Hamas cares nothing for the Palestinians, it makes no sense to send them aid in hopes that, somehow, they will use it responsibly; if anything, it sounds like wishful thinking.

Published in the Marshall Islands Journal, November 17, 2023

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Review of The Clash of Civilizations by Samuel P. Huntington

Photo by Alexander I. Velasquez (author’s copy)

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Book Details

Category: Non-fiction, political science, national & international security, international relations, international diplomacy
Page Count: 352
Year of Publication: 2011 (Paperback Edition)
Rating: 5/5
10-Word Summary: Civilizations have replaced ideologies as the driving force of geopolitics.

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About The Clash of Civilizations

Samuel P. Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order is one of the greatest books I have read in my life. Sometimes I would just shake my head and pause my reading because I had to think about whether Huntington was some sort of fortune teller given how eerily accurate his prediction of the 21st century geopolitical landscape was when he published his book back in 1996.

Huntington was the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard University and chairman of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. He was also director of security planning for the National Security Council in President Jimmy Carter’s administration, as well as the founder and coeditor of Foreign Policy.

The Clash of Civilizations is divided into five parts: Part I covers the first three chapters where Huntington argues that the most important distinction between peoples in the post-Cold War world is civilization and not ideology. For example, World War II was an ideological war featuring German Nazism, Italian Fascism, and Soviet Communism, while the Cold War was an ideological battle between the Communist East led by the Soviet Union and the capitalist West led by the United States. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the age of ideologically driven geopolitics had come to an end and was replaced with what Huntington proposes is the new paradigm of geopolitics going into the 21st century: civilizations. And the most important element of civilizations, that which divides nations and populations more than any other element, is religion.

Hence, in Part II, Huntington details that the upcoming geopolitical conflicts will be between civilizations due to the religious, and therefore political and cultural, differences. For example, the late 20th century featured the Islamic Resurgence, where Arab governments turned to Islam to enhance their political and spiritual authority and to gather popular support. The Iranian Revolution from 1978-1979 is the most famous example of this. Islamic law replaced Western law, Islamic codes of behavior, such as the banning of alcohol and proper female covering, replaced Western codes of behavior. But the interesting thing Huntington points out is that here in the West we call this Islamic “fundamentalism.” The irony is that these Islamic laws come from the prophet Muhammad himself, either from the Qur’an or from the hadith: the sayings and practices from the prophet Muhammad. If the Qur’an is supposed to be the literal word of God as Muslims believe it to be, then not following Islamic law is not following the will of Allah. All this to say that there is no middle ground: Western values inherently clash with the will of Allah.

Yet, the main idea in Part II is not necessarily the clash with Islam. Rather, the main idea is that the West is in decline—both in influence and military power. Henry Kissinger eerily says the same thing in Diplomacy, another famous book published two years earlier in 1994, where Kissinger also predicts how the geopolitics of the 21st century will be shaped.

Not only is the West in decline, but rapid economic development in Asia beginning with Japan in the 1950s and continuing into the mid-1990s with the rapid economic growth in China meant another threat to the West in the form of a Chinese-led world order in East Asia. Given Asian belief that Asia will surpass the West economically, growing Asian belief in the cultural superiority over the West, and the need for Asian nations to find common ground in Asia, it was clear to Huntington that Asia and its values will threaten the weakening Western-led world order.

This leads into Part III, where Huntington explains that the international relations of the 21st century will revolve around countries grouping themselves around the lead states of their civilizations. For example, the West, though in decline, will continue to be led by the United States, while East Asia will rally around the leadership of China, and the Baltic and Orthodox states will unite around Russia.

And in Part IV, Huntington explains that the West’s desire to maintain its military superiority through policies of nonproliferation and counterproliferation and the West’s desire to spread political values such as democracy and human rights will inevitably lead to conflicts with Islamic governments and East Asian governments. This is why Bill Clinton failed to halt the North Koreans from acquiring nuclear weapons and why the Japanese government distanced themselves from the United States’ human rights policies in the 1990s.

Part V ends the book on a somber note: The United States must affirm and preserve its Western identity and create stronger relations with other Western nations based on similar cultural and religious heritage. But the West must “Recognize that Western intervention in the affairs of other civilizations is probably the single most dangerous source of instability and potential global conflict in a multicivilizational world”(Page 312). Hence, it’s best to leave China to East Asia and leave the Baltic states to Russia.

Should You Read The Clash of Civilizations?

I cannot do this book justice in a 1,000-word review. I have tried to summarize the book through the narrative of international relations, but this book is so much more than that. For example, Huntington discusses in great depth the civilizational conflicts that happen within the borders of one nation, such as the ones that happened in Yugoslavia—a conflict among the Catholic Croats, the Bosnian Muslims, and the Orthodox Serbs. And he discusses the problems that lead to decay within a civilization, such as the growth in crime, the growth in divorce, and the weakening of the work ethic.

If someone who knew nothing about geopolitics or international relations could only read one book to understand everything happening in the 21st century, I would say that this is the book to read. Huntington’s writing is great, he backs his assertions with great detail, but most importantly, his analysis is proving to be correct.

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Review of The Third Revolution by Elizabeth C. Economy

Photo by Alexander I. Velasquez (author’s copy)

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Book Details

Category: Non-fiction, foreign policy, history, international diplomacy, international relations
Page Count: 251 (Paperback Edition)
Year of Publication: 2019
Rating: 5/5
10-Word Summary: A guide to Xi’s political and economic transformation of China.

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About The Third Revolution

In 1990, Deng Xiaoping gave his 24-character strategy for China: “observe calmly; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership,” and the rest of the Chinese leadership succeeding Deng have maintained this position—that is, until we meet Xi Jinping.

Elizabeth C. Economy, C. V. Starr senior fellow and director for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and her book The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State is a great summary and guide to Xi’s political and economic transformation of China. The book was recommended by H. R. McMaster, former National Security Advisor to former President Donald Trump, in his course Assessing America’s National Security Threats (for which a review is soon to come), so I knew the book would most likely live up to expectation. And I was right.

Xi’s ultimate goal is his Chinese Dream: doubling incomes by 2020 and recapturing China’s historic centrality and greatness in the international system; in short, the rejuvenation of the China. Yet what Economy makes clear from the start that Xi’s method of attaining his goals is different from that of his predecessors. Here is Economy in her own words:

“What makes Xi’s revolution distinctive is the strategy he has pursued: the dramatic centralization of authority under his personal leadership; the intensified penetration of society by the state; the creation of a virtual wall of regulations and restrictions that more tightly controls the flow of ideas, culture, and capital into and out of the country; and the significant projection of Chinese power. It represents a reassertion of the state in Chinese political and economic life at home, and a more expansive and ambitious role for China abroad.” (Page 10)

The rest of the book goes on to detail Xi’s strategy. The second chapter focuses on Xi’s concentration of political power. Economy makes it clear that if one had to compare Xi with any of his predecessors, the only comparison should be with Mao Zedong. Whereas Mao’s strategy for China was based on continual revolution, Xi’s leadership strategy is based on continual corruption and the need to rid the Communist Party of it. Hence Xi’s amendment of the Constitution in 2018 to abolish the two-term limit on the presidency—if he leaves, then the corruption will only continue, or so goes Xi’s rationale.

But my favorite chapter was the third. In the words of Economy: “China doesn’t have the Internet, it has a ‘Chinanet.’” (Page 55) According to the Beijing News in 2013, there are an estimated 2 million employed to monitor opinion on the Internet and censor content. The freedom of information is in opposition to the values of the Communist Party, and hence it should not surprise us that China is aligned with other nations, such as Russia, that share that same belief. Yet Xi’s excuse to the rest of the world for the censorship is a libertarian one: Every nation should be free to determine its internet policy without interference from other states.

Chapter four details Xi’s economic reforms and their results: higher levels of debt, the consummation of valuable credit, and fewer new jobs, and chapter five highlights the fact that China is a nation of innovation—not invention—and the Chinese government is all too willing to accept suboptimal innovation so that Chinese firms—and not foreign firms—can have the lions share of the market; in the case of batteries, this means a lot of waste and inefficiency.

Chapter six is a great summary of Xi’s war against pollution, one that silences activists who go against or challenge the government’s environmental policy and one that fails to develop the political and economic incentives necessary to control pollution. And chapter seven details China’s growing international presence: their failure at soft power, their aggressive military action in the region, especially in the South China Sea, and their lack of global responsibility. The final chapter ends with Economy’s recommendations for U.S. policy toward Asia, and how it can advance its interests in light of Xi’s assertiveness.

What I Liked

Elizabeth C. Economy is a great writer. It’s rare that I read through an entire book without puzzling at a sentence or two trying to decipher what the author was trying to say, but Economy’s book is clear and unambiguous throughout.

And Economy writes the facts, details, and statistics regarding Xi’s policies, mostly without following up with a statement of value such as: This policy is good or this policy is bad. The reader is left to determine for themselves what they make of Xi’s policies, no doubt having to do with the fact that the Council of Foreign Relations takes no stance on policy issues; and it’s refreshing to read from someone who will tell you the facts without their own political biases surfacing on the page.

Finally, though there were a lot of details and statistics that, though necessary to include, could easily bog down the reader and cause the mind to drift, most of the chapters include a final section that summarize the main points so that the reader could review the most important information.

Should You Read The Third Revolution?

If you haven’t been keeping up with China for the last ten years and are looking for an authoritative source on Xi Jinping and what he has been up to, then look no further. This book is your one-stop source for all things China from 2012 to 2019. If you decide to read the book, I highly recommend getting your hands on the paperback edition, as this edition was updated with figures and statistics up to 2019 as opposed to the hardcover’s figures and statistics dating to 2018.

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Review of On China by Henry Kissinger

Photo by Alexander I. Velasquez (author’s copy)

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Book Details

Category: Non-fiction, history, international diplomacy, memoir
Page Count: 548 (Paperback Edition)
Year of Publication: 2012
Rating: 5/5
10-Word Summary: An exploration of Chinese history and diplomacy with the West.

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About On China

I think the people at Penguin Books had to title the book On China because there was no other suitable name for the book. It doesn’t fit neatly into any one category of literary genre because it’s many things. For the first four chapters, the book is a history of China that rushes through the early history of Chinese civilization to get to the all-important 19th century where China is humiliated by the Western powers of the world until the decline of the Qing Dynasty and the revolution of Mao Zedong.

Chapters five through seven begin the book’s focus on diplomacy between China, the Soviet Union, and the USA, and the decade of crisis during Mao’s time as Chairman that included events such as the Great Leap Forward, the 1962 Sino-Indian War, and the Cultural Revolution.

But it’s chapters eight through seventeen where the book also becomes memoir. Chapters eight through eleven are the time period where Dr. Kissinger is serving as then American President Richard Nixon’s Secretary of State, and Kissinger makes public the thought process that went into opening up relations with Communist China as well as the conversations had between himself and Mao Zedong. Chapters twelve to seventeen detail the eras of Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, as well as Kissinger’s conversations with those leaders, respectively.

The final two chapters, and the afterword to the paperback edition (the edition I read) give Kissinger’s insight as to what the world will look like and how the USA should act given China’s newfound role as a superpower.

What I Liked

Anyone can write a book about Chinese history and its diplomatic history with the rest of the world, but it’s unique that one can do that as a former Secretary of State with insight into the character of different Chinese leaders and the conversations had with them. Hence, my favorite part about On China is that I felt like a fly on the wall amongst some of the world’s most powerful individuals and their conversations, as the outcome of these conversations would go on to shape geopolitics until our present day.

And this is where Kissinger’s book truly shines because it’s refreshing to come across a history lesson from one who lived during the relevant time period and helped to shape it. I felt that I understood the reasoning behind why the USA decided to open up to China (in a nutshell, both felt the Soviet Union was the greater threat) behind the scenes, unlike the way one gathers information from reading a dry history textbook.

But Kissinger’s book also gave me a newfound respect for President Nixon; he was a very calculative and strategic thinker, make no mistake, and Kissinger does not shy away from expounding on President Nixon’s principles of foreign policy. However, it’s refreshing to hear it from someone who worked so closely with Nixon as opposed to someone who is writing from a distance like a journalist or an academic, as Kissinger sprinkles the book with the meetings and conversations had with Nixon prior to opening up to China.

What I Didn’t Like

Kissinger’s dry personality runs through each page, and he writes and talks in his conversations as if he is observing some sort of phenomena in a cold and calculative manner. For example, take the following excerpt from his book where Chairman Deng Xiaoping explains to Kissinger the Chinese strategy behind withdrawing troops from Vietnam:

DENG: After I came back [from the United States], we immediately fought a war. But we asked you for your opinion beforehand. I talked it over with President Carter and then he replied in a very formal and solemn way. He read a written text to me. I said to him: China will handle this question independently and if there is any risk, China will take on the risk alone. In retrospect, we think if we had driven deeper into Vietnam in our punitive action, it would have been even better.

KISSINGER: It could be.

DENG: Because our forces were sufficient to drive all the way to Hanoi. But it wouldn’t be advisable to go that far.

KISSINGER: No, it would probably have gone beyond the limits of calculation.

DENG: Yes, you’re right. But we could have driven 30 kilometers deeper into Vietnam. We occupied all the defensive areas of fortification. There wasn’t a defense line left all the way to Hanoi.

Kissinger comes off as almost robotic in this conversation, carefully choosing each word of the sentence, and much of his writing comes off in the same dry tone.

When discussing events such as Mao’s Great Leap Forward, Kissinger mentions the failed production goals and how it led to the deaths of over twenty million people. Yet, he falls short of calling Mao a failed leader or leveling any direct criticism toward him for his failed policies. I understand that Kissinger knew Mao, but that doesn’t mean he should shy away from leveling criticism toward the man when his decision led to the deaths of millions.

Should You Read On China?

If you’re looking for a book that explains the last two hundred years of Chinese history with a focus on diplomacy and international relations, then this is your book. However, given that the paperback edition was published in 2012, the book makes no mention of Xi Jinping—given that he was relatively unknown until his ascension as President in 2012—and his important transformation of China over the last eleven years. This book would be best read in combination with another book, such as Elizabeth Economy’s The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State for which a review is soon to come.

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