Home › Books & Reviews › Capsule Reviews › Weaving the Net: Conditional Engagement With China

Weaving the Net: Conditional Engagement With China

Edited by James Shinn
Reviewed by By Donald Zagoria
May/June 1996
Print Email
Login or Register to leave a comment.

Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.
Edited by James Shinn
Council on Foreign Relations Press
1996
284 pp.
$19.95

A well-reasoned argument for advancing American interests in Asia and a substantial contribution to the debate on China. The volume calls for ‘conditional engagement’ and identifies ten guiding principles; for example, peaceful resolution of territorial disputes, freedom of navigation, and transparency of military forces. There are several thoughtful essays by American and Asian scholars and a variety of sound advice.

Still, one is left with many doubts about whether a shiny new set of principles will somehow resolve the problems between the United States and China. First, by their very nature, the principles are subject to divergent interpretations. China regards its sovereignty over Taiwan as a matter of principle and refuses to renounce the right to use force against a part of it own territory. Taiwan asserts another common principle: the right of self-determination. Finally, and perhaps most important, powerful domestic forces are at work in both China and the United States that are determined to demonize the other side.

Related

Essay, Special 1980
East Asia in 1980
Andrew Nagorski

American optimism about East Asia, in precious short supply only a few years earlier, was abundantly available in 1980. "The arc from Korea through Taiwan and the Philippines, at the very center of great power rivalry for much of this century, is less subject to these strains today than at any time in well over forty years," Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke declared in June. Such pronouncements by U.S. policymakers were understandable: East Asia offered far more possibilities--for diplomatic overtures, for expanding trade--than anyone dared predict during the Vietnam era. But in 1980 enough warning signals were flashing throughout the region to suggest the need for a more balanced--and less buoyant--assessment.

Read
Essay, Winter 1982
The United States and Japan: The Bilateral Potential
David MacEachron

In the tangled international tapestry certain relationships dominate the pattern. The U.S.-Soviet struggle has colored almost all world politics for a generation. Franco-German entente has ended centuries of European warfare. One relationship which holds much potential for improving world conditions is that between Japan and the United States. This bilateral relationship, conducted within a dense multilateral web in which each nation has many other ties based on interest and sentiment, is now, and will be increasingly, central to any proper functioning of the world economy and polity.

Read
Essay, Spring 1983
The Moscow-Beijing Détente
Donald S. Zagoria

Since the end of World War II, there have been three watersheds in Sino-Soviet relations. In February 1950, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China formed an alliance against the West. In the late 1950s, there was the beginning of the historic split between them that transformed international politics. Then, in the early 1970s, there began the Sino-American rapprochement that, by the end of the decade, completely altered the strategic landscape and led to an incipient Chinese-American alliance against the Soviet Union.

Read