Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power is Transforming the World/The Dragon Looks South: China and Southeast Asia in the New Century

Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power is Transforming the World. By Joshua Kurlantzick. Yale University Press, 2007. Hardcover: 306pp.

The Dragon Looks South: China and Southeast Asia in the New Century. By Bronson Percival. Praeger Security International, 2007. Hardcover: 200pp.

The books under review are the latest entrants in what is becoming an impressive list of book-length studies dealing with the topic of China's recent rising influence in Asia and its implications for the United States. Both books deal heavily with the situation in Southeast Asia. The Percival study does so explicitly while the Kurlantzick book, despite its stated global scope, devotes about half of its discussion to Southeast Asia. China's rise seems likely to remain a hot topic in international affairs and both of these books have numerous insights and strengths that recommend them to a wide audience.

A common refrain in media coverage and several recent scholarly assessments is that China's rapid rise is creating a new order in Asia with China at the centre that coincides with, and takes advantage of, a widely perceived decline in America's leadership position in Asia. The Kurlantzick book conforms strongly to this view, emphasizing the strengths of China's soft power. He defines China's soft power very broadly to include all aspects of Chinese international influence other than the military, and he depicts an array of US weaknesses under the broad rubric of soft power. Kurlantzick views the implications of this situation with considerable...