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CULTURAL REALISM: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History. By Alastair lain Johnston. Princeton (New Jersey): Princeton University Press. 1995. xii 307pp. (Figures.) US$39.50, cloth. ISBN 0-691-02996-2.
THIS IS AN important book that will change the way we think both about historical Chinese attitudes towards the use of military force and about the predictive implications for China's present and future behavior. It thus joins a series of recent work on China that has completely overturned what previously was taken for granted - for example, we no longer believe in the universal application of the tributary system, in the absence of a system of civil law, or in the total victimization of Chinese women.
The central question Johnston poses is this: "How does one explain the frequency of violence in Chinese historical strategic behavior while at the same time maintaining that traditional Chinese thought is uniquely antimilitaristic?" (p. 27). In other words, although the consensus...