China, Fragile Superpower: How China's Internal Politics Could Derail Its Peaceful Rise

Shirk, Susan. China, Fragile Superpower: How China's Internal Politics Could Derail Its Peaceful Rise. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2007. 336pp.$27

According to Susan Shirk, China suffers terribly from the "wag the dog" syndrome. Shirk argues rather persuasively that China is saddled with a host of internal problems, ranging from widespread social unrest to rampant political corruption, that have sharply intensified insecurities among Chinese leaders with respect to their hold on power. Such perceptions of vulnerability have in turn heightened Chinese sensitivities to slights by Japan, Taiwan, and the United States, slights that accordingly threaten to arouse potentially uncontrollable national passions and, in the process, stimulate regime-toppling impulses at home. For Shirk, this volatile nexus of domestic and foreign pressures means trouble for regional stability in Asia. As Chinese...