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CHINA'S FOREIGN POLICY. China Today Series. By Stuart Harris. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press; Hoboken: Wiley [distributor], 2014. xvii, 236 pp. (Maps.) US$22.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-7456-6247-3.
This fine introduction to contemporary China's foreign policy stands out for its fairness and honesty. Debates outside China about Communist China and the world have ordinarily focused on the concerns of the American-led international community. Written by Stuart Harris, a former Australian government official who has dealt with China and other countries in foreign affairs and trade, the book would disappoint expectations of kindred inclinations, for it explains not only criticisms of Chinese foreign policy but also China's own diplomatic objectives and the changing methods that the Communist Party and government have chosen to pursue those objectives. Neither China nor America bashers would be pleased.
Among the total eight chapters of the book, chapter 1 is the only one devoted to the impact of history and culture on China's foreign policy and the main aspects of the Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping eras up to what Harris terms the 1989 Tiananmen Square tragedy. Instead of privileging Chinese nativism (nationalism)-popular in academic discussion and media communications on post-Deng Chinese foreign relations-Harris pays homage to the many other traditions and cultures, such as cosmopolitanism, quasi-imperialism, Sinocentrism, and victimhood, that have played important and changing roles in foreign policy. Chapter...