Haunted by Chaos: China’s Grand Strategy from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping

China has now arrived as a major global power and has a larger GDP than the U.S. in PPP terms. The book provides a history lesson and explains some of China’s problems. In many ways, Sulmaan Wasif Khan is pessimistic about China's long term future. He suggests that China still views itself as a victim and remains suspicious of foreigners, which is worrying. The book does not really explain what China plans to do with its new found power.Khan argues that China is insecure and its decision making is based on a response to a hostile world. It remembers its past humiliations, starting with the Opium Wars. He believes that China is still worried about its security and this is the key to understanding how it behaves. Khan is generally sympathetic to China and tries to explain and justify its behavior.China believes it needs a strong military because it is worried about security and it distrusts foreigners. A strong military also requires a strong economy. But, China's leaders are also worried about a military coup. China believes it needs to provide a decent living for its working class. It fears that if they are poor and unhappy, they will become angry and rebel. China has conflicting goals and fears, and its leaders see enemies everywhere. Khan made me start to question China’s mental health.Mao Zedong created a united China in the 1940s and held it together. Deng Xiaoping introduced capitalism. Deng was impressed with what Chinese immigrants had achieved in Singapore and Hong Kong and wanted to replicate that success on the mainland. His successors, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao stuck with Deng’s strategy. Under Xi Jinping, China has become a superpower. It has started to become more assertive and throw its weight around. Khan confirms that China is fiercely territorial and nationalistic.China has not shied away from the use of force, as it demonstrated in Korea (1950-53), Tibet (1951), and its border wars with India (1962,1967), the Soviet Union (1969) and Vietnam (1974-1991). Lee Kuan Yew believed that China demands respect from foreigners and expects them to obey its instructions. It tried to intimidate Taiwan in 1996 by firing missiles close to the island. The U.S. responded by sending two carriers and China backed down. Khan’s explanations for China’s past aggressive behavior towards its neighbors don’t really convince. It would be helpful to understand under what circumstances China might use force in the future. Its recent assertiveness has frightened some of its neighbors and defense spending has increased in Vietnam, Japan, Australia, Taiwan, and India. Many observers are worried about what its next move will be in the South China Sea.Khan claims that China's leaders have found America's leaders to be unpredictable and untrustworthy. However, they have often miscalculated America's reaction to aggression and have been surprised when it has stood by allies like Taiwan. The book implies that China will seek to exploit what it perceives to be any American weakness in Asia.Is a war between China and the U.S. inevitable? Disappointingly, Khan does not really discuss whether the countries are on a collision course. Harvard history professor Graham Allison recently wrote: "Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap"? Allison predicts that unless both sides are willing to compromise a war is likely. Steve Bannon believes that there will probably be a war within 5-10 years.Lee Kuan Yew was prime minister of Singapore and died in 2015. Lee was ethnically Chinese and the only global leader who met all five Chinese Communist Party leaders, from Mao to Xi. Lee saw the 21st century as a “contest for supremacy in the Pacific” between the U.S. and China. He believed that China needs access to Western markets, technology, and universities and it would want to avoid a war. It still needs the West. However, in a 2011 interview, he began to question the commitment of the U.S. to South East Asia and was worried about what that might lead to. The stability and prosperity of the region have depended on U.S. protection since 1945. Without the U.S., China will become the regional hegemon. He claimed that "it is China's intention to become the greatest power in the world—and to be accepted as China, not as an honorary member of the West." Lee had concerns about how a strong and assertive China might behave in the future.However, Khan believes China has a vested interest in defending the existing world order, including the WTO, free trade and the climate change accords. WTO membership has given it access to Western markets. It would also have been helpful to have a better understanding of what China’s plans are for the developing world. It invests money and rarely interferes with how those countries are being run. The U.S. tends to nag about human rights and democracy, and its investors are frightened off by corruption. China is often investing where the West will not. Most of China's initiatives, like the New Silk Road are expensive. Khan questions whether they are sustainable.Khan summarizes China’s domestic problems. It has an aging population and falling productivity. Xi is worried about corruption. He believes that too much corruption and inequality may cause the masses to turn against the regime. Pollution is a serious issue and the country is running out of fresh water. Too many of its educated people are studying abroad and not returning. Many Chinese prefer to invest outside of China. As Khan observes, it may be that the Chinese people lack faith in China's future.China is not going to become a liberal democracy under communist party rule. Many believe, including Lee Kuan Yew, that if it tried to become a democracy the country would collapse, just like the Soviet Union did in 1991. Democracy may be a dangerous option in the short term but is authoritarian rule a realistic long term strategy? Khan is surprisingly pessimistic about China’s future.Khan has a section on the balance of power and I noticed similarities with Germany in 1914. Germany was created in 1871 and it became a superpower. By the end of the century, it had the largest economy in Europe, although it was still smaller than the British Empire. The German historian Fritz Fischer stated in the 1960s that Germany's aim was to become the dominant power in Europe. Germany's arrogant and aggressive behavior began to frighten its neighbors and upset the balance of power. Other countries began to seek protection by ganging up against it. The German military became paranoid and concluded that to win a war with France, Russia, and Britain it would have to strike first. It attacked France, and Britain and Russia came to France's aid. Given its size and wealth, China should not fear anyone. Nobody is going to invade it. Hopefully, for everybody's sake, it will not repeat the mistakes of Germany and provoke a war.

As far as history books can ever be value-free in analysis, this book comes pretty close. It approaches the subject of modern Chinese geopolitics in the spirit of dispassionate, disinterested yearning for the truth. Broadly stated in my own words, its thesis is that Maoist China's authoritarian origins, combined with its large size and the presence of many different countries, blocks, and alliances surrounding its borders and coastline, have shaped the extent of its present hostilities as well as the extent to which it has been willing to bend over backwards to reconcile differences with foreign nations -- in particular, Russia, both Koreas, Japan, the United States, India, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Singapore. A good introductory summary.

I stopped reading after the disappointing chapter on Chairman Mao. Did not adequately cover the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution.

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Knowledgeable, well researched. Otherwise incredibly bland, boring account. No insight other than very broad pronouncements regarding the future. I would give it a hard miss, unless you need another quotable source for your undergraduate essay.

nothing

According to the author, ‘there has been, from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping, a consistent definition of national goals and a harnessing of military, diplomatic, economic, and political means to pursue those goals.’ (P.1) Indeed, what these political leaders had was a set of instincts, instructing them what Chinese national interests were and; how these interests were protected. Thus, in gearing military power, diplomacy, economic planning, and domestic policy toward what were seen as long-term national interests, these instincts did constitute China’s grand strategy. Most important of all, they saw China as a brittle entity, in a world that was fundamentally dangerous. Their main task was to protect it. Unfortunately, all that China had experienced in its past showed that statehood was something fragile, easily lost; it was never something that could be taken for granted, even in times of peace. Preserving Chinese statehood ‘required seeking a balance of power during the Cold War and after, while maintain control of one’s own citizens. It meant modernizing one’s military without disturbing the political economy.’ (P.3) In sum, the Chinese state has had little experience of conducting foreign policy as a unified, secure entity. That inexperience has been the hallmark of China’s grand strategy.Today, China has come of age as a great power and never been stronger in recent memory; however, it is as insecure as it has been felt since the late sixties. It is in this paradox that the grand strategy of Xi Jinping is rooted. Indeed, he pursues the same goals as his predecessors did, but with greater urgency and vigor. To remain a great power, Xi’s conclusion seems to have been, China will have to act like one. Also, the state remains ever vigilant to threats, both internal and external. On the other hand, as China’s power has grown, Xi is both more willing and more able to do something about these new strengths.In realist terms, pursuing regional preponderance and global influence seem to be the only way to find a place safe for Chinese authoritarian state, if its power allows. However, Xi’s ambition for China to play a larger role in shaping the world’s norms and institutions and to assert its presence more forcefully in its own neighborhood has provoked a rethinking in the United States (and elsewhere) about the nature of Chinese power and its implications for the rest of the world.After all, with great power comes great insecurity. Paradoxically, Xi’s vigorous quest for national security has undermined the larger strategic goal it was meant to achieve: a stable neighborhood. And this means that China’s security environment is becoming ever more dangerous.

An astonishingly uncritical look at Chinese leadership, unless you include the writer's negative views of the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward, which anyone would be hard-pressed to praise. No mention of the human rights abuses, or China's actions in Tibet. There's nothing wrong with coming out generally in favour of a country's leadership, but there are times when it reads too much like a fan letter.Still, it is an interesting account of recent Chinese history, so I give it three stars.

My academic focus is on China and its global politics, I picked up this book on a whim and would encourage to see it as a good book for a general audience, not an academic one.This book is typified by a great deal of breadth at the sacrifice of depth, while it offers good anecdotes and an accessible style, it sacrifices details and makes assumptions which are less than agreeable for presenting a nuanced analysis. Clunky in some aspects also, in particular, the flow of events can go back and forth and skims over periods in a sentence, the great leap forward gets about a sentence, and the Korean war is given a paragraph.However, it is a well sourced text in itself and is aware of its very real limitations, while I would not rely on this text to ground any serious research, it is a good piece to thumb through, and is not a dry account of China's global strategy, even if it does not focus on any aspect of it for too long.In summary: it gives a look at general logics of China's global politics, rather than the tactics in itself.

This books tells that chinese rulers r flexible but they'll never compromise on one China policy

Fast postage, i am only a quarter of the way through this so far, but find it very interesting reading having been to China several times before.

Intensely interesting