By Annie Crabill

China’s Foreign Policy Since 1978: Return to Power

Written by Nicholas Khoo

Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2020, 200 pp.

In addition to the AK-47 and Silicon Valley, one of the most enduring byproducts of the Cold War is an academic theory called neorealism.[1] In the 1950s, as U.S. policymakers struggled to analyze and predict Soviet behavior, the study of international politics became a distinct discipline. Unlike their counterparts in, say, university history departments, these international relations scholars created conceptual frameworks to make sense of foreign policy decisions, both contemporary and historical.[2]

Among the core questions these scholars tried to answer was why wars continued to break out, and why states repeatedly found themselves in conflict. Kenneth Waltz, who first outlined the theory known as neorealism, believed that structural power differences, rather than human agency, best explained the recurrence of war.[3] Neorealism assumes that the world of international relations is anarchic (meaning there is no central authority) and that states act in ways that prioritize their own survival. In this neorealist landscape, some states are revisionist, meaning they want to change existing power dynamics, but most seek to preserve the status quo.[4]

Nicholas Khoo, an associate professor of politics at the University of Otago in New Zealand, argues that this twentieth-century theory can help us make sense of China today—albeit with some tweaks. In his 2020 book, China’s Foreign Policy Since 1978, Khoo echoes Cold War-era scholars in the need for frameworks (he writes that “theory is essential to understand world politics”) but only if they’re built around the correct concepts.[5] The correct conceptualization of China, however, is far from obvious. The “remarkable degree of academic consensus on China’s importance,” he observes, “is matched by an equally striking dissensus on how to conceptualize that state.”[6]

Khoo argues a neorealist model best explains the decisions of modern China—as opposed to others that might emphasize domestic factors or Chinese identity, for example—but he offers some adjustments to the classic formulas. He is not persuaded, on the one hand, by offensive realists’ claims that China’s rise will lead to an unstable multipolar system. Indeed, he thinks it will likely lead to a stable bipolar world.[7] Nor does he believe that Waltz’s defensive neorealism, which holds that states will “defend” their security within the status quo, aligns with Chinese behavior, which Khoo shows to be sometimes aggressively revisionist. Instead, Khoo opts for a revised neorealist model, in which Chinese foreign policy decisions are driven chiefly by state interests and relative power.[8]

This is a book written for an academic audience rather than a general one. It is packed with footnotes, subheadings, and passive verbs (and, less standardly, with typos).[9] The prose may be a bit bloodless, but it is not inaccessible. Khoo clearly defines the theories he discusses and organizes his argument chronologically. He starts with the era of Deng Xiaoping, whose slogan in the early 1980s was “bide one’s time, accomplish great things,” to that of current President Xi Jinping, who confidently articulated a “Chinese dream” in 2012. Khoo’s basic argument, roughly, is that the more powerful China becomes, the more aggressive its foreign policy decisions are, and the more “spiral dynamics”—pushback from other states—come into play.

How has the United States, the status quo power, responded to China since it emerged as an economic force in the 1990s? Unevenly, according to Khoo. The Clinton administration pursued a strategy of “strategic partnership,” ushering China into the World Trade Organization while attempting to condition favorable trade policies on improved human rights practices. The Bush administration claimed to consider the relationship one of “strategic competition,” even though relations were at times more benignly productive than during the Clinton era. The Obama administration sought “strategic reassurance,” but found itself in increasingly troubling situations in the South China Sea.[10] Finally, the policies of the Donald Trump administration could best be characterized as ”wild swings.”[11] After all this oscillation, U.S. policymakers now seem to agree on one point: “engagement” with China has failed.[12] This failure is evidenced most strongly, for Khoo, in overtly aggressive Chinese actions in the South and East China Seas, which the United States and its ally, Japan, have proved unable to stop.[13]

Using Khoo’s neorealist template, a review of U.S. policy reveals a misguided focus on domestic politics, which Khoo argues “led to a series of foreign policy disasters.”[14] U.S. attempts to dictate Chinese human rights practices, or the status of Taiwan, have only escalated tensions. In what could crudely be seen as an inverse of Cold War bipolarity, interdependence seems to be increasing between China and the United States, but the sense that conflict will be too costly for either side to bear appears to be decreasing.[15] Given this state of relative power dynamics, the U.S. approach to managing China’s rise instead must involve “a political bargaining process.”[16]

Khoo published his book before the election of President Joe Biden, but the challenges cited by virtually every pundit and politician remain largely unchanged. Uyghurs. Cyber espionage. Unfair trade practices. Increased authoritarianism. The end of an independent Hong Kong. The climate crisis. The list of problems in the Sino-American relationship is long, cluttered, and bleak.

A good theory can cut through the fog, set aside what is merely distracting, and clarify what is important. In the most exaggerated version of neorealism, all one needs to know about a state is its relative power and its interests. Its system of government, the personality of its leader, the direction of public opinion—all are irrelevant. Khoo’s argument is more nuanced than this, but it is neorealist at its core. For those outside the formal discipline of international relations, and for students of history especially, such a framework runs the risk of oversimplification. One might fairly ask how a state’s interests could be understood without making sense of pesky domestic details first.

But even if it fails to be entirely persuasive, Khoo’s framework helps readers identify priorities, consider past mistakes, and see, quite clearly, the trajectory of China’s rise. In this regard, it is a helpful book, and today’s policymakers, like those of the 1950s, need all the help they can get.

About the Author

Annie Crabill is an M.A. student at the Yale Jackson Institute. She is interested in writing about global affairs for a broad audience.

Endnotes

1.     General Mikhail Kalashnikov, who invented the AK-47 at the dawn of the Cold War, when he was a sergeant in the Soviet Army. See review of Ak47 by Michael Hodges in “Briefly Noted”, The New Yorker, May 12, 2008, accessed June 22, 2021, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/05/19/briefly-noted-the-invention-of-everything-else; Seth Center and Emma Bates, “Tech-Politik: Historical Perspectives on Innovation, Technology, and Strategic Competition”, CSIS Briefs, Center for Strategic & International Studies, December 19, 2019, accessed June 22, 2021, https://www.csis.org/analysis/tech-politik-historical-perspectives-innovation-technology-and-strategic-competition; James Pethokoukis, “Silicon Valley: An unrepeatable miracle? A long-read Q&A with Margaret O’Mara” AEIdeas (blog), American Enterprise Institute, October 4, 2019, accessed June 22, 2021, https://www.aei.org/economics/silicon-valley-an-unrepeatable-miracle-a-long-read-qa-with-margaret-omara/.

2.     Douglas Martin, “Kenneth Waltz, Foreign-Relations Expert, Dies at 88”, New York Times, May 18, 2013, accessed June 22, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/us/kenneth-n-waltz-who-helped-shape-international-relations-as-a-discipline-dies-at-88.html.

3.     Nicholas Khoo, China’s Foreign Policy since 1978: Return to Power (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2020), 13.

4.     Khoo, China’s Foreign Policy, 2.

5.     Ibid., 17.

6.     Ibid., 2.

7.     Ibid., 14, 137.

8.     Ibid., 16.

9.     I found typos on pages 17, 26, 73, 105, 116, 117, 118, and 138.

10.  Khoo, China’s Foreign Policy, 75.

11.  Ibid., 72, 78.

12.  Ibid., 87.

13.  Ibid., 133.

14.  Ibid., 138.

15.  Ibid., 78.

16.  Ibid., 138.

The eBook version of China’s Foreign Policy since 1978: Return to Power available at Google Play, ebooks.com other eBook vendors. The book can be ordered in print from the Edward Elgar Publishing website.