mandag 31. oktober 2016

What we know and don’t know about China’s foreign and military policies.

China has become a very open country, but it still shields many secrets that we overlook. Its leaders are not an open book. If anything, it has become even harder to read their intent. We are left judging them by what we see, but the real meaning of any act in politics can only be determined if we are able to track first its original motivation and then its pathways among the politically powerful actors affected by it.

One book that should give everyone cause for humility in analysis of China’s international and domestic affairs, and the interplay between them, is the monumental scholarly study by Ezra Vogel of Deng Xiaoping published in 2011. Its subject had surrendered leadership of China two decades earlier, but the Vogel study reveals much information for the first time to the American public. Read more