Rising Star

China’s diplomatic strategy has changed dramatically since the mid-1990s, creating both challenges and opportunities for the United States. U.S. policymakers have only just begun to comprehend these critical changes, however, and all too often their China policy has been incoherent. In Rising Star, Bates Gill points the way out of this morass. Based on a comprehensive and far-reaching analysis of the transformation in China’s security diplomacy, he persuasively makes the case for a more nuanced and focused policy toward Beijing.

Over the past decade, China’s approach to regional and global security affairs has become more proactive, practical, and constructive. This trend favors U.S. interests in many ways. Yet China’s new strategy has also bolstered its international influence and may enhance its ability to resolve thorny issues—such as Taiwan’s future—on its own terms. In exploring these dynamics, s ing Star fofocuses on Chinese policy in three areas— regional security mechanisms, nonproliferation and arms control, and questions of sovereignty and intervention. The concluding chapter analyzes U.S.-China relations and offers specific recommendations toward a framework that emphasizes what the two countries have in common, rather than what divides them. Today, China’s rise presents the international community with a tremendous challenge. Successfully managing this transition will require informed realism, astute management, and nimble diplomacy. Timely and vital, ng Star off offers essential guidance to policymakers approaching this task, and provides insightful understanding for all those interested in Chinese foreign policy both in the United States and around the world.

Bates Gill is director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. He was formerly the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Security and International Studies, and he was the first director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution.