Maoism's Window into Africa: China's Interest in Post-Independence Algeria

Protecting Chinese Interests Abroad or Planning for PRC Primacy? Andrew Scobell (bio) Andrea Ghiselli's meticulously researched and lucidly written tome, Protecting China's Interests Overseas: Securitization and Foreign Policy, explores the drivers of China's increasing global military activism and is well worth the read. He has done exceptional research in primary Chinese language sources and solidly grounded his scholarship in the relevant international relations literature. The topic is one that has grabbed the attention of the United States and other countries—the growing global activism of the armed forces of the People's Republic of China (PRC). While still modest and tentative compared to the security activities and overseas military postures of other great powers, the 21st-century activities of China's armed forces go well beyond the PRC's borders and immediate periphery. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy now routinely transits the Indian Ocean to the Gulf of Aden, and PLA Navy vessels regularly appear in more distant bodies of water. China joined the club of great powers that possess overseas military bases with its first official military facility beyond PRC borders formally established in Djibouti in 2017. And for twenty years the PLA has regularly conducted ground, air, and maritime exercises with other militaries in locales both within China and around the globe. China has also been dispatching soldiers to serve in UN peacekeeping missions far afield since the 1990s. But China's increased military activism during the past decade or so signals a sea change in Beijing's disposition and thinking. China long proclaimed that it did not station a single soldier overseas or occupy an inch of foreign soil. But with a military base abroad, Beijing can no longer say this. What accounts for this dramatic change? The book describes the 2011 unraveling of Muammar Gaddafi's regime in Libya as the watershed event. Beijing was caught by surprise and had to scramble to evacuate some 36,000 Chinese workers from the chaos (p. 1). The operation was coordinated by China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs mostly using chartered commercial shipping via the Mediterranean to remove PRC citizens from harm's way. The involvement of the military in this operation was almost [End Page 160] a sideshow—limited to four PLA Air Force Ilyushin Il-76s flying out 1,655 Chinese (p. 229) and a single PLA Navy vessel, the frigate Xuzhou, serving as an escort for an armada of civilian ships ferrying the evacuees out of Libya (pp. 223–24). According to Ghiselli, "a crisis in a third country had never impacted Chinese interests abroad as much as this one" (p. 1). In an era where great-power competition is the dominant rubric and the myth of Chinese omnipotence seems pervasive in the policy community, two key findings of Protecting China's Interests Overseas merit special attention. First, Ghiselli finds that China's greater security presence beyond its own immediate Asia-Pacific neighborhood is defensive—driven by a "powerful" impulse (p. 1) to protect its burgeoning interests overseas—rather than propelled by an offensive strategy to wrest global supremacy from the United States. The author concludes that the "deployment of Chinese soldiers in critical regions like the Middle East or North Africa…has not been motivated by a desire to erode American supremacy in those regions" (p. 241). Ghiselli's point is that not everything Beijing does is about great-power competition with Washington. Of course, the United States looms large for China's leaders and factors into almost every decision they make. But the PRC is pursuing its own destiny and advancing its own interests, not all of which involve the United States. A policy implication of this finding is that there is potential for cooperation, or at least coexistence, with the PRC on the global stage. However, China's "interest frontiers" are expanding and, when combined with Beijing's own zero-sum thinking, notwithstanding China's "win-win" propaganda rhetoric, there is no guarantee that this potential will be realized. Second, Ghiselli's research reveals that most "events related to China's interest frontiers were hardly the result of a well-thought-out plan" (p. 242). This finding calls...

Reviewed by: China in International Society Since 1949: Alienation and Beyond Yafeng Xia (bio) Yongjin Zhang . China in International Society Since 1949: Alienation and Beyond. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. viii, 345 pp. Hardcover $69.95 , ISBN 0-312-21540-1. Since the early 1980s, scholars have been introducing different approaches to the study of Chinese foreign policy. Utilizing the "international society" model associated with the English school as his theoretical framework, Yongjin Zhang has written a fine book on the international relations of the People's Republic of China (PRC). This is a continuation of his endeavor to interpret China's international behavior in the tumultuous world of twentieth-century politics, begun in his 1991 book China in the International System, 1918-1920: The Middle Kingdom at the Periphery. "The central argument of this study," Zhang declares of the work under review here, "is essentially a simple one. The international relations of the People's Republic of China is a saga of the isolation-alienation-socialisation-integration of China in international society since 1949. This saga is the continuation of a historical search by both China and the wider world for mutual accommodation" (p. 244 ). Zhang challenges the conventional wisdom that China was in isolation from the international system during much of the Cold War. He contends that China did not isolate itself, but rather was alienated from international society. To Zhang, "alienation" means that cordial relations between states "have been broken and friendly feelings toward each other have been turned into bitterness and hostility" (p. 44). "Alienation," therefore, is often accompanied by "violent confrontations and conflicts" (p. 45). Zhang advances a clear thesis that he develops consistently throughout his analysis. He discusses in detail the five stages of China's gradual alienation from international society, starting in 1949, when the PRC, as a revolutionary state, was mistrusted by the United States, which took measures to alienate the emerging new regime in Beijing from the international community. The United States adopted a policy of nonrecognition of "Red China" and urged its Western allies to take the same position. The second phase was dominated by the Korean War, which "created lasting enmity and apprehension between the two nations." The United States instituted a full trade embargo against the PRC and blocked its membership in the United Nations. The PRC was further alienated from an international society dominated by the United States. The third phase was "marked by crises and border wars in and around the PRC" (p. 53). The two Taiwan Strait crises in 1954-1955 and 1958, the Tibetan rebellion in 1959, and the Sino-Indian border war in 1962 only served to alienate the Beijing regime further from international society at a time when many regarded the PRC as an expansionist power. The fourth phase was dominated by the Sino-Soviet [End Page 495] polemics of the 1960s, which ended with the PRC's alienation from the Soviet bloc. This process came to a climax in the late 1960s during the Chinese Cultural Revolution when the PRC "called for and set out to establish an international united front against both superpowers, urging revolutionary changes to the international system" (p. 57). Thus, the author argues, the period from 1949-1970 "was characterized by the exclusion, more than seclusion, of China from the universal international organisations and international institutions" (p. 57). As international society refused to accord the PRC legitimacy as a normal player in the system of states, Beijing constantly posed itself as a challenge to the existing international system. Just as Zhang attributes China's alienation largely to "systemic factors," he claims that the de-alienation of China in international society since the early 1970s has depended "as much on the systemic changes as on the changing orientation of China's international policies" (p. 58). As the international system became more accommodating to the adversarial relationships between ideologically hostile power blocs, China's perception of changes in the international system led China to reconsider its international strategy. Structural change at the United Nations brought China into the world organization, thus beginning the acceptance of China into international society. China's de...

[ 44 ] asia policy Introduction: Sixty Years of Foreign Policy in the PRC Xiao Ren & Travis Tanner October 1, 2009, marked the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Within the Chinese system for numbering years, the number 60 is of particular significance because it representsthecompletionofafullcycle.InreviewingthePRC’sfirstcompleted cycle, it is clear that China has undergone profound economic, political, and social changes that have transformed the country from one of the poorest and most underdeveloped in the world into a rapidly growing, globally integrated power. This transformation has been so comprehensive that many observers have been stunned by China’s advancements and by the fact that a country can change so dramatically in such a short period of time. As China sets its sights on the future and becomes an influential—if not yet driving—presence on the world stage, numerous questions and concerns regarding PRC’s foreign policy priorities persist. This roundtable features three essays examining different aspects of Chinese foreign policy decisionmaking. First, Allen Carlson explores how Chinese foreign policy elites view the various nontraditional security issues facing China (such as ecological/environmental security, terrorism, illegal immigration, transnational smuggling, economic development, population, and weapons proliferation). Second, Cheng Li explores the emergence and role of Westerneducated Chinese returnees in the formation of strategic thinking and foreign policy in China. Finally, Mark Frazier examines the linkages between the national economy and Chinese foreign policy and the degree to which domestic demand for natural resources influences foreign policy decisions. To place these three essays in perspective, this introduction overviews the first 60 years of PRC foreign policy and then looks ahead at China’s role in the world moving into the next cycle. xiao renis Associate Dean of the Institute of International Studies and Director of the Center for Chinese Foreign Policy Studies at Fudan University. He can be reached at . travis tanneris Director of the Pyle Center for Northeast Asian Studies at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR). He can be reached at . note uThe papers in this roundtable were first presented at a conference organized by the Pyle Center for Northeast Asian Studies at The National Bureau of Asian Research in partnership with The Center for Chinese Foreign Policy Studies at Fudan University’s Institute of International Studies. The conference was convened in Shanghai, China, in October 2009, to examine the drivers and trends influencing Chinese foreign policy, particularly focusing on the recent global economic downturn and its implications for China’s economic and geopolitical outlook. The conference organizers would like to thank the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the Ford Foundation for their support of this project. [ 45 ] roundtable • chinese foreign policy and domestic decisionmaking Six Decades of PRC Foreign Policy Though not all researchers agree on the exact division, the past 60 years of foreign policy in China can generally be split into two distinct 30-year periods. 1949 marked the rise of the new revolutionary state, setting in motion the first 30-year period, which was characterized by drastic changes in China’s relations with the world’s two major superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR). During this period from 1949 to 1979, ideology played a key role in top-level decisionmaking, and this led to a poorly institutionalized system in which a small, insular group of high-level leaders made foreign policy decisions. Additionally, Mao Zedong’s personal proclivities greatly influenced China’s foreign policy decisionmaking, with domestic political considerations frequently determining the shape and direction of China’s outward diplomacy. Although in its earliest days, the PRC adopted a strategy of “leaning to one side” and allied itself with the Soviet Union, this alliance did not last and was terminated just over a decade later. Isolation from the region and the world, an ideological focus on aligning with the world’s other developing countries, and deep-rooted mistrust of the world’s major powers thus came to characterize this period. Two factors can be identified as the main causes of the dramatic change in the Sino-Soviet relationship. The first cause was the conflict between the Soviet Union’s aspirations to...

This article looks at two seemingly disparate events: Georges Pompidou’s 1973 presidential visit to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the filming and release of Jean Yanne’s blockbuster comedy Les Chinois à Paris (1974). Both produced flawed visions of Franco-Chinese relations. During Pompidou’s visit, officials and the press attempted to demonstrate that France enjoyed warmer relations with the PRC than any other Western nation. Yanne’s film parodied the French fad for Maoism by imagining the People’s Liberation Army invading and occupying Paris. His film caused an uproar in the press and sparked official Chinese protest. The article ultimately argues that the two events were deeply related, part of a wave of popular and official interest in China in the early 1970s that extended well beyond the well-known stories of student and intellectual Maoists. This interest paved the way for Franco-Chinese relations as we know them today.

ЛИНГВИСТИЧЕСКИЙ АСПЕКТ КАК ФАКТОР ВНЕШНЕЙ ПОЛИТИКИ

After having suffered from the self-inflicted wounds of internal convulsions and diplomatic isolation during the Cultural Revolution, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has returned to the world diplomatic scene with a new, vigorous, and imaginative foreign policy. To appreciate its dimensions fully, one must recall that China's foreign policy was left largely unprotected from the disruptive spillovers of the domestic quarrels during the Cultural Revolution. The Red Guards not only sacked the British chancery in Peking, but also seized their own Ministry of Foreign Affairs in August 1967. By November 1967, forty-four out of forty-five ambassadors were called home for “rectification,” leaving the durable Huang Hua in Cairo as the PRC's sole representative abroad. China's trade also suffered; by the end of September 1967, Peking had been involved in disputes of varying intensity with some thirty-two nations. However, the transition from revolutionary turmoil to pragmatic reconstruction came through a series of decisions made by Mao Tse-tung and his close advisors beginning in late July 1968 and culminating at the First Plenum of the Ninth Party Congress held in April 1969, ushering in a new era in Chinese foreign policy. toward the United Nations may be characterized as one of “love me or leave me, but don't leave me alone,” evolving through the stages of naive optimism, frustration, disenchantment, anger, and lingering envy and hope, the PRC's support of the principles of the United Nations Charter had remained largely unaffected from 1945 to 1964. However, the Indonesian withdrawal on January 7, 1965, triggered off a process of negative polemics against the United Nations. Indeed, Peking's bill of complaints against the United Nations was broad and sweeping: that blind faith in the United Nations had to be stopped because the organization was by no means sacred and inviolable; that by committing sins of commission and omission, the United Nations had become an adjunct of the U.S. State Department; that the United Nations had become a channel for United States economic and cultural penetration into Asian, African, and Latin American countries; and that the United Nations in the final analysis was a paper tiger.

Science and Really Existing Socialism in Maoist China

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, American Industrial entrepreneurs took great interest in China's Industrialization. They invested in the works of buliding railways, driving minerals, erecting telegraph and improving the harbors. These industrial investments had begun since the end of Ch'ing Dynasty and reached higher development in the Republic China. American invested in the Republic China's industrialization would coincide with the international competition in China's market, and had the close relationship with China's indigenous political and economic situations. This article indicates two American Corporations, American International Corporation and Siems-Carey Company which negotiated with Peking Government upon two engineering works. One is the project for improvement of Huai River and Grand Canal, which have the spirit of Humanitarian capitalism, and another one have the great profits for building 1,500 mile railroad. However, both cases would fail in the end. By analyzing the two cases, the author illuminates how the American investment involved in problem of politics and foreign affairs during the period of warlord China.

Although debate persists over the precise extent to which the foreign policy of the People's Republic of China (PRC) has actually changed in recent years, it is clearly evolving.1 Outside of the near seas, where China is largely perceived as increasingly assertive in its pursuit of core national interests, are Chinese foreign policy approaches becoming more flexible?2 Some related discussions focus on the PRC's voting behavior on UN resolutions involving humanitarian intervention as well as its contributions to international security.3 Its actions in waters abroad have also generated high levels of domestic and international interest, given their connection to Chinese politics, economics, military development, and diplomacy. Yet there is relatively little systematic analysis of whether Chinese foreign policy behavior is becoming more flexible with respect to nontraditional security challenges in the aquatic domain.4 This makes it difficult to address questions about how Beijing's behavior here is related to broader Chinese foreign policy trajectories. Specifically, are Chinese approaches to nontraditional waterborne security indicative of a larger shift in the country's foreign policy toward greater flexibility and idiosyncratic dynamism?This article offers two case studies on Chinese participation in nontraditional waterborne security since 2008: the Gulf of Aden and the Mekong River.5 These cases have presented critical tests for Beijing, not only operationally but also in terms of policy and symbolism. The Gulf of Aden and Mekong River differ fundamentally in their geographic characteristics and proximity to China, China's relative regional position, the degree to which Chinese foreign policy interests are threatened, the nature of China's involvement in operations, and the legal opportunities and constraints. These disparities are precisely why examining the cases together is helpful for understanding Chinese foreign policy trends. China's behavior vis-a-vis these two regions illustrates that Beijing is exploring flexible foreign policy tactics responsive to manifold factors in order to protect its interests. Addressing security challenges in these regions offers China opportunities to protect its economic interests abroad; allows Chinese military, paramilitary, and security forces to accrue experience and improve operationally; enables China to enhance its political image by performing successful missions and engaging in friendly diplomacy with other states before, during, and after operations; and lets China participate meaningfully-if thus far modestly-in the construction of a 21st-century architecture for nontraditional security governance that is commensurate with the country's relative power in a given region. Dynamic approaches to nontraditional waterborne security provide vital flexibility for a Chinese regime facing complex internal and external pressures while the PRC continues its ascent from a developing country to a global power. China will continue to expand the ability of its military and security infrastructure to perform nontraditional waterborne security missions outside China without necessarily altering the core framework of global maritime governance. This development should be welcomed by other states in the maritime commons. Further, while admittedly a small sample, China's security contributions in the Gulf of Aden and Mekong River demonstrate that the country's foreign policy approaches to nontraditional waterborne security are potentially compatible with, rather than inherently threatening to, existing security frameworks.China's international economic, political, and social connections are unprecedented. The PRC relied on foreign trade for just under half of its 2012 GDP.6 People flows are an outgrowth of economic interdependence: over 80 million Chinese citizens now travel abroad annually, a figure that is expected to rise to over 100 million by 2015.7 China's workforce abroad, estimated at over 5 million in 2012 but likely substantially higher, is also expanding rapidly. …

Netizen Opinion and China's Foreign Policy:Interpreting Narratives about North Korea on Chinese Social Media Andrew Scobell (bio), Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga (bio), Astrid Cevallos (bio), Arthur Chan (bio), and Zev Winkelman (bio) keywords China, North Korea, foreign policy, internet, public opinion, social media [End Page 97] executive summary This article analyzes Chinese netizen opinion of North Korea by examining thousands of Chinese-language social media posts. main argument The impact of netizen opinion on one of China's most challenging contemporary foreign policy issues is difficult to assess. Previous research on Chinese attitudes toward North Korea has focused on elite policy debates and paid little attention to popular views. To address this imbalance, this article collects a novel dataset of thousands of Chinese-language social media posts on the leading microblog, Sina Weibo (Xinlang Weibo), in 2015. Analysis of this dataset reveals four multilayered popular Chinese narratives on North Korea: one ridiculing the country and its youthful leader Kim Jong-un, a second critiquing China via unflattering comparisons and parallels with North Korea, a third assessing China and the legacy of the Korean War, and a fourth addressing the ongoing foreign policy security challenge that North Korea poses to China. These popular narratives are in direct conflict with China's official narrative of long-standing, battle-tested comradely relations between the two states. This official narrative also pointedly omits any detailed characterization of North Korea and its leaders and only refers to denuclearization in the context of the entire peninsula. Moreover, the popular narratives mirror elite discourse while providing greater nuance and context for understanding Beijing's tormented relationship with Pyongyang. These findings underscore the complexities and underlying sensitivities of China's disposition vis-à-vis North Korea. policy implications • Netizen narratives on North Korea reveal a lively popular discourse that tends to mirror elite discourse and conflicts with China's official narrative. • While the specific impact of online public opinion on Chinese foreign policy is difficult to assess, China's state monitoring and censorship decisions suggest that it is of irrefutable interest and relevance to policymakers. • Cognizant that many netizens hold strong negative views of North Korea, China may be playing a two-level game with such sentiment, seeking to mollify Chinese public frustration with both countries' leaders, while at the same time signaling to Pyongyang that Beijing's policy is under substantial pressure from Chinese netizens. [End Page 98] This article analyzes the largest sample of online public opinion to date on one of the most complicated contemporary foreign policy challenges confronting the People's Republic of China (PRC): the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), or North Korea. Beijing's behavior toward its neighbor has been remarkably restrained in the face of repeated provocations—including nuclear tests and missile launches—which come at a time when Beijing has acted assertively on other foreign policy issues.1 Chinese elite attitudes toward the DPRK have been widely reported, including debates among academic and military elites about whether China should "abandon" North Korea.2 In the past, discussion of popular views has been constrained by the limited availability of information, but the widespread use of social media in China now provides data for in-depth analysis of online public opinion. Such analysis can shed light on the role that Chinese internet users, or "netizens," may play in shaping the leadership's foreign policy options toward North Korea. The place of public opinion in China's foreign policy is a common yet controversial research topic.3 Some studies assert that public opinion is a key independent variable in shaping the policies of the PRC toward Japan and the United States.4 Other studies conclude that Chinese leaders manipulate public opinion to obtain leverage against other countries.5 Even those who assert the relevance of public opinion for the PRC's North Korea policy disagree about its precise impact: Thomas Christensen argues that public opinion constrains policy options for Chinese leaders, while [End Page 99] Simon Shen contends that it expands those options.6 To date, there has been no thorough analysis of the impact of public opinion on China's policy toward North Korea. According to one expert, however, "there...

The image of China’s peaceful rise, which the Chinese government is keen to enforce in the world, stands in contrast to the view of China’s ascent as a threat. China’s economic and military growth is perceived as a potential threat to the (East) Asian security structure and as a challenge to the preponderance of the United States. Even though the PRC is more active in international and regional organizations—and better integrated in the international community—than ever before, the ambiguity of China’s true political intentions is still dominant. The focus of this analysis is the Chinese tradition of Just War and its benefits for an enhanced understanding of contemporary Chinese foreign policy. The tradition of Just War has rarely been studied, but the search for an understanding of Just War in Chinese traditional thinking can, nevertheless, assist in the analysis of China’s current foreign policy. Whether China’s foreign policy is benign or malignant or whether China dominates Asia is, therefore, “profoundly uncertain.” With regard to foreign policy analysis, the differentiation between the regional and the international levels might help to transcend the predominant understanding of Chinese foreign policy in international relations theory. Das Bild vom friedlichen Aufstieg Chinas, das von der chinesischen Regierung verbreitet wird, steht im Gegensatz dazu, dass Chinas wirtschaftlicher und militarischer Aufstieg als mogliche Bedrohung fur die Sicherheitsstruktur (Ost-)Asiens und als Herausforderung der US-amerikanischen Vorherrschaft betrachtet wird. Obwohl die VR China noch nie so aktiv in der internationalen Gemeinschaft war wie heute, besteht Unsicherheit bezuglich ihrer wahren politischen Absichten. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht die chinesische Tradition des gerechten Krieges, um ein erweitertes Verstandnis von der gegenwartigen chinesischen Ausenpolitik zu gewinnen. Die Vorstellung vom gerechten Krieg ist bisher nur selten untersucht worden, dennoch kann es die Analyse der gegenwartigen chinesischen Ausenpolitik bereichern, die bereits im alten China vorliegenden entsprechenden Ideen einzubeziehen. Die Auseinandersetzung mit dem chinesischen Verstandnis vom gerechten Krieg und mit dessen Anwendung auf Chinas Ausenpolitik sensibilisiert zudem dafur, zwischen verschiedenen Ebenen der Analyse zu unterscheiden. So kann die Differenzierung zwischen regionaler und internationaler Ebene helfen, das vorherrschende Verstandnis von der chinesischen Ausenpolitik in den internationalen Beziehungen zu transzendieren.

In the past two decades, the economy has loomed so large that it is dictating some of the terms of foreign policy or influencing the outcome of debates that involve economic interest. Th ere has always been a discrepancy between stated foreign policy and specific economic interests. In the early 1950s, because the young People’s Republic of China needed natural rubber, it bought it from the very Southeast Asian countries where it was simultaneously fomenting an insurrectional Communist Party, which was most active among the workers of rubber plantations. In the early 1970s, China’s continued need for copper dictated a very fast turnaround from Chile’s Allende government to the Pinochet junta. (Even today, China turns a cold shoulder to exponents of the nationalization of mining resources in Latin America, because of its own involvement.) Lack of trust among the world’s leading socialist countries once meant that the currency of choice in China-USSR trade was likely to be the Swiss franc.

The question of the Chinese Representation in the United Nations (UN) arose with the People's Republic of China (PRC) putting forward its demand for a seat in the UN Security Council on 18 January 1949. Since 1951, the government of the PRC applied annually to the UN General Assembly to be replaced the government of the Republic of China (ROC) as the representative of China. From 1950 to 1971 the ROC government was recognized as the sole government representing China in the UN. With the adoption of General Assembly Resolution 2758 on 25 October 1971, expelling the ROC government, the representatives of the PRC government replaced the ROC representatives as the sole legitimate representative of China to the UN, and have since held the seat in the General Assembly, the Security Council, as well as in all organs and specialized agencies of the UN. The issue of the Chinese representation in the UN came to a close. The objective of this essay is to reconstruct and analyse the struggle over the issue of the Chinese representation in the UN. The essay is divided into two parts, namely conditions of entering into the UN, and the Chinese representation question to the UN. It provides an analysis of veto power and package deal, conditions of admission to the UN, the competence of the General Assembly, and the essence of Chinese representation question to the U N. It discusses the different solutions to the Chinese representation question involvement with the U.S. interest, the security of Taiwan and submits a realistic assessment of the ultimate outcome of the struggle from a ROC viewpoint. It will show that all strategies in dealing the of Chinese representation question depended on the voting situation in the Security Council and the General Assembly. If an ”Important Question Variation” or ”Dual Representation Resolution” had been approved and the resolution promulgated by Albania would have failed, the PRC would have been seated in the General Assembly and in the Security Council. But as long as Taiwan retained a seat in the UN, the PRC would not join the UN. PRC and its allies, however, would continue to find ways to exclude the ROC from their right to represent China. It concludes that the aim of the foreign policy is to pursuit national interest. Taiwan's attempt to enter the United Nations is not only unrealistic; conversely it also increases the tension across the Taiwan Strait. One must know that bilateral diplomatic relations is the base of international relations, without the strengthening of bilateral relations and the support of the United Nations member States, Taiwan's entrance into the United Nations is unfeasible. Strengthening the relations between two sides of Taiwan Strait is paramount.

International Law and the Extraordinary Interaction Between the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China on Taiwan

Reviews 289 Qiang Zhai. The Dragon, the Lion, and the Eagle: Chinese-British-American Rektions, 1949-1958. Kent (Ohio) and London: The Kent State University Press, 1994. xi, 284 pp. Hardcover $32.00. This is the only available one-volume survey ofrelations among the United States, Great Britain, and the People's Republic of China (PRC). Zhai sets out to examine "Anglo-American policy toward die PRC between 1949 and 1958 and the reaction ofthe Chinese Communist Party" (p. 1), and "to describe in detail the role ofindividual policy makers" of the PRC in order to "enrich understanding the CCP's foreign policy" (p. 3). While Zhai has generally done a good job in reconstructing the debates among American and British policy makers on issues like Soviet-PRC relations, Tibet, the Korean War, the partition ofVietnam, and die two Taiwan Straits crises, one cannot say the same in the case of the PRC. Despite Zhai's claim to the contrary, this work does not explain the policy process in the PRC. Here and there Zhai refers to decisions made or instructions issued by individual Chinese leaders, notably Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. However, there is no interpretative framework for understanding die PRCs foreign policy. Nor is tiiere an exposition ofhow policies on external relations were made in die PRC in this period. As to the U.S. and Britain's respective policies toward China, Zhai's account is also somewhat patchy and sometimes superficial. There are indeed glaring omissions , too. For example, one is bewildered that Hong Kong appears only in passing , even though one would have expected it to be potentially the most explosive issue between Britain and the PRC. After all, on the only occasion when Western forces and die PLA engaged in combat during the Chinese Civil War (viz. the Amethyst Incident of 1949), die foreign forces were British units based in Hong Kong, and Britain subsequently massively expanded its small garrison in Hong Kong, made up mainly ofinfantry, to a force of30,000 supported by tanks, heavy artillery, fighters, bombers, and a powerful fleet including an aircraft carrier, as the PLA swept across southern China. Why was such an apparently hostile military buildup by die British, which surpassed anything the Americans did before the Korean War, ignored in this work? Zhai's neglect ofHong Kong either leads to or reflects a failure to put into perspective not only Britain's China policy, but also the PRC's policy toward die British and an important element in Anglo-American cooperation. Since the© 1995 by University pRC's foreign policy was focused upon national reunification, why did Beijing igofHawai 'iPressnQre ^ Hong Kong quesuon? JnJ5 [s particularlyodd since Britain had made a wartime commitment to discuss the future of Hong Kong after the defeat ofJapan with die government of China, which under British law was the PRC govern- 290 China Review International: Vol. 2, No. 1, Spring 1995 ment by January 1950. Likewise, this omission means Zhai has overlooked die fact that Britain's policy toward die U.S. in the Far East was also, to an extent, dictated by die British need and policy to enlist U.S. support in the defense of Hong Kong, particularly should die PRC invade widi Soviet backing. In short, Zhai is reasonably good at reconstructing the policy debates on his chosen topics as represented in the archives and personal memoirs that he has consulted. He is weak in working out the frameworks upon which were based die policies of die diree powers concerned, and has failed to identify the unifying theme in their triangular relations. This work also suffers from another serious omission: it completely ignores Taiwan or the Republic of China as an actor even though the two Taiwan Straits crises constitute about a quarter of the book. This is a pity, as important questions such as Taipei's input into the making of the United States' China policy— for example, over the level ofU.S. military involvements during the two Straits crises—has not been taken properly into account. Zhai's analysis ofU.S. policy toward die Straits crises is hollow because he ignores the actual military situation there, particularly...