Jean A. Garrison’s China and the Energy Equation in Asia is an excellent book that examines China’s increasingly diffuse policymaking apparatus. In all, there are seven well presented chapters that cover a diverse range of topics including China’s energy policy sub-system, the key actors and institutions underlying energy policy development in China, energy relations and resources in Russia and Kazakhstan, and the wildly competitive nature of pipeline politics in East Asia. The author’s concluding chapter on the ‘implications of China’s quest for energy security’ is an especially salient and thought-provoking addition. Ultimately, Garrison’s in-depth and sophisticated investigation into the principle motivators behind China’s efforts to secure external energy sources and promote transparency and cooperation with socalled ‘regional rivals’ casts considerable doubt over ‘hawkish’ depictions of the country’s ‘unitary’ intentions. It is a timely and topical supplement to the evergrowing literature on Chinese foreign policy and politics. However, the book is not without its shortcomings. First, the author relies heavily on the ‘bureaucratic politics perspective’ to substantiate the claim that multiple internal administrative and economic units have an equally profound impact on China’s foreign and energy policy regimes. As a result, Garrison suggests that the central government is frequently hamstrung by conflicting and contradictory institutional and parochial preferences. I found this proposition very intriguing and I was open to some convincing, but her appraisal created the misleading impression that ‘authority and influence’ are now evenly distributed across several ministries, agencies, and state corporations. While it may be true that a varied range of interests contribute to the energy policy debate, it is difficult to accept that they all possess equivalent levels of influence, without compelling evidence of Beijing’s relative responsiveness to support this hypothesis, or the authority to institute a permanent course of action. Characterizing China as both fragmented and authoritarian seems to miss the point that superordinate/subordinate institutional arrangements (that is, a J OF CHIN POLIT SCI (2011) 16:449–450 DOI 10.1007/s11366-011-9174-y