BUT ALL is not perfect. The essays in Nancy Bernkopf Tucker's Dangerous Strait analyze both cross-strait relations and U.S. policy toward the Taiwan issue, providing essential context and thoughts on how to avert disaster. In her own contribution, Tucker (full disclosure: this author is my wife) argues in favor of an American policy of strategic ambiguity. Michael Swaine's essays in the Tucker collection and in Shambaugh's Power Shift detail the arms race on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Thomas Christensen's article in the Johnston and Ross volume exudes pessimism. He suggests that if the men in Beijing see Taiwan slipping away, the threat of American intervention would not likely deter them. He notes that the Chinese have used force when they perceived that the opportunity to achieve strategic objectives was on the verge of being lost--and that they have used force even against more powerful adversaries, as in their attack on UN forces in Korea in 1950 and on Soviet forces on Chenbao Island in 1969. Perhaps fortunately, recent political elections on Taiwan have favored politicians more solicitous of Beijing's concerns, but the situation remains too volatile for comfort.

The question that haunts Robert Sutter, both in his China's Rise in Asia and in his contribution to Power Shift, is whether Beijing's current strategy, emphasizing China's "peaceful rise" or "peaceful development", is tactical or strategic. When China completes the transition to great power status, will it continue to seek constructive partnerships with other powers and remain a benign presence in Asia? Sutter is skeptical about China's intentions, suspecting that when China has the power, it will become more assertive in relations with its neighbors and more aggressive in its efforts to replace American influence in Asia. His concerns mirror those of the Japanese and of several Southeast Asian states. Certainly such behavior would be consistent with Chinese practice over the centuries.

Several of the other essayists in the Shambaugh volume are more optimistic, stressing China's integration in the existing world order. David Lampton contends that Beijing's leaders are convinced that the drive for military power brought down the Soviet Union and that the Chinese are getting everything they want through cooperation and what he calls their "remunerative" (economic) power--everything, that is, except Taiwan. He concedes readily that deterioration of cross-strait relations could easily disrupt China's effort to reassure its neighbors of its peaceful intent. Bates Gill notes that China's approach to its "new security concept", first articulated in the mid-1990s and reflected in its defense white papers, has become less stridently anti-American and more confident that the world is shaping up in ways beneficial to the nation's future. He points to indications that the Chinese may at long last stop seeing themselves as history's victims.

Gill also quotes Hu Jintao's senior foreign policy advisor, Qian Qichen, conceding improvement in Chinese-American relations in 2002, but insisting that "there is no change in the basic contradictions" between the two countries. A similar note was sounded by Wang Jisi, probably China's most highly respected academic analyst of Chinese-American affairs. In a recent essay, originally published in Chinese in a journal of the Central Party School and revised for Foreign Affairs, he stresses his leaders' efforts to cooperate with Washington but concedes "China and the United States cannot hope to establish truly friendly relations."

IN ALL of the books under review--except for the one focused on Taiwan--there is a consensus among the authors that China today is very much a part of the international community and that its current strategy is to assume the role of a responsible power in order to defuse concerns about its rapidly growing economic and military strength. Similarly, there appears to be a consensus within the Chinese foreign policy elite, military as well as civilian, that a good working relationship with the United States is essential. China's efforts to resolve the standoff over North Korea's nuclear ambitions are the most obvious example, but its increasing willingness to participate in multilateral forums with its neighbors and to find common ground with India and Russia also fits the pattern. Only its frequent and intensifying contretemps with Japan reveal another side, perhaps perceived in Beijing as a safer way to satisfy nationalist fervor while the leadership seeks accommodation with the Americans.

Goldstein, whose focus on China's grand strategy is obviously the sharpest, is a little warier than Shambaugh and Lampton but less concerned than Sutter about China reverting to offensive conduct once its power is sufficient to challenge American influence in Asia or to solve its differences with neighbors unilaterally. He, like most of the others, recognizes that Washington's responses to China's rise will play a major role in determining how China will act as the day approaches when its economy is expected to surpass that of the United States and its military may conceivably narrow the enormous gap that exists between it and the American military today. But he makes a very persuasive case that it will continue to be in China's long-term interest to pursue a cooperative strategy. Quite simply, it has worked: It has broad support among China's elite; it does not sacrifice future flexibility; and the military option is unattractive. He does not see China maximizing its military capabilities for the foreseeable future.

None of this suggests that China's leaders will share the values most Americans hold dear in the next thirty or forty years, if ever. Wang Jisi concedes that there remain more profound differences between China and the United States than between any other two major powers in the world. Elizabeth Economy of the Council on Foreign Relations, writing recently in the International Herald Tribune, decried China's despoiling of developing countries across the world in its lust for their natural resources--and its willingness to support regimes such as that of Sudan, which much of the rest of the world considers guilty of vicious brutality toward its own citizens. China's own human rights record is not likely to improve any time soon, as demonstrated almost daily in reports of its treatment of dissent. Nor will China cease to press on with its desire for more influence at American expense, as evidenced by its success in dislodging South Korea from America's orbit.

Nonetheless, if China's grand strategy for the foreseeable future is pinned to obtaining a good working relationship with the United States as the fulcrum for its "peaceful" development, America's leaders have little choice but to play along. Despite China's dependence on the American market for its phenomenal economic growth, Washington has little leverage with China. Prudence dictates that the United States should persuade China of its ability and willingness to welcome China's rise and that it will cooperate with Beijing in its bid to ascend--just as President Theodore Roosevelt assured the Chinese one hundred years ago. It must also make clear that it will not tolerate a return to China's revisionist behavior. In 2005, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick tried to send that message when he called upon the Chinese to assume a "stakeholder" role in the world. Thus far, Beijing's response has been ambiguous--decidedly irresponsible in its actions in Burma, Sudan, Uzbekistan, and Zimbabwe, but allowing for some hope that it will support American efforts to stem nuclear proliferation by Iran and North Korea. The jury is still out.

Warren I. Cohen is Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and a senior scholar in the Asia Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Essay Types: Book Review