Asia and Pacific

The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order

BY RUSH DOSHI. Oxford University Press, 2021, 432 pp.

Stronger: Adapting America’s China Strategy in an Age of Competitive Interdependence

BY RYAN HASS. Yale University Press, 2021, 240 pp.

The best U.S. policy toward China would be based on an accurate assessment of Beijing’s strategic ambitions. These valuable books present the debate about that policy in clear terms and pose critical questions for Washington. It is indisputable that China views the United States as the main threat to its security, but that does not answer the question of how far Beijing intends to extend its own power. Does China merely seek more influence in existing international institutions? Does it want to dominate its region? Does it seek to displace the United

States entirely as the dominant global power? Doshi, who assumed the position of China director on the U.S. National Security Council after writing this book, makes a strong argument for the worstcase scenario, in which China’s long-term aims are to break up the U.S. alliance system, establish a global network of military bases, monopolize cutting-edge technologies, dominate trade with most countries, and foster authoritarian elites around the world. As evidence, he quotes extensively from the often obscure writings and speeches of Chinese leaders and thinkers, then infers their concrete meaning from China’s increasingly assertive recent actions. He rejects as unrealistic both proposals for accommodation and strategies to subvert the regime. Instead, he suggests policies the United States could adopt to at once “blunt” China’s influence through more active multilateral diplomacy and “rebuild” the U.S.-centered international order by strengthening its alliances and encouraging domestic revival.

Hass, who served on the National Security Council under President

Barack Obama, offers an equally thoughtful and informative analysis, but one that differs in significant ways from that of Doshi. He does not think China seeks to export its governance model, create a Sinocentric political or military bloc, or eliminate U.S. influence in international institutions. Beijing’s primary interests are to protect the regime from overthrow, secure control over its claimed national territories (including Taiwan), and maintain the international economic access necessary to sustain prosperity at home. In pursuit of these goals, China wants to weaken or eliminate the U.S. alliance system in Asia, stifle critical voices abroad, and gain an equal say in global institutions. China recognizes, however, that the United States still has power and that other major countries and regions, such as India, Japan, and Europe, will not accept Chinese domination. Hass therefore recommends some of the same policies as Doshi, such as strengthening U.S. alliances and engaging multilateral institutions, but also counsels the

United States to welcome a stronger Chinese role in international rule-making, accept the need of many countries to balance between China and the United States, and seek coordination in areas of common interest, such as climate change and global public health.

Immigrant Incorporation in East Asian Democracies

BY ERIN AERAN CHUNG. Cambridge University Press, 2020, 270 pp.

Shrinking birthrates and growing life expectancy have created a crisis of aging in East Asian societies, but a commitment to ethnocultural purity prevents the obvious fix: immigration. Most immigrants, if they can stay in the countries at all, must retain their foreign citizenship, sometimes for generations; only foreign brides are normally allowed to naturalize. In recent decades, however, immigrants have achieved some new rights in the three East Asian democracies studied in this book—Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. In each case, civil society actors drove the process in different ways. Progress has been slowest in Taiwan, where the pro-immigrant movement was overshadowed by stronger movements concerned with protecting jobs, increasing respect for aboriginal communities, and asserting Taiwan’s separate identity from China. In Japan, local governments and volunteer groups provided services for foreigners similar to those available to citizens. The strongest support for immigrants emerged in South Korea, where the progressive labor, religious, and human rights movements that grew out of the struggle for democracy in the 1980s fought for a full range of labor protections for guest workers. But in all three places, even naturalized immigrants continue to face discrimination.

Chung’s informative study offers a fresh view on political movements and racial attitudes in Asian democracies.

Coup, King, Crisis: A Critical Interregnum in Thailand

EDITED BY PAVIN CHACHAVALPONGPUN. Yale Southeast Asia Studies, 2020, 379 pp.

The death in 2016 of the revered king Bhumibol Adulyadej, who had reigned for 70 years, intensified a long-running crisis of legitimacy in Thai politics. In 2014, the military, fearing that the king’s son, Vajiralongkorn, would not be a popular successor, had carried out a coup—the country’s 12th since its transition to a constitutional monarchy in 1932—and intensified its use of the lese majesty law to repress critics of the monarchy. The new king turned out to be even more selfish, impulsive, and violent than feared. In this informative volume, 14 leading specialists on Thailand probe the stalemate between the conservative power structure of the monarchy, the military, and Buddhist leaders, on the one hand, and opposition forces among urban youth, the lower-middle class, and rural residents of the north and the northeast, on the other. The palace and the military cling to each other ever more tightly and rule ever less competently, a political alliance in obvious decline but incapable of either retreat or reform.

The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier

BY BENNO WEINER. Cornell University Press, 2020, 312 pp.

Conflicting Memories: Tibetan History Under Mao Retold; Essays and Primary Documents

EDITED BY ROBERT BARNETT, BENNO WEINER, AND FRANÇOISE ROBIN. Brill, 2020, 712 pp.

Forbidden Memory: Tibet During the Cultural Revolution

BY TSERING WOESER. TRANSLATED BY SUSAN T. CHEN. EDITED BY ROBERT BARNETT. Potomac Books, 2020, 448 pp.

Beijing’s difficulty incorporating Tibetans into the Chinese nation goes back to the earliest days of communist rule. These three books offer precious insights into a hidden history, hinting at the range of stories that will be told if the region’s archives are ever opened. During a brief period of access, Weiner was able to conduct research in the government and party archives of the Zeku Tibetan Autonomous County, in Qinghai Province, poring over documents dating from 1953 to 1960. Once the new communist government had pacified resistance, it merged two organizational systems: Tibetan tribal chieftains and religious leaders manned the government, and Han cadres from outside the region staffed the more powerful Chinese Community Party organization. Beijing was unsatisfied with the results of that system. The party sought to persuade the local communities to identify with a larger, multiethnic Chinese nation but faced various forms of passive and active resistance. In 1958, the party moved decisively to destroy the local power structure and create pastoral collectives. The Tibetans and the Hui Muslims in the region rebelled but were repressed with great violence, which was followed by a severe famine. Parallel events occurred across the Tibetan Plateau, creating a legacy that shapes HanTibetan relations today.

Conflicting Memories interweaves translated excerpts from 15 sources from the post-Mao era—speeches, memoirs, film scripts, oral histories, fiction, narratives of spiritual journeys, and others—with 13 interpretive essays by impressively qualified Western and exiled Tibetan scholars. Several documents present the official Chinese view that the imposition of Han rule in the 1950s and 1960s was essentially benevolent and successful, even if some mistakes were made. But most of the sources, chiefly those published unofficially or outside China, offer the victims’ perspectives on forced labor, imprisonment, torturous “struggle sessions” (during which people were forced to publicly confess to various misdeeds), and the destruction of monasteries and religious relics. All the contributions by Tibetans express an intense commitment to their distinctive culture and religion.

Woeser’s book takes up the story with the arrival of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Her father was a military propaganda officer who used his personal camera to document the public humiliation and torture of leading monks and aristocrats, the destruction of historic sites, triumphal rallies and marches, and posed images of smiling Tibetan youths holding portraits of Mao. Years after her father’s death, she decided to publish the

photos abroad. Her close reading of each picture tells readers as much as she could find out about who is portrayed, what happened to them, and the memories triggered in survivors when she showed them the images.