china IR rev final sept 2023

Fang Cai, Xiaojing Zhang & Guopeng Yu Constructing Political Economy
with Chinese Characteristics, Springer, 2022.
This book analyses the characteristics of China’s economic operation in the new era and explores Xi’s thoughts on
China’s development. The book is divided into six parts. First, the guiding principles and main contents of the political
economy of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Second addresses epistemology and methodology. The third part
reveals the extensive logic of the new normal of economic development from the time and space dimensions. The fourth
part examines the purpose, motivation, necessary conditions, and measurement of the scale of action according to the
new development concept. The fifth part discusses the path of building a modern economic system. Finally, the last part
focuses on how China’s wisdom and China’s solution could contribute to global governance and the promotion of
development. An antidote is provided by Emmanuel Dubois de Prisque & Sophie du Rocher Le Chine et le Monde:
essai sur la sino-mondialisation.
Ho-Fung Hung City on Edge: Hong Kong under Chinese rule, Cambridge,
UP, 2022
Hong Kong has maintained precarious freedom at the edge of competing world powers for decades. In the City on
Edge, Ho Fung Hung offers a timely and engaging account of Hing Kong’s development from pre-colonial times to the
present, focusing on the post-1997 handover period. Through careful analysis of vast economic data, a myriad of
political events, and intricate networks of actors and ideas, Hung offers readers insight into the fraught economic,
political, and social forces that led to the 2019 uprising while situating the protests in the context of global finance and
the geopolitics of US-China rivalry.
Susan L. Shirk Overreach: How China Derailed its Peaceful Rise, OUP,
2022.
As the book’s titles suggest, something has changed in China. It no longer reassures the world that its rise to power will
be peaceful, believing that internal threats to the Communist Party’s control were the leading cause of a restrained
approach to foreign policy. Instead, they reassured the outside world of China’s peaceful intentions to facilitate the
country's inevitable economic ascendance and prevent a backlash. Then something changed. China went from fragile
super-power to global heavyweight, threatening Taiwan and its Neighbours in the South China Sea, tightening its grip
on Hong Kong, and openly challenging the United States for preeminence economically and technologically militarily.
China began to overreach. To counter it, Shirk argues that the worst mistake the rest of the world, and the United States
in particular, can make is to overreact. Understanding the domestic roots of China’s actions will enable us to avoid the
mistakes that could lead to war.
Jianwei Wang & Weiqing Song The European Union in the Asia-Pacific:
Rethinking Europe’s strategies and policies, Manchester UP, 2022.
It is to Hans Maull, Gerald Segal, and Jusuf Wanandi’s book Europe and the Asia Pacific that we owe the origins of
the three geographical terms: Asia-Europe (Assyrian: Asu-Ereb), the Asia Pacific, encompassing the Americas, Russia,
Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific, and Pacific Asia inclusive China, Japan and South Korea and the Asian
countries on the pacific rim. The implicit assumption is that the European Union may contribute to the forging of an
East Asian caucus by exploiting the European’s desire for markets and their bad conscience. The EU, however, doesn’t
have a policy towards the Asia-Pacific. Instead, the European Union has an Asia policy that needs a policy review and
an Indo-Pacific strategy hatched in part in exchange for US assistance in Ukraine and the Middle East, where the EU
felt let down by the Obama administration 20 . The authors claim, however, that the EU has defined the Asia-Pacific since
the 1980’ies as one of its strategic targets on its ambitious road toward a global power. Therefore, they contend
correctly that it is high time to evaluate the EU’s performance in its Asian policy. The EU must redefine its interests and
roles and rethink its strategies and policies towards the dynamic and ever-important Asia Pacific region. This book
addresses this theme by elaborating on the general context, significant issues, and countries in the EU’s Asia (Pacific)
20
See Alice Ekman China and the battle for coalitions, Challiot Paper, The circle of friends versus the Indo-Pacific
Strategy. Or better: Felix Heiduk Europe’s Foray into the Indo-Pacific”, European Review of International Studies,2022.
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