china IR rev final sept 2023

Shyam Saran How China Sees India and the World. The authoritative
Account of the India-China relationship, Juggernaut Publication, 2022.
So how does China perceive India? According to the author Chinese perceive themselves as the most consequential and
most important of ancient civilizations. Saran uses contemporary Chinese scholarship, CCP leadership speeches and
writings, and his experiences as a diplomat and foreign secretary. Based on understanding, what drives their worldview,
an assessment can be made of China’s likely future behavior. This book complements Vijay Gokale’s The Long Game:
How the Chinese Negotiate with India.
Thomas J. Biersteker, Robert Carlin & Chung-In Moon Understanding Kim
Jong-Un’s North Korea. Regime Dynamics, Negotiation and Engagement,
Lexington Books, 2022.
This book is organized around an assessment of how Kim Jong-Un’s regime calculates, balances, and addresses the
various key policy challenges it faces based on the three author’s wide-ranging experience with North Korea. This gives
the authors a hands-on experience with how North Korea works. Contrary to the perceptions, myths, and single-issue
studies – such as dynastic survival or economy-based analyses, this study provides an integrated approach and
constitutes an essential contribution to our understanding of North Korea. Required reading for those who want to reengineer
the six-party talks toward peace on the Korean peninsula are Mi-Yeon Hur’s The Six-Party Talks on North
Korea: Dynamic Interactions among the Principal States or on the same issue by the prolific Leszek Buszynski ‘s
Negotiating with North Korea: The Six-Party Talks and the nuclear Issue. Indeed, the strategy of incurring costs on
Pyongyang is a harbinger of conflict and seems to have created another unproductive and unstable stalemate. Jagannath
P. Panda addresses the power play among major Asian powers around Korea and its impact on the Indo-Pacific region
from an Indian perspective in The Korean Peninsula and Indo-Pacific Power Politics. Bo Gao examines sub-state and
non-state actors’ influence on Chinese-DPRK relations in China’s Economic engagement in North Korea. Wonjae
Hwang’s South Korea’s Changing Foreign Policy: The Impact of Democratization and Globalization provides a
perspective on Korea's foreign policy. Marco Milani, Fiori, and Dian’s The Korean Paradox: Domestic Political Divide
and Foreign Policy in South Korea approach the subject by studying beliefs, traditions, and identities. Finally, Jongwoo
Han, in The Metamorphosis of US-Korea Relations, traces the evolution of US-Korea relations from US aspirations of
linking-up Alaska, the Philippines, The Samoan Islands, and Korea to complete a defense perimeter in the Pacific and
its dominance in the Asian market. This led to a decline of the Chinese sphere of influence and reduced size of Russian
power in the Pacific, and to the rise of Japan, which brought about all sorts of ills to the Korean peninsula, such as
Japanese colonization, the division of Korean along the McArthur-line following the occupation of Japan and
subsequently the Korean War due China’s backing and Stalin’s eagerness for war and for revanche stimulated by the
North Korean regime’s desire for challenging the post-WWII-status quo. According to Wasif Khan (2022:60),
considerations of Mao were three-fold: First, Beijing’s need for a buffer zone ideally ideologically sympathetic to its
North East. Second, the non-recognition of the US of the PRC. Third, an interest in providing sufficient Chinese
capabilities, upending American troops in South Korea, withdrawing all US troops from Taiwan, and the PRC’s
resumption of China Taipei’s seat in the UNSC. Thus, the Korean War broke out, which ended along the 38 th parallel,
drawn up by General MacArthur. Han believes the US-Korea relationship has come around full circle and that it is time
for the US to recognize North Korea in the interest of a settlement of the Korean question. Given that Korea has been
used as a staging ground for both Chinese incursions into Japan and, more recently, Japanese colonization of Korea and
incursions into China, and Western projected interest in preventing a Japanese-Chinese condominium, compared with
Japan’s historical tendency to tilt towards the stronger party in Asia, care needs to be taken about the form. Content
Korean unification may take and impact the balance of power in North East Asia. Renewing the peace and cooperation
treaty between Japan and China is not anathema to Western interests. But how would China and Japan react to a unified
and strong Korea?
Brian Gewirtz Never Turns Back—China and the forbidden history of the
1980s, Belknap Press, 2022.
This is a rather interesting book on the discussion taking place not only on the streets and a fringe group of dissident
public intellectuals but inside the corridors of power on the possibility of China transitioning to democracy in 1980’ies
based on Chinese archives, official accounts, diaries, and memoirs, some which have only recently become available.
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