China's Foreign Political and Economic Relations

Sebastian Heilmann is founding director of the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) in Berlin and professor of comparative government at the University of Trier. Dirk H. Schmidt is senior lecturer at the University of Trier.

• Chapter 1: Introduction: What Does China Want? Chapter 2: Foreign Policy Decision MakingChapter 3: Reorientations in China’s Foreign PolicyChapter 4: China's Security PolicyChapter 5: China in the World EconomyChapter 6: China’s Role in International Environmental and Climate PolicyChapter 7: China and International Human Rights Policy Chapter 8: The Taiwan IssueChapter 9: China’s Relations with Japan and KoreaChapter 10: Sino-American RelationsChapter 11: China’s Relations with EuropeChapter 12: Empire and Guerrilla: China’s Multifaceted Foreign RelationsSources and LiteratureAppendix: Chinese-English Glossary

This excellent book offers an outstanding overview of China's international relations, going beyond conventional analyses of its 'peaceful rise.' Heilmann and Schmidt thoughtfully examine a huge amount of information on China's foreign economic and security policy, challenging the 'Cold War-era mentality' of the Western academic literature on China's foreign relations. The book shows that instead of becoming a market-based, democratic power, tightly integrated in the Western-dominated global order, China is challenging this order with its own concepts of order, even if it engages in substantive cooperation with the US and the EU. The first part examines China's foreign policy objectives, the foreign policy decision-making process, the changes in China's foreign policy after the adoption of structural economic reforms in 1979, China's security, environmental, and international human rights policy, and its spectacular rise to the top level of the global economy in less than 30 years. The second discusses the potential for armed conflict over the status of Taiwan, and China's relations with Japan, North and South Korea, the US, and the EU. . . .Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, and research collections.