Saturday 8 October 2011

US-CHINA: A NEW BOOK BY A. L. FRIEDBERG

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BOOK REVIEW: US-CHINA POWER IMBALANCE THREATENS ASIA

A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia by Aaron L Friedberg

Reviewed by Benjamin A Shobert

Asia Times, October 8, 2011

The extremes are easy: China as villain at one, pursuing global hegemony achieved through a mish-mash of totalitarianism, socialism and capitalism. Or, if you prefer, China as the benevolent rising power whose pursuits should be understood only to the extent they enable the country to achieve its economic aims.

The obvious danger in these extremes is that they are mutually exclusive and, as such, have successfully promoted inaction. For Aaron Friedberg, professor at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School and author of the new A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia, pursuing the status quo in the face of China's rise would be a strategic error.

Friedberg's book is less a call to action and more a series of increasingly probative questions and macro-observations that seek to determine whether American policy towards China has grown complacent and, if so, whether we have considered the mid and long-term implications of our complacency.

(...) [artículo aquí]

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