Playing Our Game : Why China's Rise Doesn't Threaten The West

In brute-force struggles for survival, such as the two World Wars, disorganization and divisions within an enemy alliance are to one's own advantage. However, most international security politics involve coercive diplomacy and negotiations short of all-out war. Worse Than a Monolith demonstrates that when states are engaged in coercive diplomacy--combining threats and assurances to influence the behavior of real or potential adversaries--divisions, rivalries, and lack of coordination within the opposing camp often make it more difficult to prevent the onset of conflict, to prevent existing conflicts from escalating, and to negotiate the end to those conflicts promptly. Focusing on relations between the Communist and anti-Communist alliances in Asia during the Cold War, Thomas Christensen explores how internal divisions and lack of cohesion in the two alliances complicated and undercut coercive diplomacy by sending confusing signals about strength, resolve, and intent. In the case of the Communist camp, internal mistrust and rivalries catalyzed the movement's aggressiveness in ways that we would not have expected from a more cohesive movement under Moscow's clear control.

Reviewing newly available archival material, Christensen examines the instability in relations across the Asian Cold War divide, and sheds new light on the Korean and Vietnam wars.

While recognizing clear differences between the Cold War and post-Cold War environments, he investigates how efforts to adjust burden-sharing roles among the United States and its Asian security partners have complicated U.S.-China security relations since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

For anyone who wants to better understand China and its economic and political relations to the West, On Equal Terms offers front-row insight. Exploring China's state-capitalist economic model and the unique qualities and ideals of Chinese culture that can make difficult for Westerners to understand its approach to business interactions, the book looks to the future, explaining how China and the United States can cooperate to solve some of the world's major problems.

Covering the extraordinary changes taking place in China and China's relationship with America and the West over ten powerful chapters, the book looks at China's state-capitalist model of governance, how history affects her behavior in foreign policy, how China is emerging as an economic world power, that products are not made but assembled in China, that China is not one big market but many markets, and much more.

• Provides an inside view on the future of China and America from an expert with personal experience on both sides of the story
• Explains the sometimes mysterious worlds of "Guanxi" and "Mianzi"—the notions of giving, saving, and preserving "face" in business and cultural relationships that many Westerners struggle to understand
• A truly up-to-date resource that gives reader's the most recent information about Chinese-American relations

China and America need to cooperate in order to solve the major problems of the world, and On Equal Terms gives readers the information they need to improve their business and professional relationships in China.