Book Review: China Goes Global: The Partial Power by David Shambaugh
China Goes Global: The Partial Power by David Shambaugh. Oxford: OUP. 9780199860142 Hardcover, 432 pages 2013. £20.
Living in China, one notices that Western expatriates there generally have a much less alarmist view of China’s rise than their countrymen back home often have. Not infrequently can you hear some variation of the phrase, ‘China is a lot less scary up close.’ Though often appearing implacable when seen from New York or London, they say, China disaggregates into just so much tumult and disorder when experienced firsthand in the tenements of Chongqing or the maddening bustle of Shenzhen.
This repeated, and collective, experience of China - the ‘up close’ view - tells the story not so much of the unstoppable rise of a Great Power, but of a deeply confused and insecure society, endlessly fixated on its own problems and uncertain about its present and future place in the world - hardly the picture one gets from the dominant narrative in Western media outlets. In his timely and highly readable monograph, distinguished China scholar Professor David Shambaugh asserts that the macro-scale reality of Chinese power has more in common with the ‘up close’ narrative than is commonly or regularly appreciated. China, in the words of the subtitle, should rather be understood as a ‘Partial Power.’
Examining China’s global presence in five different dimensions (Diplomacy, Economics, Global Governance, Culture, Military Power), Shambaugh traces each one first across its reach, then plumbs its depth. With copious data and not a few anecdotes of his own experience, Shambaugh lays out systematically the case that China’s reach, while undeniably global, is almost universally shallow: despite being a member of every major IGO, China neither seeks nor accepts leadership in any major international project; its foreign policy is truculent, reactionary, and driven almost exclusively by domestic politics; its non-resource-related economic activities abroad are very limited and have mostly foundered; its ‘sui generis’ culture is a mystery to outsiders and the Communist Party’s attempts to explain it to the world have been almost insurmountably inept; it has hard but no soft power, commands powerful awe but no deep admiration, has plentiful collaborators but no true friends.
However, Shambaugh does not intensively or specifically dissect China’s political and economic activities in Central or Southeast Asia, where its presence has been relatively more robust. While not only demonstrating some important exceptions to his carefully-established rules, this could also have helped strengthen his case vis-a-vis China’s endeavors in OECD countries. That said, given Shambaugh’s target audience, and the additional pages and complexity such an analysis would entail, and as Western alarmism is understandably more focused on Chinese forays in the West, I would wager it was most likely omitted for editorial reasons. But its absence is regrettable nonetheless. Moreover, Shambaugh’s regular lexical identification of the prime political actor as ‘China,’ rather than ‘The Chinese Communist Party’ has the net effect of obscuring the true nature of the political system and the fundamental interests at play. But this transgression is not unique to his work.
All that said, whether his assertions are universally true is not finally the point. More than anything else, this work offers a welcome sedative for those agitated by Sinomania. Shambaugh is certainly not naive to the potential disruptions to the global system portended by China’s re-emergence, as his earlier work has consistently shown. But, in arguing that its rise has not, to date, been as comprehensive as is often thought, and that it is filled with its own share of foibles and missteps, the author reminds us that China is often even more confused and uncomfortable with its new global role than the West is.
Shambaugh’s implication for those in international policy and global affairs is clear enough, and has been made also by other scholars and policy figures, notably Joseph Nye: treating China explicitly as a threat is the surest way to guarantee it becomes threatening. Appreciating the partiality of China’s rise thus far underscores the room remaining to shape it carefully henceforward. Nowhere is it written that China’s global presence must result either in reactionary nationalistic xenophobia or Sino-Confucian domination of the global system. The reality is likely to be something altogether less spectacular, and more manageable, so long as we maintain the presence of mind to allow it to emerge.
Peter Marino holds an MSc in Global Politics from the London School of Economics. He is the founder and Executive Director of Inform, a New York and London-based international news and analysis group.
