Navigating Sovereignty World Politics Lost in China [Paperback]

In this book, the author undertakes a postcolonial analysis of identities the Chinese state uses to confront world politics and globalization. Because these identities are created at the confluence of Western modernity and Confucian tradition, two elements that are continually reinterpreted themselves, the result is an ambiguity regarding the identities best suited to explain Chinese behavior. The author argues that this uncertainty is not a new condition but one that reaches back to end of the nineteenth century. It is by understanding this ambiguity surrounding identities that will in turn help present -day authorities predict the future course of Chinese behavior in world politics.

This is an iconoclastic book. A reader with an open mind, seeing the new meanings that Shih finds in old concepts, can learn much here both about China and about international relations theory. Shih throws fresh light on general notions like state or negotiation, as well as on Chinese topics like the perennial semi-other Japan or cross-Strait relations. Mark Twain, Lee Teng-hui, Edward Said, mathematical modelling, and Zhou Enlai all provide grist for this large mill. Shih criticizes statists (realists, liberals, and constructivists alike) for justifying violence. He shows that power is a purpose of policy. He explores motives, not just interests. He shows how territorial sovereignty has been inadequate as the essence of a Chinese state, even in modern times. - Lynn T. White III, Princeton University

This is a rare and rigorous analysis. The more you digest it, the more you get out of it, and the more it provokes your thinking, the deeper it makes you want to go. - Dr. Sheng Li Jun, Senior Fellow, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Chih-yu Shih has given us a book that forces us to see China and its relationship to the larger world beyond its borders in hosts of new and very different ways. Using theories derived from orló!