Rising Star

China's diplomatic strategy has changed dramatically since the mid-1990s, creating both challenges and opportunities for other world powers. Through a combination of pragmatic security policies, growing economic clout, and increasingly deft diplomacy, China has established productive and increasingly solid relationships throughout Asia and around the globe. Yet U.S. policymakers have only just begun to comprehend these critical changes. Here, noted China analyst Bates Gill provides a coherent framework for understanding China's new security diplomacy and guiding America's China policy forward. Gill offers a comprehensive and far-reaching analysis of the transformation in China's security diplomacy, persuasively making the case for a more nuanced and focused policy toward Beijing.

Over the past decade, China's approach to regional and global security affairs has become more proactive, practical, and constructive, a trend favoring U.S. interests in many ways. At the same time, China's new strategy has also bolstered its international influence and may enhance its ability to resolve thorny issues--such as Taiwan's future--on its own terms. In exploring these dynamics, Gill focuses on Chinese policy in three areas: regional security mechanisms, nonproliferation and arms control, and questions of sovereignty and intervention. Looking to the future, he offers specific recommendations for a balanced and realistic approach that emphasizes what the two countries have in common, rather than what divides them.

As a rising star in the constellation of great powers, China and its new security diplomacy present the international community with a tremendous challenge. Successfully managing this transition will require informed realism, astute management, and nimble diplomacy. Timely and vital, Rising Star offers thoughtful guidance on how to approach these tasks and provides valuable insights for understanding Chinese foreign policy.