The Rise of Xi Jinping and China's Superpower Future, by Chun Han Wong - Book review by Benjamin Tze Ern Ho (H-Net Reviews)

H-Net Reviews

Wong, Chun Han. Party of One: The Rise of Xi Jinping and China's Superpower Future. : Avid Reader Press, 2023. xvi + 395 pp. $20.99 (paper), ISBN 9781982185749.$30.00 (cloth), ISBN 9781982185732.

Reviewed by Benjamin Tze Ern Ho (Nanyang Technological University)
Published on H-Diplo (February, 2025)

Commissioned by Seth Offenbach (Bronx Community College, The City University of New York)

Printable Version: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=61176

Among contemporary China watchers, there is a view that President Xi Jinping—in more than a decade of ruling China—has refashioned and remodeled the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and China’s political landscape into his own image. A case in point can be seen in the emphasis in recent years (particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic) on national security concerns instead of economic development, consequently affecting China’s relations with the rest of the world (particularly the West and the United States, which Beijing views as having designs on undermining its national security). Not surprising, scholars have attempted to divine what Xi’s worldview might be and how his thinking has shaped China’s foreign policy practices. Some notable works in recent years include Kerry Brown’s Xi Jinping: A Study in Power (2022), Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung’s The Political Thought of Xi Jinping (2023), and Kevin Rudd’s On Xi Jinping: How Xi's Marxist Nationalism Is Shaping China and the World (2024).

While these widely acclaimed books have provided good clues and insights into the thought forms and political world that Xi inhabits, their analyses tend to focus on specific aspects of Xi, such as his personality (Brown and Rudd) and his political ideas (Tsang and Cheung). Chun Han Wong’s Party of One moves the needle on the study of Xi in a decisive manner, in this case, attempting to connect Xi’s ability to effect real changes in China’s sociopolitical space through his executive power vis-à-vis the CCP. Among Chinese scholars, there is an acknowledgment that the CCP is not monolithically defined and that there exists a variety of views, factions, and ideological positions within the party. That said, I argue that under Xi, these factions are rendered powerless or irrelevant unless they happen to square with his own personal views. To evidence this, Wong uses his years of experience as a Wall Street Journal reporter who honed his craft in China. He provides us with a multilayered and multi-textured portrayal of Xi and illustrates how the CCP and China have been thoroughly “Xi-nicized” as Xi has stamped his influence not only within the party but also on the broader Chinese society.

To make sense of Chinese politics these days, one way is to recognize that the CCP sits on top of Chinese society and Xi sits on top of the CCP. By marrying Marxist-Leninist principles of control with a veneer of Chinese traditional thought (taken from the repertoire of Confucian and Legalist ideas), Xi has managed to exert and extend his control of the party and society in ways unimaginable since Mao Zedong—thus making him the paramount leader of modern China today. This is where Wong’s investigation and analysis in writing this book helps his work stand out from other comparable works. By telling the stories of the ordinary Chinese and Chinese officials, Wong is able to weave a compelling narrative of how Xi’s leadership has been decisive in spreading the widespread changes we see today in Chinese society. The common Chinese saying “Heaven is high and the emperor is far away” is sometimes used to lend credence to the belief that many local officials often disregard the wishes of the central authorities in Beijing, especially if these instructions run up against their own local priorities. Reading the Party of One, one comes away with a slightly different take in that “heaven may be high, but the emperor is not far away.” In other words, Xi’s influence is total and his political tentacles and reach go very far. As Wong observes in his analysis of how the party has exacted control over its own cadres (wherever they may be), “the leadership keeps tabs on elite party families through informants within their staff—scrutiny that dissuades many princelings and retired elders from criticizing Xi” (p. 73).

The focus on the mark Xi has made on the party is the strongest and most compelling aspect of the book. All eight chapters are single-mindedly focused on one outcome of Xi’s rule: the party. As I have observed elsewhere, Xi’s derivation of power and influence is intrinsically linked to his preeminence and position in the party.[1] To use a J. K. Rowling analogy from the Harry Potter books, Xi and the party have made “horcruxes” of one another.[2] Without the party with which to execute his wishes and commands, Xi would just be another Chinese citizen (out of the 1.3 billion citizens) or political official (with political ambitions but without the political platform to implement his ideas). Likewise, without a unifying figurehead in the person of Xi, the party would inevitably be consigned to factional struggles and internal competition, and in the worst case it would suffer the same fate as the Soviet Union some three and a half decades ago.

Xi has worked to ensure that party survival is contingent on the party being obedient—even subservient—to his wishes, while his ability to stay in power depends on his mastery of the party and his use of the party apparatus to achieve his own political goals. Unlike Mao who viewed himself as above the party, Xi’s fortunes are wholly linked to his place and position within the party. Wong thus tells the story of Xi’s power and influence within the party, from invoking anti-corruption measures (as of this writing, its defense minister Dong Jun is under investigation for corruption, suffering the same fate as his two predecessors), to writing the rules of governance, rejiggling the economy, and projecting its influence globally. While most of these observations and insights will not be new to seasoned Chinese watchers, Wong does an excellent job unpacking and putting on paper what has hitherto only been discussed or speculated about. His wide contacts of sources within China (intellectuals, dissidents, ordinary citizens) allow him to connect the dots in the Chinese political space and to conclude that “Xi’s efforts [in maintaining domestic stability] have yielded a nonpareil system of social control” (p. 92). By allowing his contacts to tell their stories where possible, Wong provides us with a kaleidoscope of narratives testifying to the overarching narrative: Xi’s words are law, what he says becomes policy.

Since Deng Xiaoping’s reforms and opening up in the late 1970s, China has prided itself on wanting to be open to the outside world so as to ensure economic growth. Even during the Tiananmen period of the late 1980s, where relations between China and the West witnessed a downturn, Beijing’s purge of liberal-minded colleagues was only short-lived as Deng himself embarked on his southern tour in 1992. This was followed by Jiang Zemin’s declaration that China aimed to build a socialist market economy, enshrining Deng’s path as official orthodoxy. All these have seemed to change under Xi; the party—not the market—reigns supreme. As Wong puts it, what is happening to China today is an economic “hybrid system that combines central planning with market mechanisms, where state and private enterprises act in concert to advance the party’s economic agenda” (p. 131, emphasis added). In other words, what is ultimately important to Xi is not economic efficiency (in which market forces play their role for better or worse) but the party’s benefits as a result of economic policies. The longevity of the party, not the health of the Chinese economy, is ultimately of key importance. A more vivid example would be the extended lockdown by Chinese government during the coronavirus pandemic in which Beijing did not open up almost a full year after many countries started to open their economies and to live with the virus as being endemic. As a result of the draconian measures taken during the pandemic, the Chinese economy tanked and Beijing today is still trying to recover from the economic damage.[3]

Given the above, one may think that Xi’s godlike status within Chinese society will be eternally secure or that there are no areas of weaknesses in Xi’s political armor. This is not the case, and this is where I think Wong’s portrayal of Xi—as being essentially unchallenged from both within and without—is not quite as clear-cut as the Party of One suggests based on my reading. To be fair, Wong in the conclusion makes the correct observation that “Xi’s China is brash but brittle, intrepid yet insecure” (p. 280); however, Wong does not go so far as to quite point out the chinks within the party, unlike other public intellectuals, like Singapore’s Bilahari Kausikan who talks about Xi as being a “single point of failure within the CCP system.”[4] In other words, by arrogating power to himself, Xi is creating a system that is ripe for disaster, especially when things turn sour. The lack of decentralized decision-making power means potential paralysis in decision-making. By second-guessing what Xi likes, rather than what he needs, Chinese officials and policymakers have little agency to “speak truth to power” and instead end up parroting official Chinese-speech. As evidenced by the coronavirus pandemic, Chinese officials in Wuhan were slow to act as they could not make any meaningful decisions until permission was given from the top in the early stages of the pandemic back in January 2020. Likewise, the recent purge of senior officials at the highest echelons of China’s political office, such as its former foreign minister Qin Gang and three defense ministers, suggests a level of incongruence between decision-makers at the top (including Xi) and the information they are given to make decisions (why weren’t these problems spotted and highlighted earlier?).

Seen this way, the problems within the Chinese political system should not be viewed in isolation and as having no bearing to the broader structure that has enabled the existence and even permissiveness of these problems. As William Shakespeare puts it in Hamlet, “there are more things in heaven and earth Horatio than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” One would hope that in sitting at the apex of power in the Chinese political system, Xi’s philosophy of the world would be sufficiently enlightened to recognize that in his party of one, the buck stops with him.

Notes

[1]. Benjamin Ho, “Why Xi Jinping Cannot Back Down on Coronavirus,” National Interest, June 4, 2022.

[2]. In the Harry Potter books, a horcrux is an object in which a dark wizard or a witch had hidden a detached fragment of their soul in order to become immortal or invincible.

[3]. “China Posts Record Deficit in 2022 on Covid Zero, Property Slump,” Business Times, January 30, 2023, https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/international/china-posts-record-deficit-2022-covid-zero-property-slump; and Sun Yu and Yuan Yang, “Why China’s Economic Recovery from Coronavirus Is Widening the Wealth Gap,” Financial Times, August 18, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/e0e2940a-17cb-40ed-8d27-3722c9349a5d.

[4]. Bilahari Kausikan, “Address by Ambassador Bilahari Kausikan at the Third Atal Bihari Vajpayee Memorial Lecture,” Ministry of External Affiars, Government of India, Media Center, January 23, 2023, https://www.mea.gov.in/Speeches-Statements.htm?dtl/36142/Address_by_Ambassador_Bilahari_Kausikan_at_the_third_Atal_Bihari_Vajpayee_Memorial_Lecture_January_23_2023.

Benjamin Tze Ern Ho is an assistant professor in the China Programme, Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He specializes in the study of Chinese international relations and Asian comparative political order.

Citation: Benjamin Tze Ern Ho. Review of Wong, Chun Han. Party of One: The Rise of Xi Jinping and China's Superpower Future. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. February, 2025.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=61176

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Stephanie Huezo. Review of Jarquín, Mateo. The Sandinista Revolution: A Global Latin American History. H-LatAm, H-Net Reviews

 A new Review has been posted in H-LatAm.

Huezo on Jarquín, 'The Sandinista Revolution: A Global Latin American History'

Jarquín, Mateo.  The Sandinista Revolution: A Global Latin American History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2024. 336 pp. $29.95 (paper), ISBN 9781469678498.

Reviewed by Stephanie Huezo (Fordham University)
Published on H-LatAm (November, 2024)
Commissioned by Casey M. Lurtz (Johns Hopkins University)

Printable Version: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=60842

The year 1979 brought intense change in Nicaragua and the broader Western Hemisphere. That year, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) successfully overthrew the US-backed Somoza family dictatorship, which had held power for more than four decades. This historic moment provided inspiration for revolutionaries throughout Central and Latin America generally but also generated concern and fear for the United States in the context of the global Cold War. What followed was a decade-long struggle to fulfill the revolution’s goals of socioeconomic and political change in the face of internal and external challenges. English-language scholarship on the rise and fall of the Sandinista Revolution has primarily been told from a US perspective. But the regional history of the revolution provides us with a more complete understanding of its successes and failures as well as its impact in the rest of Latin America.

Mateo Jarquín’s book, The Sandinista Revolution: A Global Latin American History, contributes to this regional perspective of one of the most well-known revolutions in twentieth-century Latin America. As the title suggests, Jarquín dives into the international history of the Sandinistas, emphasizing the role of Nicaraguan and Latin America leaders in defining the Sandinistas’ political project. This is his major contribution. Moving beyond the framework of US intervention in Cold War Latin America, Jarquín highlights the role of other regional actors like Mexico, Cuba, and Venezuela in dictating the Sandinistas’ revolutionary trajectory.

His identity as the son of Sandinista diplomats and his personal experiences of learning about the revolution through an international lens while living outside of Nicaragua shaped his approach in focusing on the “thinking and decision making of national elites” (p. xvi) as well as Latin American diplomats. In order to center the narrative on these historical actors, Jarquín relies on archival sources from Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, and the United States as well as interviews with top Sandinista Front officials. While these documents provide evidence of the Sandinistas’ military, political, and diplomatic actions, the interviews with Sandinistas and Latin American political figures add another layer of complexity to understanding the changing views of the revolution. This impressive multisited research and access to interviewees due to his proximity to national elites through family connections allows Jarquín to argue that the “revolution was shaped [and reshaped] by how it fit within a global picture” (p. 6).

Taking a top-down approach to the Sandinista Revolution, Jarquín organizes his book in four parts that closely tie in with the three phases of the Sandinista period: “insurrection and state breakdown, consolidation in power, and civil war” (p. 6). Part 1, “Origins, 1933-1979,” provides the historical context that led to the success of Nicaragua’s revolution. As a left-wing guerrilla organization, in the 1970s the FSLN was weak and divided. The three tendencies (or factions) that made up the FSLN—the Guerra Popular Prolongada (GPP) tendency, the Tendencia Proletaria (TP), and the Tendencia Insurreccional (or Tercerista tendency)—had varied goals and approaches to taking power. And while Jarquín explains these differences, he privileges the Terceristas’ work as it reveals best the diplomatic choices made that led to Somoza’s defeat. After creating a revolutionary junta and outlining their revolutionary agenda, Tercerista leaders sought foreign support, first by Venezuela’s president Carlos Andrés Pérez. Cuba, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Panama would later offer support. Jarquín demonstrates that despite these leaders’ differing interests and political stance (Pérez was an anticommunist), each wanted Somoza out. They provided weapons and military expertise. Additionally, Jarquín argues that these regional leaders also isolated Somoza diplomatically while legitimizing the Sandinistas’ armed approach. In effect, Jarquín asserts that external support and political connections that helped Sandinista leaders take power.

After a detailed demonstration of the pivotal role of Nicaragua’s Latin American neighbors in Somoza’s defeat, the book moves on to discuss the challenges Sandinistas faced as they consolidated their power. The broad-based revolutionary coalition that helped bring Sandinistas to power now presented obstacles in implementing a governing style. As Sandinista leaders gained state control and carried out redistributive economic policies, the moderate and conservative members of their anti-Somoza coalition became alienated. And while internal divisions arose in the country, the FSLN government strove to create friendly diplomatic relations with the rest of the world. But their relationship with Cuba and its support to the Salvadoran guerrilla organization, Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), alarmed the United States, especially under the Reagan administration, which viewed Central America as a hotbed for communism. What followed is well known among scholars of Latin America and US intervention—the Contra War—but before getting there, Jarquín reveals how countries like Venezuela and Mexico used Nicaragua’s revolution and early years of consolidating power to minimize US intervention in Latin America. Once again, the role of Latin American leaders during the Sandinista Revolution complicates the history of the Cold War in the region. Nicaragua’s revolutionary outcome and future was not based solely on US foreign policies but also on local and regional interests and desires.

It is this complexity that also animated the Contra War. In the third section, “War, 1982-1985,” Jarquín argues that the Contra War was both a war of foreign aggression and at the same time a civil war, moving away from narratives that claim one stance over the other. While the US government did heavily arm and financially support the contras to undermine FSLN power and supposedly contain communism, there were social projects like land reform that also served to push sectors of society to support the US-backed contras. Heavily relying on written personal accounts and interviews with Sandinista commanders, Jarquín demonstrates why peasant farmers joined the contras despite being a central population for the new government’s revolutionary projects. While he includes a 1991 oral history report of peasant contra commanders, this section leaves us wanting more. How exactly did rural Nicaraguans experience land reform? Did others outside of the “middle peasantry” (p. 130) support the contras as well? Of course, as in any monograph, the author must make choices, and Jarquín chose to stay within the lens of diplomacy. But the inclusion of peasant voices in a discussion about land reform would have provided a more nuanced view of this project and its connection to contra support.

The last chapter of part 3 as well as the last section of the book (part 4, “Peace, 1986-1989”) highlights once again the importance of diplomacy in the Sandinista Revolution. While the Sandinistas were fighting the US-backed contras, Latin American governments were carefully watching the potential consequences of this war. Latin American leaders worried about the United States’ view of Nicaragua as a proxy war battleground of the Cold War. If Nicaragua continued with its revolution, the United States could justify a military invasion that would affect the whole region. To quell any possible US invasion in Latin America, leaders from Venezuela, Mexico, Panama, and Colombia came up with a diplomatic solution, the Contadora process, to bring an end to the war in Nicaragua. While Contadora did not lead to any substantial change when it was created in 1983, it did eventually lead to the Central American peace process ushered in by Costa Rican president Óscar Arias. Just like the Contadora, these peace negotiations limited US foreign policy in the country. Even with these changes, the Sandinistas would not continue in power; in 1990, Nicaragua democratically elected Violetta Chamorro (former member of the Sandinista junta) to become president, delivering a heavy blow to revolutionary projects in the Latin American region. Yet, some Sandinista leaders conclude that the legacy of the revolution wasn’t lasting socioeconomic changes but democracy. Considering the aftermath of the revolution and Nicaragua’s current political situation, one must consider what definition of democracy these leaders used before accepting this legacy.

For its analysis on the diplomatic history of the Sandinista Revolution, this book is a must-read for those interested in Nicaragua, Central America, Latin American relations, and even US intervention in Latin America. Ultimately, this book calls us to see the Sandinista revolution not just as a Nicaraguan event nor a Central American one but a truly regional historical moment that defined the end of Cold War Latin America.

Citation: Stephanie Huezo. Review of Jarquín, Mateo. The Sandinista Revolution: A Global Latin American History. H-LatAm, H-Net Reviews. November, 2024.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=60842

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Atkinson on Rollo, 'Terminus: Westward Expansion, China, and the End of American Empire' [Review] (H-Net Reviews)

Estamos vivenciando o fim de uma era? O fim da expansão contínua do império americano e o início da re-ascensão do Império do Meio (em sua fase política comunista), depois de dois séculos e meio de ascensão do primeiro e do declínio do segundo? 

Pode ser, mas é um processo que pode se passar pacificamente, ou envolver algum conflito bilateral, uma vez que se trata de um processo diferente do que houve durante a era anterior, quando os dois impérios estavam relativamente ou absolutamente desconectados. Desta vez, há uma grande interdependência (já foi melhor) e intensos contatos entre os dois impérios, diretamente e nas zonas de fricção (Taiwan e Rússia, para mencionar apenas duas), o que pode comandar uma convivência em bons termos ou atiçar conflitos já existentes. Este livro trata do passado e não do presente ou do futuro, mas ele oferece boas indicações sobre como abordar essa MAIS IMPORTANTE relação da atual geopolítica mundial, mais até do que o desafio da Rússia, que pode ser contido no continente europeu.

As próximas décadas já são a de uma nova corrida armamentista, nuclear e espacial, e de uma disputa de arrogâncias que pode descambar para um conflito direto. O que significa que não haverá muito espaço para a cooperação conjunta em benefício dos países mais pobres, mas uma competição sem qualquer convergência de objetivos entre os dois grandes impérios da atualidade.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Brasília, 19/05/2024

Atkinson on Rollo, 'Terminus: Westward Expansion, China, and the End of American Empire' [Review]

H-Net Reviews

Rollo, Stuart.  Terminus: Westward Expansion, China, and the End of American Empire. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023. 296 pp. $55.95 (cloth), ISBN 9781421447384.

Reviewed by David C. Atkinson (Purdue University)
Published on H-Diplo (May, 2024)
Commissioned by Seth Offenbach (Bronx Community College, The City University of New York)

Printable Version: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=60309

Stuart Rollo’s Terminus: Westward Expansion, China, and the End of American Empire is a richly kaleidoscopic contribution to the ever-burgeoning literature on US-China relations. Rollo situates the Sino-US relationship in terms of the rise and fall of American empire, and this is the book’s most important interpretive contribution. Focusing on the context and character of Americans’ evolving disposition toward China over the last 250 years, he begins with an overview of US continental colonization and Americans’ subsequent expansion into the Pacific Ocean. He concludes with President Joseph Biden’s attempt to resuscitate the diminished structures of the US-dominated liberal internationalist order. In between, Rollo entwines his evaluation of American engagements with China with an expertly rendered narrative of imperialism and foreign relations, blending historical and international relations perspectives throughout. It is an erudite and informative synthesis that should appeal to all H-Diplo readers, as well as our students and members of the public who seek a clear understanding of why contemporary US-Chinese relations remain so fraught in our present moment, and how we got here.

Terminus is a versatile book that can be read in multiple registers. Rollo’s narrative is especially valuable for the way he weaves four distinct narrative threads together. On one level, it is a useful survey of Sino-US relations, albeit one that emphasizes the perspectives of American rather than Chinese interlocuters in that relationship. Readers looking for the Chinese perspective, or a greater focus on traditional diplomatic relations, will find it lacking compared to Warren I. Cohen’s still essential America’s Response to China (2019), for example. But that is not Rollo’s purpose. Rather, Terminus seeks to integrate that story into the history of American empire and expansion. On that level, it offers something particularly novel. Historians of American imperialism might balk at Rollo’s emphasis on the imperial rather than colonial manifestations of Americans’ desire for economic, if not territorial, suzerainty in Aisa, but again, that is not his objective: how Americans conceived of China (Qing, Nationalist, and Communist) in relation to the rise and fall of American empire (commercial, financial, territorial, military, and ideational) is the focus. In addition to interlacing these themes, on another level Rollo pays regular attention to the ideas of those theorists and strategists who whetted American appetites when it came to China, combining historical and international relations scholarship and perspectives throughout the narrative. We hear from a large cast of both critics and boosters of American power from across the centuries, including Karl Marx, John Atkinson Hobson, Nicholas Spykman, William Appleman Williams, and Andrew Bacevich to name a few. Finally, the book can be read as a very engaging survey of US foreign relations writ large, since Rollo never confines himself to the transpacific lens, and instead constantly keeps American visions of China in the same frame as Americans’ conceptions of a broader global imperium.

Terminus is therefore best understood as an alloy, in that it derives its strength from the mixture of these four interlacing narratives and frames. The result is a concise and accessible book that offers an adept historical overview of China’s changing significance to American policymakers, theorists, and strategists from independence to the present.

The book is divided into three sections, each encompassing a distinct phase of American ambitions for China. Part 1 traces the story from the aftermath of independence to the turn of the twentieth century and focuses on the commercial and financial aspirations of American merchants, statesmen, and strategists during that century. In the first two chapters, Rollo roots his narrative in a familiar story of westward expansion characterized by violent Native dispossession and the insatiable drive for land and commercial access to Asia. In that context, China especially enraptured those seeking to exploit Asia’s potentially lucrative markets, goods, and raw materials. Rollo is attentive to the domestic and international contexts that both facilitated and inhibited the realization of these prospects—whether real or imagined—and he emphasizes the internal and external ruptures that catalyzed the Qing dynasty’s nineteenth-century decline. This part of the book culminates in the convulsion of late nineteenth-century US imperialism, and Rollo rightly focuses on the major manifestations of that paroxysm in the Asia-Pacific region. The Open-Door Notes and the Boxer Rebellion receive particular attention, and Rollo is attentive to the racial and geostrategic anxieties that suffused the most capacious cravings of those who viewed China as an outlet not only for American goods, but also American capital and civilization.

Part 2 addresses the twentieth-century phase of US economic and strategic predominance, from the emergence of American power following the First World War to the ostensive triumph of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. Rollo unsurprisingly foregrounds the American and Japanese competition for East Asian predominance at the core of this section’s first chapter, orienting his analysis productively toward modern industrial warfare’s thirst for strategic raw materials. From this perspective, both contenders perceived China as a repository of essential minerals like manganese and tungsten that would consolidate their prospective regional—and in the case of the United States, global—primacy. Chapter 5 broadens its frame commensurate with the now truly global aspirations of American power. The allure of potential markets and investment opportunities in China and elsewhere now gave way to more sophisticated geostrategic conceptions of global capitalist integration and cooperation. Commercial dominance remained an important objective, but security and prosperity now required the creation and management of an intricate, internationally panoptic liberal-democratic architecture, one dominated of course by the United States. In Asia, that manifested in what Rollo provocatively calls an “American-led Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere,” anchored by Japan (pp. 120-121).

The sixth chapter addresses the emergence of the People’s Republic and the Cold War, which in Rollo’s interpretation sees China evoke a more dangerously existential threat to the broader hegemonic project fostered by the United States, not just in Asia but around the world. He sees the wars in Korea and Vietnam as exemplars of that project, but also harbingers of its demise. It is the one chapter in which Rollo’s argument might have benefited from more room to breathe, since we are hurled at breakneck speed through some of the most consequential moments in the history of Sino-US relations. This includes not only those devasting American wars in Southeast and East Asia, but also President Richard Nixon’s rapprochement, President Jimmy Carter’s fulfillment of recognition, and the profound economic transformations of the Ronald Reagan years, not to mention those of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping.

The third part of Terminus transitions to the post-Cold War era through the present. Here, Rollo recounts the flush of victory that encouraged American policymakers to confidently thrust the open door upon the globe. The desire to secure markets, raw materials, and investment opportunities reigned supreme, as successive US presidents and their counselors inside and outside government tried to reshape the world in America’s apparently transcendent image. For Rollo, economic access and predominance remained paramount, but contemporary presidents differed in their enthusiasm for strategic competition with China. It waned during the Bill Clinton years, during which American officials believed the gospel of globalization would convert Chinese Communist leaders to the benefits of democratization and neoliberal economics. Strategic competition nevertheless waxed under the presidency of George W. Bush, exacerbated by the events of September 11 and the global war on terror. American imperial overreach during the Bush years diminished the United States’ capacity to reshape the world in its image, and China seized the opportunity to reorient and strengthen its own economy, eventually supplanting the US as the global economic hegemon by many metrics.

Chapters 8 and 9 deal with American attempts to alternatively understand, manage, resist, or reset that reality. The final chapter is, from my perspective, the most generative and thought-provoking. Rollo proves as fluent in the lexicon of modern security studies as he is with its historical antecedents. His assessment of our contemporary options to grapple with the threat and possibilities posed by Xi Jinping’s resurgent China is clear-eyed and judicious. Rollo’s estimation of the most productive path forward reflects that most venerable analogy, favored by generations of American national security personnel: the Goldilocks principle. While President Donald Trump favored a white-hot porridge laced with quid pro quos, zero-sum transactions, and military superiority, others have mooted the cold gruel of retrenchment. Rollo not surprisingly favors the more palatable oats of “offshore balancing and mutual deterrence and denial” (p. 206). That might not set the taste buds alight, but it is much less likely to cause irreparable indigestion.

The final chapter concludes with one of the book’s most intriguing points. Here, Rollo posits our contemporary conundrum: how to ensure peace between “a rising Chinese empire and a declining American one” (p. 208). This brief recognition that China is erecting an imperial structure of its own—one that reflects its own interests and yet echoes many elements of the now deteriorating edifice constructed by the United States—is a tantalizing gesture toward the next century of US-Chinese relations. It also demands that we retrain our focus less on American intentions and possible rear-guard actions, and more on the objectives of China’s ruling class as it looks toward the next century. Others are already doing that work, of course, and Rollo’s Terminus will be a very useful text for them as they come to grips with the American half of that equation.[1] The nightly gaggle of pundits who confidently espouse the unique dangers of China’s rise would do particularly well to take cognizance of Rollo’s historicization of the United States’ attitudes toward global power across the last two centuries. They may find more resonances than dissonances between the waning American imperium they lament, and the expanding Chinese imperium they decry.

Note

[1]. See. for example, Suisheng Zhao, The Dragon Roars Back: Transformational Leaders and Dynamics of Chinese Foreign Policy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2022); Susan L. Shirk, Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022); and Bates Gill, Daring to Struggle: China’s Global Ambitions under Xi Jinping (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022).

David C. Atkinson is associate professor of history at Purdue University. He is the author of The Burden of White Supremacy: Containing Asian Labor Migration in the British Empire and the United States (2017), along with numerous articles and chapters on international migration, diplomacy, and empire.

Citation: David C. Atkinson. Review of Rollo, Stuart. Terminus: Westward Expansion, China, and the End of American Empire. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. May, 2024.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=60309

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

===========

From Amazon: 

Terminus: Westward Expansion, China, and the End of American Empire Kindle Edition

by Stuart Rollo (Author)  Format: Kindle Edition

3.0 3.0 out of 5 stars

---

A sweeping narrative of America's imperial history and its long entanglement with China.

In Terminus, Stuart Rollo examines the origins and trajectory of American empire in the Asia-Pacific region, focusing on its westward expansion and historic entanglement with China. American foreign and strategic policy in this region, Rollo argues, has always been shaped by broader economic and political concerns centered on China. China's current rise, and the economic and strategic systems that China is developing, represents the most serious challenge to the structure of American empire to date.

Rollo paints a sweeping historical narrative of American imperial history and its relationship with China from 1776 to the present. Grounded in archival research, official and personal correspondence, policy documents, declassified intelligence material, and congressional records, Terminus traces the development of American empire building from the pre-independence period to the eve of World War I, arguing that this new empire was primarily driven by commercial interests in China. Rollo explores shifts in global power, resource politics, and international economic structures that led the United States to transition from one of several imperial powers to the world's sole superpower by the last decade of the twentieth century. Finally, he examines the decline of American empire since its brief period of unipolarity in the 1990s, explaining the new pressures and challenges posed by the rise of China.

Rollo proposes three scenarios for how the United States might manage its inevitable imperial decline: a vain attempt to shore up and extend the empire, an exploitative hegemony, or a post-imperial foreign policy. This last option would work to repair the damaged fabric of American social and political life, providing a long-term, stable foundation for national security, prosperity, and the well-being of its citizens. All empires eventually end, but with the benefit of hindsight, Rollo urges us to consider how to engineer a softer landing.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Important, insightful, and timely, this is an extraordinary synthesis of an incredibly comprehensive subject. I could never have imagined it possible to summarize the economic, political, and cultural history of US-Chinese relations over 225 years, yet Rollo has succeeded. The research is impressive, both for its thoroughness and selectivity.
―Walter Allan McDougall, University of Pennsylvania, author of The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy: How Civil Religion Betrayed the National Interest

The first book to develop a historical analysis of the American empire through the lens of the US-China relationship, Terminus addresses the most challenging issue in the contemporary world: the great power rivalry between the United States and China. Rollo offers a comprehensive survey of the rivalry, entanglement, and decoupling of the United States and China in global trade, investment, and production as well as the growing role of China in undermining the US empire in such areas as capital formation, technology innovation, and global production and supply chains.
―Baogang He, Deakin University, author of Contested Ideas of Regionalism in Asia

Narrating the rise and decline of the American empire through the prism of US-China relations, Stuart Rollo has written a succinct, sophisticated, and hard-hitting critique. The appearance of Terminuscould not be more timely―nor or its contents more worrisome.
―Andrew Bacevich, Chairman and Cofounder, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft

 

About the Author

Stuart Rollo (SYDNEY, AUS) is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney.

 

Product details

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023. 296 pp. $55.95 (cloth), ISBN 9781421447384

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BWSKD9VM

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Johns Hopkins University Press (October 31, 2023)

Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 31, 2023

Language ‏ : ‎ English

File size ‏ : ‎ 4171 KB