Roy, Denny

Abstract
For the Asia-Pacific region, perhaps the greatest strategic problem of the next two decades is maintaining peace and prosperity while a second great power emerges to rival the United States. Policymakers attempting to manage this issue will need the best advice available from experienced and thoughtful analysts of Asian history, politics and international relations.
Enter Hugh White, a widely respected Australian scholar and former government official, with The China Choice: Why America Should Share Power. White’s book suggests a strategy for managing the transition: unilateral accommodation of China by the United States, or what some would more derisively call ‘appeasement’. White’s book deserves attention because it raises pertinent, difficult questions about managing the strategic stresses that accompany the rise of China. White essentially blames the United States for bilateral tensions between the countries and their spillover into other regional issues. If there is a conflict, it will be because Washington is ‘choosing to accept China as a strategic rival … [instead of] working with it as a partner’ (pp. 4–6). It is therefore America’s responsibility to untie the knot by giving up its alleged containment policy and treating China as an equal, welcoming Beijing into a ‘Concert of Asia’. Such a Concert would comprise a group of the Asia-Pacific great powers that agree to jointly manage security affairs to preserve regional stability.
White makes perhaps the most thoughtful and persuasive case to date for the United States to accommodate a rising China by stepping down from its position as the dominant regional power. Much of his analysis is insightful and well-argued, but his policy recommendations have substantial weaknesses. A critique of these weaknesses demands as much attention as the book itself.
White dives into a policy debate that divides over three big questions, each of them hotly debated. The first is whether China is set to overtake the United States as regional leader or, at least, overturn the US-supported regional order. Some analysts insist that China’s rapid economic and technological development is exaggerated and unsustainable, and does not justify the prediction that it will be the next superpower. Other observers contend that it will inevitably acquire the sinews of hegemonic strength. Some add that US decline is also inexorable.
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