Chinese Arms Transfers: Purposes, Patterns, and Prospects in the New World Order (review)

1 14 China Review International: Vol. 1, No. 2, Fall 1994 historical significance of communism, the comparative significance of communist regimes, and so on would have greatly enriched this book. On a number of narrower points this reader felt that Ferdinand tended to exaggerate the unity and downplay Aie factional struggles within the CCP. While it is true that Mao did not physically wipe out his opponents as Stalin did, Ferdinand's view that "in China, until the failure of the Great Leap Forward, the party manifested virtually no signs of disunity" is a vast overstatement. Corinna-Barbara Francis Brown University 5ÛC>Qi 9®W R. Bates Gill. Chinese Arms Transfers: Purposes, Patterns, and Prospects in the New World Order. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1992. xiv, 248 pp. China is a major weapons producer and has been one of the top five arms exporters for most of the past forty years. Yet, China's role in the international arms trade has not attracted as much attention from academics as it deserves. While there are some excellent journal articles available, for the last few years there has been a need for a good, up-to-date, and comprehensive book-length study of this subject. R. Bates Gill's book is thus a welcome and useful contribution to the field. Drawing extensively on a wide range of mosdy Western sources, Gill provides a good overview of Chinese major weapons transfers from 1950 to 1990. Throughout, Gill argues that Aie primary motivations for Chinese arms sales are security and political inAuence, with profit becoming a motivation only after 1979, when China began to demand money for its weapons. Unlike some other writers, Gill tends to minimize profit as an incentive in Chinese arms sales in the 1980s and clearly seems to feel that security issues and political influence will continue to be the most important determinants of Chinese arms sales in the future. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 places China's arms exports in an international context by discussing recent trends and issues in arms exports and arms control and by comparing China's performance with that of other arms-exporting countries. This section also summarizes transfers of major weapons by© 1994 by University China between 1950 and 1979, when China gave away weapons but did not sell ofHawai'i Pressthem. The first chapter is the best part of Aie section, giving the reader a proper perspective on the extent and nature of Chinese arms sales in comparison with the superpowers as well as medium arms producers. The second chapter, for die Reviews 115 most part, repeats material already available elsewhere and adds little that is new to our understanding of this period of China's arms trade. Part 2 is the strongest and most interesting part of the book. It provides a detailed discussion of China's major weapons transfers to the Middle East and to South and Southeast Asia from 1979 to the early 1990s. This section is empirically rich and highly informative. Gill's analysis is well grounded, though in a few places his arguments would be more convincing ifhe had drawn more fully on Chinese sources, as in the case where he argues for continuity in strategic interests in the Persian Gulf from Maoist to post-Mao China. Given Gill's emphasis on security matters in China's arms trade, it is somewhat surprising that he does not deal wiAi Israel's connection with China. This was an important source of military technology for Aie Chinese and played a role in the development of Chinese weapons systems in the 1980s. Unfortunately this relationship receives only a few brief sentences. Despite these problems, Alis section is a valuable contribution to the study of China's major weapons exports in Aie post-Mao era. Part 3 provides a summary of the author's findings and attempts to project future trends in China's arms trade. This section is strongest when dealing with the reasons why the Chinese were successful in attaining their policy goals in some cases while experiencing failure in others. However, not all of China's transfers of major weapons have been in pursuit of...