In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • China, International Organizations, and Global Security
  • Lisa Fischler (bio)
Ann Kent . China, International Organizations, and Global Security. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007. xvi, 360 pp. Hardcover $65.00, ISBN 978-0-8047-5551-1.

How China interacts with international organizations is significant, in terms of both compliance and cooperation, because "while state compliance with international norms, principles, and rules is an essential building block of harmonious interstate relations, a state's cooperation with them, in the sense of implementing and promoting their objective and purpose in a variety of ways, remains the most reliable predictor of long-term global security" (p. 248). In effect, China, International Organizations, and Global Security demonstrates not only variations in the depth and breadth of the People's Republic of China's (PRC's) commitment to the international system but also the necessity of engaging, as opposed to containing, this emerging regional and global player during the foreseeable future. A comprehensive introduction and thorough conclusion enhance the historical overview and the four case studies, each involving a different international regime, addressed in the remaining five chapters. The historical chapter shows China's steep learning curve, in terms of its active participation in the global community, especially over the last two centuries. The case studies clearly highlight the variation in the PRC's compliance and cooperation across diverse international organizations: the Conference on Disarmament (CD), the World Bank (IBRD/WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the International Labour Organization (ILO), and the UN Committee against Torture (CAT). This volume's skillful use of processed-based theories to better understand why authoritarian states, such as the PRC, engage the international system more than superficially makes a valuable contribution to furthering research on international relations and international organizations, on China studies and Chinese politics, and on comparative regimes.

The worth of China as an empirically valuable and theoretically useful case study stems from the current debate over the effectiveness of international organizations, the rise of the PRC as an impressive global actor, and concerns over the international impact of perceived rogue states on the part of developed countries. As the introductory section indicates, evidence of China's capacity to learn and effectively engage internationally over the last three decades lends empirical credibility to the vital role of international regimes in global security and to engagement, rather than containment, of authoritarian governments as a preferred policy. The variation of China's compliance and cooperation across international organizations highlights the more comprehensive explanatory power of process-based theories in comparison to compliance theories alone. For [End Page 250] the future, however, China's "further international integration and socialization are critical to the maintenance of international standards of human security and sustainable development" (p. 251). China has progressed dramatically in terms of engaging internationally, but without its continuing cooperation the global economy and environment will be in dire straits.

Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, China's attitude toward, perception by, and relationship with the international system fluctuated tremendously, but was shaped consistently by both global and domestic forces. "History," according to the author, "provide[s] a benchmark of the power of international institutions to help socialize and transform states" (p. 34). Ann Kent divides the extended, gradual, and excruciating process by which China reached its current degree of engagement with the global community into four broad epochs: imperial and Republican times, 1949–1971, 1971–1978, and 1978 to the present. The unequal treaties of the mid-1800s shocked Qing emperors into moving from an exceptional, culturally superior view of the Middle Kingdom to a defensive, instrumentalist employment of international law against Western imperialism. Republican era leaders' initial participation in and support of international regimes, such as the League of Nations, crumbled beneath the weight of China's betrayal by other global powers at the 1919 Paris Peace Accords and during Japan's 1931 invasion of Manchuria. Active overtures to the UN by the PRC in the early communist years to engage internationally fell victim to U.S. policies, China-Taiwan issues, Korean War politics, and Cold War tensions. Isolation describes China's relationship with the international system...

pdf