Chinese Economic Reform: The Impact on Security (review)

530 China Review International: Vol. 4, No. 2, Fall 1997 divination texts, and research on these and other such texts is ripe for expansion. Perhaps, as the Verse says, "Marvelous things approach the gate door." Kenneth Goodall Kenneth Goodall is an independent writer and editor with a special interest in the Yijing and early China. REFERENCES Cleary, Thomas, trans. The Buddhist I Ching. Commentary by Zhixu Ouyi. Boston: Shambhala, 1987. -----------. The Taoist I Ching. Commentary by Liu Yiming. Boston: Shambhala, 1986. Nylan, Michael, trans. The Canon ofSupreme Mystery by Yang Hsiung: A New Translation with Commentary of the T'ai Hsilan Ching. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. -----------. The Elemental Changes: The Ancient Chinese Companion to the I Ching. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. Wilhelm, Richard. The I Ching or Book ofChanges. Rendered into English by Cary F. Baynes. Foreword by C. G. Jung. New York: Pantheon, 1950. im Gerald Segal and Richard H. Yang, editors. Chinese Economic Reform: The Impact on Security. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. ix, 215 pp. Hardcover $65.00, isbn 0-415-13007-7. Chinese Economic Reform: The Impact on Security deserves to reach a large audience . This is an important collection ofwell-written essays on the impact of China's economic reforms on the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and its activities both inside and outside China. The contents are a selection of papers from a conference on Chinese economic reform and defense policy that was held in Hong Kong in July 1994. The conference was sponsored by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London and the Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies in Taipei. From this gathering has emerged a group ofinsightful and generally accurate studies on the relationship between Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms and the course ofdevelopment the PLA has taken during the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s. The book is logically organized into two sections. The first is concerned with the impact of China's economic reforms on the domestic activities of die PLA—for example , its involvement in business pursuits. The second concerns the impact of these reforms on the PLA's outlook and activities overseas. Discussions here conofHawai 'i Press Reviews 531 cern such issues as weapons sales abroad and the Military's strategy toward Taiwan and the South China Sea. The book opens strongly with a fine Introduction by its editors, Gerald Segal and Richard Yang. Their discussion provides an anchor and a focus for all the other discussions by making the crucial observation that a central contradiction lies at the heart of the PLA's connection to China's economic reforms. The editors observe that Beijing on the one hand has the non-status-quo aim to regain sovereignty over all territories that it considers to be rightfully Chinese, such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Sprady Islands. On the other hand, the modernization and national prosperity that it desires depend on trade and peaceful relations with the outside world (p. 1). All die articles that follow, in one way or another, deal with aspects of this problem. The first section ofthe book deals with the domestic implications for the PLA of China's economic reforms. A book of this type runs the risk of redundant discussion, and in this section almost every essay makes the point that there is a direct relationship between the low budgetary priority accorded the Military by the Four Modernizations program and the PLA's commencement ofbusiness ventures. Contrary to expectation, however, the essays are not redundant. Instead , die repetition ofthis point, direcdy or indirectly, coming out ofdifferent topics of discussion, such as David S. G. Goodman's on corruption in the PLA and Arthur Ding's on defense industries, results in greater understanding on the part the reader. From this perspective, François Godement's discussion in the second part of the book on China's overseas arms sales belongs in the first section as well. Godement illustrates that whereas such arms sales were originally ideologically motivated, and often were actually donations and concerned with insurgency groups, in the late 1970s and in die 1980s they became profit-oriented and...