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Reviewed by:
  • Winning the Third World: Sino-American Rivalry during the Cold War by Gregg A. Brazinsky, and: Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World by Jeremy Friedman
  • Julia Sinitsky
Gregg A. Brazinsky, Winning the Third World: Sino-American Rivalry during the Cold War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. 448 pp. $39.95.
Jeremy Friedman, Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015. 304 pp. $35.00.

The rapid economic rise of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since the late 1970s and its continued high rates of economic growth have sparked great interest in its political, cultural, social, and economic systems. Jeremy Friedman in Shadow Cold War and Gregg Brazinsky in Winning the Third World offer two engaging histories that afford readers a glimpse into how China became the great power it is today. Along with the United States, the USSR was the other great power of the 20th century, with China well behind. But China, according to Brazinsky will be the greatest rival of the United States in the 21st century. Tracing the dynamics between these three superpowers since the end of the Second World War, and their struggle to capture the hearts and minds of the developing and nonaligned world, both Brazinsky and Friedman shed light on the great-power relations of today.

Both books capture China’s growth from a backward, dysfunctional puppet of Western powers early in the early 20th century to a powerful, independent, and dynamic country, ready to break with its Communist neighbors should disputes arise. The two books offer a comprehensive view of Soviet, U.S., and Chinese attitudes toward the developing world, as well as toward one another during the Cold War. What makes both books outstanding is their approach to the PRC—in Friedman’s [End Page 245] case through the lens of China’s complex and later antagonistic relationship with the USSR; in Brazinsky’s account by focusing on the struggle for status between the United States and the PRC. Friedman writes that the Cold War “was first and foremost a battle over the future of humanity, over the structure of economies, states and societies” (p. 224), and both books expand on these sentiments.

Friedman and Brazinsky relate China’s painful struggles with colonial powers and its later sympathies toward other subjugated populations. Both narratives trace the Communist revolution and China’s acquisition of status as a Communist great-power. China’s self-assertiveness is captured vividly as it redefined socialism for its own people and broke with Soviet orthodoxy in favor of a more radically anti-colonial and independent worldview. This was done at the expense of economic prosperity but afforded China great political autonomy on the world stage, as well as much newfound legitimacy among developing countries, at least in the early 1960s. The books detail the PRC’s triumphs on the international stage in the late 1950s and early 1960s and later its fall from grace both within the Soviet bloc and around the world during Mao’s radical Cultural Revolution. The narratives, especially Brazinsky’s also capture the delicate power plays between the Soviet Union, the United States, and China during the proxy wars in Korea and Vietnam and during various crises in Africa. Friedman, on the other hand, focuses more on the initial ideological differences that arose between Nikita Khrushchev and Mao Zedong as Khrushchev turned away from Iosif Stalin’s more radical policies.

Friedman’s book is exceptionally engaging and focuses tightly on a central thesis—that the Sino-Soviet split was caused in large part by ideological differences between the two countries over the Third World. What is most impressive in Friedman’s work is his command of historical literature from all the countries about which he writes. His ability to use both Russian and Chinese documents in addition to English-language sources adds depth and perspective to his writing. After Khrushchev proclaimed the adoption of “peaceful coexistence,” Mao concluded that the USSR had abandoned its revolutionary and anti-imperialist principles and had backed away from supporting revolutions in former colonies in Africa...

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