Overreach: How China Derailed its Peaceful Rise, by Susan L. Shirk

Expand

'Overreach' by Susan L. Shirk

One of the few things Democrats and Republicans can agree on is China, threatening to become the world’s most dangerous rogue state after years of seemingly benign relations with the U.S.

Susan L. Shirk’s Overreach summarizes China’s rise after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976 and worries that the country is headed toward conflict with the West. Post-Mao, China’s Communist leaders ran the country collectively, reforming its moribund economy, opening the gates to foreign markets and stepping carefully onto the global stage. Their goal was to become East Asia’s great power. As Deng Xiaoping counseled, “Hide our capabilities and bide our time, but also get some things done.”

A professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at University of California, San Diego, Shirk shows that China’s military-economic build-up accelerated dramatically under Xi Jinping but is rooted in the plans of his predecessors. She cites the fundamental insecurity that has nagged China’s leaders as they presided over massive social changes that transformed their nation from rural Communism into an urban consumer society. Projecting power is a means of rallying nationalism and displays of nationalism can be a distraction from social tensions. The interdependence of China and the U.S. and the interlocking of their economies was dealt a heavy blow by COVID but had already been undermined by growing anxiety. The pandemic “revealed just how hostile the relationship has become,” especially when compared with China’s earlier cooperation during the SARS, swine flu and Ebola epidemics.

Shirk seems to minimize the negatives of the supply chains binding America to other economies even as she explains how China-U.S. tension is causing both nations to “exploit their economic and technological leverage to pressure each other” and reduce their vulnerability “by decoupling their economies and technologies.” With China supporting bad actors in North Korea and Myanmar, encouraging Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, committing cultural genocide against Tibetans and Uyghurs, crushing Hong Kong’s democracy and asserting control over the South China Sea, Xi may have reached the point of overreach. Shirk is also concerned that the U.S. will overreach in response. A new cold war has begun, and it could heat up dangerously if China attacks the democratic stronghold of Taiwan.