Product Description

Clear, comprehensive, and well-balanced, this unique assessment takes the measure of what is arguably the most important geopolitical change in today's world: the growth of China's power. In the only book on the subject to be based on extensive interviews with elite political leaders, diplomats, and others in China, the United States, and countries on China's periphery, David M. Lampton investigates the military, economic, and intellectual dimensions of China's growing influence. His account provides a fresh perspective from which to assess China--how its strengths are changing, where vulnerabilities and uncertainties lie, and how the rest of the world, not least the United States, should view it. Lampton gives a valuable historical framework by discussing how the Chinese have thought about state power for over 2,500 years, and he asks how they are thinking about the future use of power through instruments such as their space program. He also provides broad suggestions for policy toward China in light of the 2008 elections in the United States and China's hosting of the Olympic Games, in a book that is essential reading for understanding one of the most significant developments of the twenty-first century.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10796 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-30
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

From the Inside Flap
"By learning more not only about China, but from China, America is more likely to sustain a constructive relationship with the rising China. Lampton insightfully provides us with the much-needed guidance."-Zbigniew Brzezinski, Center for Strategic and International Studies

"Professor Lampton's stimulating and well-researched book provides a comprehensive framework for intelligent thinking about the implications for the United States and the world of the rapid expansion of China's economic and military power. Serious students of world affairs and non-specialists concerned about the outlook for U.S.-China relations will all benefit from the historically-based insights and judgments that fill the pages of this thought-provoking volume."--J. Stapleton Roy, former United States ambassador to China

About the Author
David M. Lampton is George and Sadie Hyman Professor, Director of China Studies, and Dean of Faculty at The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He is author of Same Bed, Different Dreams: Managing U.S.-China Relations, 1989-2000 (UC Press) and editor of The Making of Chinese Foreign and Security Policy in the Age of Reform, among many other books and articles on Chinese domestic and foreign affairs.

Customer Reviews

Interesting book with differently historical point of view
It's a very interesting book that the author uses a unique argument to discuss current Asian affair and related issues. I like it because it provides a framework to decribe US-China relation, but not writting a micor-history along the time lines. Great book and reasonable assumptions of powers, "Might", "Money" and "Mind."

This is a remarkable book
I gave this book to a friend, Henry Sailer, who was raised in China and very knowledgeable. This is his review.

This is a remarable book.It will enlighten the most advanced specialist and, at the same time, teach the new beginner.

There are new facts to be absorbed in virtually every sentence and Mr. Lampton's writing and organizational skills are such that the reader approachs each chapter with mounting fascination.

Mr. Lampton obviously has entree to leaders of most of the Asian states of which he writes - an entree which he has employed with commendable discretion and which brings to light facts and ideas which would otherwise not be available to the most zealot scholar, student or layman.

I have never said of any book of this kind that I intended to read it again. I do now.