[…] a new book by Brookings Institution Fellow Melanie Sisson entitled The United States, China, and the Competition for Control. In this slim volume (less than 100 pages of text before the endnotes), Sisson persuasively refutes the notion that China is seeking to supplant the United States as the global hegemon.[…]
On balance, Sisson asserts that China, “far from opting out or of seeking to obstruct or overturn the post-war order’s institutions,” has “integrated itself into them and, from there, worked within their procedures to gain and exercise influence.” Although openly critical of some of the rules, Beijing’s emphasis has been on advocating reform from within the system and “strengthening its bargaining position” in the process. It is certainly true that China—like the United States—engages in “diplomatic dissembling, economic and military coercion, and selective interpretations of history to pursue its interests.” But Sisson concludes that “what China has said, and done, over time and into the present day suggests that China is more in support of than opposed to” the founding principles and institutions of the post-war order. Läs artikel