The Beijing Consensus: How China's Authoritarian Model Will Dominate the 21st Century
Author(s): Stefan Halper (Author)
Publisher: Basic Books
Publication Date: 6 April 2010
Language: English
Print length: 312 pages
ISBN-10: 9780465013616
ISBN-13: 0465013619
Book Description
A leading foreign policy expert tells the story of how China’s non-confrontational strategy is reshaping the rules of the new world order. In “The Beijing Consensus”, Stefan Halper presents a coherent integration of both the economic and strategic sides of China-US relations. In its efforts to influence the rest of the world-to create a new liberal and democratic order – the United States has used its military and economic might to force developing countries to aim toward democratic reform and transparency. A fine strategy, when you’re the only game in town. The Chinese, Halper argues, have chosen to confront the United States only indirectly. Instead of playing by America’s rules, as did the Soviet Union, China has redefined the rules of the game. China doles out money to dictators – with no strings attached. They buy resources from Africa and South America – without forcing transparency or reform down oligarchs’ throats. In doing so, it’s presenting the world’s despots with a viable alternative to the so-called Washington Consensus. China is showing the world how to have economic growth with an illiberal government. At the same time, Halper argues, that its rapid economic growth has created massive fissures in Chinese society between the haves and the have-nots. In order to maintain political control, the Chinese Communist Party has to sustain double-digit economic growth, which means that it must exploit and co-opt the rest of the world’s resources. Necessity lies at the heart of China’s expansionist policies. Without them, the Communist Party risks its own demise. “The Beijing Consensus” will prove to be a vital book in understanding the increasingly complex relationship between the United States and China-and between China and the rest of the world.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Powerful” –The Financial Times, 24th April 2010
“If (The Beijing Consensus) sounds alarmist, Halper has been on the money before. A lifelong Republican, his book America Alone was among the earliest to warn against the dangers of George W Bush’s ideologically driven, combative approach to the world. The author calls for the West to show flexibility and imagination in dealing with China’s pervasive challenge to its values.”
–The Daily Telegraph, 15th May 2010
“Mr Halper supplies chapter and verse on the way the Chinese are spreading their influence across much of the developing world, by coughing up no-strings-attached loans, for example, rather than trying to meddle in other countries’ internal affairs in the manner of the World Bank and the IMF.” –The Economist, 5th June 2010
‘Halper believes that the coming decades will see an increasingly overt competition between the US and China. China, he asserts, “poses the most serious challenge to the United States since the half-century cold war struggle with the Soviets.” –The Financial Times
About the Author
Stefan Halper is a Senior Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge, where he directs the Donner Atlantic Studies Programme. He is also Senior Research Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and a Distinguished Fellow at the Nixon Center in Washington, D.C. Halper served in the White House and Department of State during the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations, advising on a range of U.S. foreign policy and national security issues. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and other newspapers and magazines. He is a frequent commentator on national security and foreign policy issues for the print and broadcast media. He divides his time between Great Falls, Virginia, and Cambridge, UK.
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