Beijing's Power and China's Borders: Twenty Neighbors in Asia.

• Author: Forsyth, Ian
• Position: Book review

Beijing's Power and China's Borders: Twenty Neighbors in Asia. Edited by Bruce A. Elleman, Stephan Kotkin and Clive Schofield. Armonk, New York and London, England: M.E. Sharpe, 2013. Softcover: 371pp.

A veritable cottage industry has emerged which tries to assess China's rise by examining how the country deals with border issues with its neighbours. This book is a welcome and timely addition to that debate. Along with its exemplary timing, one of its strongest qualities is its overall ambition. By adopting a comprehensive approach to China's border issues and policies with twenty countries, the book attempts to examine "where future border disputes might arise" (p. 10) and "the likelihood and character of future border conflicts so as to address this book's central question: can China truly become a global power, much less the world's next superpower, if the Chinese government has to worry about so many boundary disputes ... " (p. 10). While the editors do not attempt to test an overall hypothesis, they do endeavour to identify general trends and patterns.

The primary thesis of this book is that geography still matters, and in the case of China, resolving territorial disputes is an ongoing process. Despite the fact that Beijing asserts that it has resolved territorial disputes with most of its neighbours, and signed a number of border demarcation agreements, this volume highlights that there are still some unsettled issues. This is especially important as these countries are literally on the front line of a rising China. Ongoing border claims and counter-claims--both on land and at sea--will have a major impact on China's national security policies, which, in turn, will greatly affect both China's immediate neighbours and other countries beyond.

The book's approach is to devote roughly ten to fifteen pages per neighbour as an independent case study. Each neighbour profile generally has a history of its relations with China, some geographical information, a description of bilateral relations and an assessment of border issues and the challenges they present to bilateral relations. As stated earlier, one strength of this book is its comprehensive view: the book rightly looks beyond China's land border neighbours and examines maritime borders with neighbours such as Brunei, the Philippines, Malaysia and even Indonesia. This is welcome due to the dearth of analysis on Brunei-China relations. The volume also takes the interesting step of...