Anthony H. Cordesman and Martin Kleiber, Chinese Military Modernization: Force Development and Strategic Capabilities (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2007), 226 pp., $24.95.

Bates Gill, Rising Star: China's New Security Diplomacy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2007), 267 pp., $28.95.

Susan L. Shirk, China: Fragile Superpower (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 336 pp., $27.00.

Gordon Chang, The Coming Collapse of China (New York: Random House, 2001), 346 pp., $26.95.

Kenneth B. Pyle, Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose (New York: PublicAffairs, 2007), 420 pp., $29.95.

Richard J. Samuels, Securing Japan: Tokyo's Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), 277 pp., $29.95.

THE VIEW that sometime during this century a "changing of the guard" will occur, when China will displace the United States in much the same way as America did Britain, is widely held. It unites liberals and conservatives, optimists and pessimists, most of whom accept the proposition that "the East is back", with China leading the pack. The debate is over when the shift will happen and what a world that currently bears an American stamp will look like after China has become Mr. Big.

The main problem with the narrative about China's challenge to American supremacy (the limits of which are being illustrated in Iraq, just as they were thirty years earlier in Vietnam) is its linear, deterministic quality. Even under the most favorable conditions, China has a long way to go before it catches up with the United States. Consider some typical measures of power. China's GDP, rendered in current exchange rates, was $2.5 trillion in 2007, less than one-fifth of America's $13.2 trillion. The gap is even wider if one takes account of those states (India, the major West European states and Vietnam) most likely to join the United States in a countervailing coalition against a "revisionist" China. Then there is the matter of America's peerless capacity for technological innovation; China is in no position to close that gap anytime soon.

The same disparity is evident in military power. The American defense budget was $518 billion in 2005, roughly 43 percent of global military spending and equal to those of the next 47 countries combined. By contrast, China's was $81 billion. Even assuming that Chinese spending is understated by 50 percent, the American military budget is four times larger. True, money is not the measure of all things, but a meticulous assessment of the Chinese armed forces by Anthony Cordesman and Martin Kleiber demonstrates that China lags far behind in more specific elements of military power as well. The People's Liberation Army relies heavily on armaments that are knockoffs or modernized variants of Soviet systems from the 1950s and 1960s and are no match for their American equivalents in range, firepower, speed, accuracy and overall technological advancement. The Chinese leadership's dogged efforts to create a modern military force by cutting manpower; upgrading the technological caliber of armor, aircraft, missiles and ships (with massive purchases from Russia); and investing in electronic and information warfare have not changed this picture-and will not for decades to come.

The one advantage that Beijing has is that the United States has chosen to assume worldwide military commitments, while China concentrates its forces closer to home. The most important consequence of this contrast, itself indicative of the gap in power between America and China, is that while China would still be defeated in any confrontation over Taiwan, it has raised the risk that the United States would have to run to protect Taiwan.

THE CHINESE leadership would have to be extremely reckless and willing to jeopardize China's galloping economic growth to initiate a war with the United States, and there is no evidence that it is made up of wild-eyed gamblers. Rather, Beijing, as Bates Gill shows, has chosen moderation of late and has sought to allay regional fears about its ascendancy by stressing that it is engaged in "peaceful development", taking a leaf right out of Bismarck's playbook.

One might counter that talk is cheap and dismiss the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) soothing messages as proof of its well-honed propaganda skills. But beyond the words, there have been real changes in Beijing's deeds. Once suspicious of multilateral approaches to east Asian problems, China has begun to embrace them. For example, it has become an active participant in the ASEAN Plus-5 forum and an advocate of regional security structures for consultations. China has also begun to favor multilateral approaches to confidence building and territorial disputes. Beijing once derided the hypocrisy and double standard behind calls for nuclear non-proliferation but now supports efforts to stop the spread of nuclear arms and other Weapons of Mass Destruction; it has, for example, played a pivotal part in the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program. Likewise, it once viewed terrorism as a manifestation of class struggle and a weapon of the oppressed but now sees it as a scourge, no doubt partly because of sporadic attacks in the Turkic-Muslim Xinjiang Autonomous Region. By and large, this strategy of reassurance has worked, allaying east Asian fears that Chinese dominance will bring upheaval and bullying in its wake. Moreover, in some parts of the region, Washington, not Beijing, is deemed the greater threat to peace.

Yet the expectation that China will remain responsible rather than turn revisionist, even as the balance of power starts to tip in its favor, could be upended by events. For one thing, it does not allow for the unexpected, most notably a latter-day Sarajevo-style syndrome, in which a crisis spins out of control, culminating in a large-scale conflict that nobody wanted, or even anticipated. Susan Shirk offers the latest version of this argument, stressing the Chinese leadership's desire to exploit rising nationalism for its own ends. The CCP has done so because it faces a very big problem: It needs a new source of legitimacy. The arid slogans of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism have lost whatever appeal they may once have had for the populace, and the party has little to offer when it comes to building a 21^st-century economic system and making it more innovative. With its censorship of the Internet and other dysfunctional proclivities, it is more of an obstacle to innovation than a spur. The party leadership has adapted by leaning heavily on nationalism, stoking it during crises, and using it more generally to articulate the theme that China under its stewardship has erased the humiliations of the 19^th century and is fast becoming a front-rank power, respected by all, pushed around by none.

This is a risky gambit, though; China's materialistic youths are also very nationalistic (though hardly unique in that regard). They monitor whether the regime is delivering on its bravado and whether it is standing up to adversaries, especially Japan and the United States. Prominent examples include the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the war over Kosovo in May 1999, the collision between a Chinese fighter jet and an American EP-3 surveillance aircraft in April 2001, and Japanese leaders' visits to the Yasukuni shrine and sugarcoating of past imperialism.

Not only is the regime aware that it is judged by its performance rather than its pronouncements, it knows that mass demonstrations occasioned by perceived slights to China-and such large-scale protests occurred during the incidents just mentioned-could turn into mass protests aimed at the regime itself. This fear is not paranoiac; there is no dearth of kindling to stoke the fire. Today's China is rife with revolts, some involving clashes with the security services, by workers and peasants-and other segments of society-over a range of issues: job losses, land seizures, rising socioeconomic inequality, corruption, environmental degradation and the ineffectiveness of courts. Moreover, the protests are growing in number and size and are becoming better organized. According to official Chinese data, the number of protests increased from 58,000 in 2003 to 85,000 in 2005 (almost four million people took part in 2004), and the Ministry of Public Safety likened the sharp upswing since the latter half of the 1990s to a "violent wind." The true number-tightly guarded by the authorities-is quite likely to be much higher.¹

The question is whether the regime will be able to ride the nationalist wave during crises by showing the toughness needed to placate its citizenry, while also avoiding a conflict with potential adversaries like the United States or Japan. This is something of a high-wire act, particularly because the ability of the Chinese population to mobilize itself has been transformed by the Internet and mobile phones, themselves important symbols of the modernization that has followed Deng Xiaoping's ditching of Maoist nostrums. Just recall how the Falun Gong faithful organized rallies and, following the regime's crackdown, used the Internet to publicize their plight.

The possibility of conflict is all the more unpalatable for Beijing because China's economic miracle is the result of shedding autarky and embracing economic interdependence or, in its turbo-charged variant, globalization. For example, if China were to unload its dollar holdings and opt for the euro as its main reserve currency, it would damage the American economy (the U.S. government would have to hike interest rates to keep attracting dollars). But Beijing would also wound itself. While Americans certainly benefit from the relatively inexpensive goods that U.S. companies export from China, it is no less true that a reliable American market is important to China. Its exports to the United States totaled $287 billion in 2006, making the United States the number one foreign destination for Chinese goods; on top of that, the United States is the fifth-largest source of foreign direct investment in China.

So, the costs of willfully creating instability-indeed, of upheaval unrelated to Chinese actions-have risen now that China's economic engine is powered by capital inflows, global markets and reliable energy supplies. And the constraints imposed by such dependence will not diminish even though China will be less susceptible to economic sanctions as rising incomes expand the internal market.

Another side effect of economic success that is far more challenging for Beijing is the extent to which Deng's reforms have transformed Chinese society. To ensure its survival, the CCP needs to maintain a monopoly on political power, a litany of social controls and communist ideology, all increasingly at odds with a complex, modern and materialistic society. This contradiction will have to be resolved. The far-reaching transformation of China will aggravate the tension between a static and repressive polity on the one hand, and a dynamic society and economy on the other, which are not only jettisoning the avowed ideals of the CCP, but also rendering the party itself an anachronism. Whether this occurs through sporadic clashes between the rulers and the ruled (the Tiananmen massacre was an early harbinger of this possibility, and recurrent protests by workers and peasants show that that event was not necessarily an aberration), the shedding of totalitarianism for a light-touch Singapore-style authoritarianism, the gradual emergence of a democratic polity or the breakdown of the system is hard to predict. But the problem is as substantial as it is undeniable.

VERY FEW of the Sinologists who have been daring enough to venture predictions about China's future have picked the last of these outcomes; rather, most assume that the regime will manage the problems it faces and that they are a sideshow to the main event: China's emergence as a superpower. Not Gordon Chang. He believes China is headed for a crack-up and offers a long list of problems to back his claim. The banking system, forced for political reasons to lend money to sustain loss-making, state-owned enterprises-millions are employed in these companies-is vulnerable to what in the antiseptic language of economics are called "non-performing" loans, and Chang is convinced that the banks' insolvency will spark an economic crisis. Along with the benefits it brings, accession to the WTO introduces competition from abroad, affecting production and employment at home. China's rapid economic growth has raised living standards for millions, but has also created deep divides between the coastal regions and the interior and west, as well as between the poor peasants and workers and urban elite, something that the leadership and Chinese academics have noted with growing concern, viewing these chasms not only as unfortunate by-products of the economic boom, but also sources of social strife. These concerns are well-founded, judging by the increasing incidence of demonstrations-some violent-by poorer Chinese who feel that they have been denied their fair share of the burgeoning wealth or who have been evicted from their lands to make way for new homes and factories. Chang, like Shirk, also argues that an increasingly nationalistic generation of Chinese places pressure on the leadership to stand tall when tested by foreign adversaries-or to lose what is fast becoming its principal source of legitimacy.

One manifestation of the inequality accompanying the skyrocketing economy is the so-called "floating population" of 140 million, consisting primarily of people who have fled the poverty of the countryside only to find themselves living on the margins of life in large cities, without rights to permanent residence and identity cards, and lacking reliable sources of income, decent housing and access to social services. Moreover, city dwellers view them, not without justification, as contributing to the increase in crime and believe that their willingness to work for less pushes wages down.² Perhaps sustained economic growth will solve such problems. To ensure this-a precondition for social stability-the regime needs investment capital, but there will be other claims on such funds. Now that birth rates have fallen sharply for the past several decades (on average, Chinese women now have 1.7 children, less than the 2.1 needed to maintain the current size of the population), the aged account for an increasing proportion of China's population (the median age was 22 in 1980 but is estimated to increase to 41 in 2030).³ They must be cared for by the state or entrusted to their children, reducing net savings and investment in either case. Then there are environmental problems: It will also be exceedingly expensive to ameliorate the health problems rampant pollution is producing; water shortages are becoming severe and will worsen as a result of further economic growth and urbanization. The price tag of the multiple effects of environmental damage is estimated to be between 8 and 12 percent of China's GNP, and continued economic growth will surely increase the burden.⁴ Finally, there is what might be called the Tiananmen-Falun Gong problem. The increasingly modern and educated citizenry created by the economic miracle will start chafing under the regime's panoply of political restrictions and gain the confidence to make its dissatisfaction known, the more so if socioeconomic inequality and environmental problems continue to increase, widening and deepening popular discontent.

None of these difficulties in themselves will necessarily bring down the regime. Indeed, its success in managing numerous problems is striking. But their persistence and combined effects could take China down a road not anticipated by the orthodox "China rising paradigm." The Soviet Union's rapid disappearance should serve as a cautionary tale: The unexpected can occur, catching everyone off guard, and China's current rulers, like their predecessors, could lose the "mandate of heaven."

NO MATTER what happens, Japan cannot help but be affected. If China's ascent is uninterrupted, no other state will feel the consequences more, given the realities of demography (China's huge advantage in population), geography (China's proximity to Japan) and history (the legacies of conflict between China and Japan). So what will Japan do in the face of a China that seeks to rearrange the regional balance of power and defies the predictions of those who claim that its common sense and growing stake in stability will lead it to choose statesmanship over saber-rattling? Two important books, Securing Japan by Richard J. Samuels and Japan Rising by Kenneth Pyle, superbly assess the choices Japan is likely to make, while placing them in historical context.

Most observers expect little or no change in the way Japan has pursued security since 1945 and predict that it will continue a variant of the Yoshida Doctrine, promulgated by Japan's first post-World War II prime minister, Yoshida Shigeru, which involved concentrating on economic development and trusting in American protection.

But while Japan may continue this "trading state" strategy, the assumption that it has no other realistic choice is not borne out by its history, a case that I have also made recently, and that Samuels and Pyle develop in more detail. (Though they do not believe that Japan will shift course as dramatically as I do-going beyond beefing up its military power toward a strategy of autonomy, propelled by an increasing awareness that the American commitment to defend Japan is becoming less reliable.)⁵

The two most important conditions that could place Japan on a new path are China's emergence as a front-rank power and Japan's loss of confidence in America's protection, or even its robust presence in northeast Asia. The Japanese officials and experts who believe that the American guarantee could become unreliable are not of one mind. Some believe that economic conditions in the United States (persistent budget and current-account deficits and mounting social problems) may prompt it to scale back military spending and commitments. Others doubt that the United States can be counted on to the degree it has been in the past because China's growing might will require it to take increasing risks on behalf of its allies in the North Pacific.

To this list I would add the possibility that the United States will recast its own grand strategy. As I argue in The End of Alliances, for most of its history, the Republic was led by individuals who were chary of the expenses and obligations that accompany permanent alliances. Seen thus, the Cold War strategy of assuming expansive military commitments and forging open-ended alliances changed the prior pattern of American statecraft; since it was a fundamental change, a new orientation could scarcely be excluded. While neither Pyle nor Samuels predict so far-reaching an American reassessment-that is not the purpose animating their books-they show that the possibility is much discussed in Japanese national-security circles these days.

Samuels delves deep into Japanese political dynamics and reveals how Yoshida's game plan, while still dominant, is now fiercely contested. Those who favor minimal additions to Japan's military budget and forces still hold positions of power and the belief that there is no need to supplant a solution that has worked so well for so long is shared by most Japanese. Moreover, there are some points of convergence between Yoshida's disciples and the pacifist left, particularly when it comes to preserving Article IX of the constitution, which commits Japan to renouncing the implements of war. (Japan skirted the literal wording of this provision in response to Washington's reassessment-particularly evident after the Korean War-that its earlier decision to demilitarize Japan had to be abandoned because of the threats posed by China, the USSR and North Korea. Yoshida acceded to American wishes with great reluctance but insisted that Japan's military power and obligations be placed within narrow bounds.)

But by the 1980s, a segment of Japan's political class and foreign-policy community-which has become particularly influential following the Cold War-was arguing that while Japan should hold firm to the American alliance, it should strengthen its military capabilities. This segment also argued that Japan should undertake defensive missions further from the homeland, participate in UN peacekeeping operations and provide greater assistance to American forces in the Pacific. They advocated revising Article IX, discarding the self-imposed limits on defense spending (the 1 percent of the GNP ceiling that soon attained sacrosanct status) and the ban on exporting arms and military technology, and acquiring armaments that would provide Japan's Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) more muscle and reach. Apart from such specific changes, the advocates of a stronger military with a more ambitious mandate want Japan to stop what they consider its self-flagellation for past misdeeds, abandon its pacifist security blanket and become a "normal country."⁶

The extent to which this school has moved Japan away from the Yoshida consensus, while also strengthening the alliance with the United States, was evident even before the tenure of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, but its influence became particularly pronounced once he was elected. Calls for rethinking Article IX have become standard. The Defense Agency gained ministerial status in 2007, and its influence has grown as the controls exercised by the powerful Cabinet Legislative Office have been diminished. Japanese ships provided logistical support for U.S. forces operating in Iraq and Afghanistan. Senior officials stated that pre-emptive attacks were justified to parry the threat presented by North Korea's ballistic missiles and nuclear program. A small contingent from the JSDF was deployed to Iraq. Even the nuclear option, once a taboo, is now part of the national-security debate.

Political currents within Japan could also take Tokyo's defense policy in a new direction. Those who favored unarmed neutrality, principally the Socialist Party, have become marginalized. Meanwhile, another group, although it certainly does not represent mainstream thinking, has become more prominent. Its adherents favor far more radical changes, including an end to the alliance with the United States, which they consider a symbol of subordination. The governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, is the best-known advocate of these positions, but Samuels shows that they are supported by a number of other prominent thinkers, who present a coherent, if somewhat overwrought, appraisal of the growing threats facing Japan-China in particular-and stress America's unreliability. Japan, these nationalists warn, will find itself alone and vulnerable unless it ditches the Yoshida Doctrine and goes well beyond the bounds envisaged by the "normal country" folks. But even if they prove to have little influence, the fact remains that the Nakasone-Koizumi line is well established and has already made a difference that would have appeared quite unlikely as late as the 1970s.

If the United States, for whatever reason, reduces its military presence in the North Pacific, China begins to throw its weight around and the comity between Tokyo and Washington starts to erode, Pyle's argument will almost certainly be validated. The idea that external shifts will bring about major changes in the theory and practice of Japan's military policy may even exceed what he envisions-the gap between the "normal country" proponents and nationalist groups that Samuels analyzes could close and public opinion could come to favor a reevaluation of the limits placed on the JSDF. This scenario goes beyond what even Pyle expects, and far beyond what Samuels foresees, but it is hardly improbable, certainly not if one considers the long sweep of Japanese history and the major recalibrations that have occurred in the balance of power over the centuries.

WOULD NORTHEAST Asia become a more dangerous place if there were to be so radical a change? The mainstream view is that it would, and it certainly cannot be dismissed. But if in fact China proves the optimists wrong-does not collapse as Gordon Chang expects and instead surpasses the United States much more rapidly than he envisaged and sets out to alter the balance of power aggressively-Japan's choices are not limited to minimalism or militarism. It can develop a far more capable military and, together with a coalition that could include the United States, India, Vietnam, Indonesia and Australia (and perhaps Russia, depending on whether it chooses to help balance China or to safeguard its sparsely populated and hard-to-defend Far East by placating Beijing), create a new equilibrium.

There are already some signs that new alignments are jelling in anticipation of a stronger China. After decades of estrangement during the Cold War, India and the United States are forming a strategic partnership, with Washington violating its non-proliferation policy to help consolidate the alliance. American arms manufacturers are eyeing an Indian market once dominated by the Soviet Union, anticipating that India will need to modernize its armed forces and have the cash to buy what it needs. India and Japan have begun military-to-military contacts and have also held joint naval exercises and operations in which Australia and the United States have participated. The United States and Vietnam have moved from enmity to cooperation. Leaders in these countries deny that China has anything to do with all this (and Indian officials, eager to dispel the notion that they are colluding with Washington, will doubtless point to an India-China naval exercise), but such protestations are scarcely persuasive, for the historical record is unambiguously clear: When a state makes dramatic gains in power, it provokes an opposing coalition. And there is no doubt who is the rising power.

The replication of this process in Asia would be neither an aberration nor, necessarily, something to fear. Imagine a China that continues to shed its revolutionary past, adopts pragmatism and stability as its watchwords, and becomes ever more intertwined with the global economy. The awareness that the intemperate quest for a Pax Sinica would inevitably provoke a countervailing alignment, tax China's resources and overextend its military power should restrain Beijing. Conversely, a belligerent China's freedom of action would be reduced by an opposing coalition, especially one that stretches Chinese resources across several widely separated fronts. Everyone benefits if a state bidding to become the new hegemon treads lightly-including the putative hegemon itself. That is a lesson offered by both Sun Tzu and Bismarck.

Rajan Menon is the Monroe J. Rathbone Professor of International Relations at Lehigh University and a fellow at the New America Foundation.

¹Thomas Lum, "Social Unrest in China", Congressional Research Service, May 8, 2006, available at http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33416.pdf; "China Grows More Wary over Rash of Protest", washingtonpost.com, August 10, 2005; the quotation is from Sinologist Dorothy Solinger, "Worker Protest in China-Plentiful but Preempted", Taipei Times, February 18, 2005.

²T. Wing Lo and Guoping Jiang, "Inequality, Crime, and the Floating Population in China", Asian Criminology, Vol. 1 (2006), pp. 112.

³Data from Nicholas Eberstadt, "Will China Continue to Rise?" (unpublished manuscript).

⁴Elizabeth Economy, "The Great Leap Backwards", Foreign Affairs, Vol. 86, No. 5 (September/October 2007), pp. 47.

⁵Rajan Menon, The End of Alliances (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

⁶The JSDF has capabilities that are much greater than its innocuous-sounding name would suggest. Japan may spend barely 1 percent of its GDP on defense, but given the size of its economy, its military budget is the fourth highest (or fifth, depending on the year) in the world, which means that even a small increase in the proportion devoted to the military can make a considerable difference. Furthermore, its technological prowess gives it the capacity to manufacture modern weapons that few other states can.