Conclusion

Since its creation in 1949 the PRC has therefore played an important role in the international arena. Within the Cold War it began as an ally of the Soviet Union but ended as a state that was willing to co-operate, although not ally itself, with the United States.

However, as the above demonstrates, assessing China's role means coming to terms with a series of paradoxes, for its external policy has often been marked by dramatic shifts in direction. To a degree these paradoxes can be explained in terms of its permanent security concerns, for within the context of the Cold War it sought to defend its own interests by maintaining a balance of power between the two superpowers. It is important though to put more flesh on this vague realist assumption in order to come to any true understanding of China's course. In essence two linked factors have shaped the PRC's foreign policy. The first, which applied throughout the period under examination, was its desire to maintain and assert its independence. After casting off its hundred-year-long virtual sub­jugation by the imperial Powers, China was determined that it would not be subject to further attempts to erode its sovereignty, either by the United States or by the Soviet Union, and that it would fully unite the country, bringing Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan home to the motherland.

Pacific War

The phrase usually used to refer to the Allied war against Japan from 1941 to 1945.

Beyond these factors, however, is one more driving force, which is simply that China is an immense country with huge resources at its disposal. Just as its weakness in the nineteenth century led to international disorder as the imperial Powers competed for its considerable spoils, so its recovery from that low point has led to instability. The slow road towards Chinese resurgence began before the communists took power — indeed it was one of the main contributory fac­tors to the outbreak of the Pacific War — but since 1949 it has gathered speed, and reached new peaks in the 1990s. Thus, even if China did not bring its troubled historical and ideological legacy to the formulation of its foreign policy, one of the key challenges for the twenty-first century would still be how the world will manage China's almost inevitable move towards superpower status.

However, while the PRC has undergone a great process of change and the question of how smoothly the world can adapt to its growing power is now one of the key debates in international politics, a very different discourse exists in relation to its neighbour, North Korea. Here the issue is not so much how to cope with a rising power, but what to do about an unreconstructed Stalinist state that refuses to die.

Z Recommended reading

The best places to start in understanding the history of the PRC are volumes XIV and XV of the Cambridge History of China (Cambridge, 1987 and 1990) and the later chapters of both Jonathan Spence's magisterial The Search for Modern China (New York, 1999) and Jack Gray's Rebellions and Revolutions: China from the 1880s to the 1990s (Oxford, 1990). A number of overviews of Chinese communist foreign policy exist, including John Garver, Foreign Relations of the People’s Republic of China (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1993) and Thomas Robinson and David Shambaugh (eds), Chinese Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (Oxford, 1994). A useful review ofAmerican attitudes towards China is Rosemary Foot, The Practice of Power: US Relations with China since 1949 (Oxford, 1997).

For Mao's China, see Roderick MacFarquhar's three-volume series, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution (New York, 1974—97), Stuart Schram, The Thought of Mao Zedong (Cambridge, 1989), Michael Schoenhals, China’s Cultural Revolution, 1960—1969: Not a Dinner Party (London, 1996), Frederick Teiwes, China’s Road to Disaster: Mao, Central Politicians, and Provincial Leaders in the Unfolding of the Great Leap Forward, 1955—1959 (Armonk, NY, 1999) and Joseph W. Esherick et al. (eds), The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History (Stanford, CA, 2006). For Mao's foreign policy, see Chen Jian's provocative study, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill, NC, 2001). The Sino-Soviet alliance has been much misunderstood, but Odd Arne Westad (ed.), Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945—1963 (Stanford, CA, 1998) provides a useful corrective. On Sino-American relations until the rapprochement, see Harry Harding and Yuan Ming (eds), Sino-American Relations 1945—1955: A Joint Assessment of a Critical Decade (Wilmington, DE, 1989), Gordon Chang, Friends and Enemies: The United States, China and the Soviet Union (Stanford, CA, 1990), Shu Guang Zhang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture: Chinese-American Confrontations, 1949-1958 (Ithaca, NY, 1992), Robert Ross and Jiang Changbin (eds), Re-examining the Cold War: US-China Diplomacy, 1954-1973 (Cambridge, MA, 2001) and Simei Qing, From Allies to Enemies: Visions of Modernity, Identity, and US-China Diplomacy, 1945-1960 (Cambridge, MA, 2006).

For China's relations with the Third World, Gerald Segal, The Great Power Triangle (Basingstoke, 1982), Ronald Keith, The Diplomacy of Zhou Enlai (New York, 1989) and Andrew Wedeman, The East Wind Subsides: Chinese Foreign Policy and the Origins of the Cultural Revolution (Washington, DC, 1987) contain useful information. For the Cultural Revolution period and the Sino-American rapprochement, see John Garver, China’s Decision for Rapprochement with the United States, 1968-1972 (Boulder, CO, 1982) and Barbara Barnouin and Yu Changgen, Chinese Foreign Policy during the Cultural Revolution (London, 1998). On the Vietnam War, see Cheng Guan Ang, Vietnamese Communists’ Relations with China and the Second Indochina Conflict, 1957-1962 (Jefferson, VA, 1997), Zhai Qiang, China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950-1975 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2000) and Priscilla Roberts (ed.), Behind the Bamboo Curtain: China, Vietnam, and the Cold War (Stanford, CA, 2006).

China in the post-Cultural Revolution period is covered by Richard Baum, Burying Mao; Chinese Politics in the Age of Deng Xiaoping (Princeton, NJ, 1994), Kenneth Lieberthal, Governing China: From Revolution to Reform (New York, 1995), D. Shambaugh (ed.), Deng Xiaoping: Portrait of a Chinese Statesman (Oxford, 1995), Colin Mackerras, Pradeep Taneja and Graham Young, China since 1978 (London, 1998) and Maurice Meisner, Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic (New York, 1999). Works that deal with post-Cultural Revolution Sino-American diplomacy are Harry Harding, A Fragile Relationship: The United States and China since 1972 (Washington, DC, 1992), Robert Ross, Negotiating Cooperation: US-China Relations, 1969-1989 (New York, 1995), James Mann, About Face: A History of America’s Curious Relationship with China: From Nixon to Clinton (New York, 1998), Patrick Tyler, A Great Wall: Six Presidents and China (New York, 1999) and Ezra Vogel, Yuan Ming and Akihiko Tanaka (eds), The Golden Age of the US-China-Japan Triangle, 1972-1989 (Cambridge, MA, 2002).

For the evolution of North Korea under Kim Il-Sung, see Adrian Buzo, The Guerilla Dynasty: Politics and Leadership in the DPRK 1945—1994 (London, 1999), Charles K. Armstrong, The North Korean Revolution, 1945—1950 (Ithaca, NY, 2003) A. N. Lankov, From Stalin to Kim Il Sung: The Formation of North Korea, 1945—1960 (London, 2001), and Balazs Szalontai, Khrushchev versus Kim Il-sung: Soviet—DPRK Relations and the Roots of North Korean Despotism, 1953-1964 (Stanford, CA, 2005). The international crisis created by North Korea's nuclear ambitions is covered by Leon Sigal, Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea (Princeton, NJ, 1997), Victor D. Cha and David C. Kang, Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies (New York, 2005), Selig S. Harrison, Korean Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification and US Disengagement (Princeton, NJ, 2003), Michael O'Hanlon and Mike M. Mochizuki, Crisis on the Korean Peninsula (New York, 2003), Gavan McCormack, Target North Korea: Pushing North Korea to the Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe (Washington, DC, 2004), and Ted Galen Carpenter and Doug Bandow, The Korean Conundrum: America’s Troubled Relations with North and South Korea (London, 2004).