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Ian Hall, China's future. By David Shambaugh: China's challenges. Edited by Jacques deLisle and Avery Goldstein: China's futures: PRC elites debate economics, politics, and foreign policy. By Daniel C. Lynch, International Affairs, Volume 92, Issue 4, July 2016, Pages 1024–1026, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2346.12686
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East Asia and Pacific
China's future. By David Shambaugh. Cambridge: Polity. 2016. 195pp. Index. £45.00. ISBN 978 1 50950 714 6. Available as e-book.
China's challenges. Edited by Jacquesde Lisle and Avery Goldstein. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2015. 307pp. Index. £24.70. ISBN 978 0 81222 312 5.
China's futures: PRC elites debate economics, politics, and foreign policy. By Daniel C. Lynch. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 2015. 312pp. Index. £69.00. ISBN 978 0 80479 419 0. Available as e-book.
Everyone with an interest in the Asia–Pacific has a view on the implications of China's rise and the country's possible futures. But few opinions are as authoritative as those presented in these books, though the three vary in form and differ in their predictions.
The most accessible—by design and in style—is David Shambaugh's punchy volume. In five short chapters, he sketches out what he thinks are the four most likely ‘pathways’ China's political elite could follow and the implications of each for its economy, society, polity and international relations. Their choice, Shambaugh argues, is between persisting with the ‘hard authoritarianism’ Xi Jinping is employing now; moving to a ‘neo-totalitarianism’ that would be harder still; reverting back to the ‘soft authoritarianism’ that prevailed between 1998 and 2008; or forging a pathway of reform, leading to ‘semi-democracy’.
