On China.

• Author: Moloughney, Brian
• Position: Book review

On China

Author: Henry Kissinger

Published by: Allen Lane, London, 2011, 586pp, US$36.

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This is a long book, far too long really, and there is not much in it that is new. Kissinger writes well and his account of his talks with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai at the time when he was President Nixon's secretary of state is worth reading. He also provides perceptive insights into the development of relations between the United States, China and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. But the endless stories of his personal encounters with successive generations of Chinese leaders soon become wearying. A shorter, less indulgent book would have been preferable.

Kissinger states that his aim in the book 'is to explain the conceptual way the Chinese think about problems of peace and war and international order, and its relationship to the more pragmatic, case-by-case American approach'. The intention is admirable, but it leads him into simplistic 'China versus the West' contrasts. The first chapter, entitled 'The Singularity of China', is devoted to this attempt to isolate China as a world apart. Kissinger runs through the standard menu, the Mandate of Heaven, Confucianism etc, in order to convey this exceptionalism, finally reducing everything down to a contrast between chess and weiqi. He argues that whereas chess is about total victory, putting the opposing king in a position where he cannot move without being destroyed, the Chinese board game is focused more on achieving relative advantage, strategic encirclement rather than total victory. Thus chess is about the decisive battle, weiqi the protracted campaign. Chess develops single-mindedness, weiqi strategic flexibility.

Kissinger's argues that as it is in board games, so it is in international relations, and he returns to this contrast throughout the book as he tries to explain the differences between Chinese and American approaches to inter-state relations throughout the 20th century. Perhaps he is deliberately simplifying in order to help readers appreciate how age-old traditions of statecraft continue to influence Chinese diplomacy. But such a view of China as static, as mired in the past, is well past its used-by date. Elevating difference to an all-consuming importance also means that we ignore all those areas where the Chinese approach is recognisable and familiar. Surely it is time to move beyond using China as the other against which we define ourselves. It not only...