The China threat is real – any notions that suggest otherwise are equally orientalizing – turns the K

Indications exist that the Xi leadership may be less satisfied with the status quo than Chan claims given that current PRC actions push up against not only the United States and Taiwan. South Korea reported economic punishment from China as a result of the deployment of a missile defense system to guard against possible North Korean attacks and repeated dangerous behavior by Chinese fishing vessels.[8] Japan expressed concern over increased naval and aerial activity by PRC assets in and over contested areas.[9] Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam indicate growing PRC harassment of their fishing and other civilian vessels in the South China Sea, which is notable given that Indonesia and the PRC do not have overlapping territorial claims.[10] Then there are tensions along the Sino-Indian border that recently resulted in deadly clashes between Indian and Chinese troops.[11] Current PRC behavior is worrisome for regional actors in other ways as well. Australia reports economic pressure for not conforming to Beijing’s preferences on pushing for an open investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and complaining about PRC efforts to influence its internal politics.[12] Along with Canada, Australia saw citizens detained and charged for illegal activities under suspicious circumstances.[13] Singapore too faced Chinese state pressure over its insistence on adherence the rule of law over the arbitration over the South China Sea brought by the Philippines against the PRC.[14] That such issues do not receive more treatment by Chan is curious since they raise questions about PRC’s commitment to self-restraint and can potentially trigger the chain-ganging effects on U.S.-China ties that Chan warns readers about (21-22, 211-215). Such friction can potentially harden positions and raise the stakes over an issue such that prevailing becomes more tied to status and other concerns, driving more aggressive and even revisionist behavior.[15] Chan’s finding that misplaced worries about the PRC and its intentions stem in part from misunderstandings of perspectives on international politics that are informed by theories from “the West” rather than China deserves elaboration and debate. So-called “Western” international relations theories often have parallels in the Chinese tradition, broadly construed. Work analyzing Spring and Autumn, Warring States, Song, and Ming documents indicate that the strategic thought that is prominent in these periods closely resembles statecraft familiar to those in the contemporary “West.”[16] Texts as varied as the Han-era annals Records of the Grand Historian and the Ming-era fiction Romance of the Three Kingdoms will suggest the same.[17] Parallels between “Western” and “Chinese” approaches to politics are unsurprising. Several millennia of collective human experience, thought, and debate over statecraft, conflict, as well as governance are almost certainly bound to produce similarities in responses. Dividing the world into “Western” and “Chinese” views of the world ignores the fact the PRC has disagreements with ostensibly “non-Western” polities such as India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, each with their own distinct philosophical traditions.[18] Also, despite sharing cultural origins, people in the PRC and on Taiwan disagree fundamentally issues of political values and rights, not the relatively simple issues of who should rule China or what a Chinese state should entail geographically.[19] Moreover, the PRC’s ruling Chinese Communist Party draws at least some of its inspiration from European thinkers in the form of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. Successive dynasties from historical China also proved themselves very adept at conquest—that is how regimes and empires get built.[20] Attributing tensions between the United States and PRC to culture suggests an overly monolithic view of the rich and varied philosophical and political traditions both major powers draw from, giving them less credit than is due.[21] To claim that contemporary international scholarship and U.S. policy are unable to adequately understand China because they are “Western” may oversimplify the nature and seriousness of problems dogging U.S.-China relations and their consequences for the world. Relegating difference to culture is not only Orientalizing, it can encourage a misplaced expectation that understanding can bring some sort of happy, mutually acceptable outcome. Perhaps Beijing and Washington understand each other well. They simply disagree fundamentally over values and interests in ways that make finding mutually acceptable accommodation increasingly difficult. This does not have to imply that either side is morally superior or normatively “better” than the other, just that understanding provides little promise for improving relations and avoiding confrontation. Better accounting for such possibilities invites fuller consideration of the roles that agency and contingency play in major power relations, two features that Chan clearly identifies as critical in the volume. Thucydides’s Trap? deserves much credit for grappling with important, pressing, and difficult questions about the drivers behind the downturn in U.S.-China relations and possible ways to address this slide. Yet, Chan’s outlook is more similar to Graham Allison’s than he initially lets on. Allison’s call for creative statecraft is possible only if the United States and China are not locked in a structural situation which neither can escape or beset by contingent circumstances that prevents Washington and Beijing from effectively exercising the agency Chan believes is central. Chan offers some insight when he points to divergences in perspectives between Washington and Beijing but may be overly limiting the ways he conceives of effects of culture and socialization. Likewise, the volume can go further in conceptualizing the various ways third parties such as regional actors and international organizations can affect U.S.-China ties, given that world politics is not just major powers going at each other—a fact both Chan and Allison recognize. Major power interactions simply do not occur in a vacuum. Such dynamics may reinforce competition as much as ameliorate them, but their effects await further clarification and explanation.