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Book Review

Xi Is Not Emperor of All He Surveys

Fractured China: How State Transformation is Shaping China’s Rise, by Lee Jones and Shahar Hameiri, (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2021) and James Reilly, Orchestration: China’s Economic Statecraft Across Asia and Europe (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2021).

 

Notes

1 Schuman 2022.

2 Karl Citation2017.

3 Zhang Citation2010; Perdue Citation2015.

4 McMaster Citation2020.

6 Jones and Hameiri, 11.

7 Jones and Hameiri, 21.

8 The idea is borrowed from studies of fragmented authoritarianism. See for example Lieberthal and Oksenberg Citation1988.

9 This is an important chapter, since prominent national security issues such as the South China Sea are generally the first point of reference for those seeking to advocate for the essentially centralized nature of the Chinese state. If the claim cannot hold in this case, therefore, the edifice falls. Arguably, without a discussion of the South China Sea, or the Taiwan question as a possible substitute, the book would pack considerably less punch.

10 Suisheng Zhao, quoted in Jones and Hameiri, 30.

11 Jones and Hameiri, 42.

12 Jones and Hameiri, 43, 170.

13 Jones and Hameiri, 49-55.

14 Jones and Hameiri, 48.

15 Reilly, 2.

16 Reilly, 2.

17 Reilly, 39.

18 Reilly, 39.

19 I did not fully understand why Reilly presents this as contributing to a specifically Chinese strategic culture, as it was not a practice specific to China at the time, and surely is not now, either.

20 Reilly, 34.

21 Reilly, pp. 80-81.

22 Reilly 39.

23 Reilly, 40.

24 Reilly, 46-48.

25 Jones and Hameiri, 56, 70.

26 Reilly, 34.

27 Jones and Hameiri’s article on the flawed regulatory state in Britain, and how the hollowing out of state capacity and the outsourcing of implementation to corporations rendered dysfunctional the national Covid pandemic response, is informative here. At its core, this is an international, not a Chinese or even an authoritarian phenomenon. See Jones and Hameiri Citation2022.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jane Hayward

Jane Hayward is a lecturer in China and Global Affairs at the Lau China Institute, King’s College, London.

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