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The New Chinese Empire: And What
It Means for the United States
By Ross Terrill
Experienced China-watcher Terrill (Mao: A Biography)
has viewed with a skeptical eye China's emergence as a
major player in the international community. In this
rather one-sided view of China's future, he implores
the West not to pursue a policy of na<ve engagement
with the People's Republic, citing what he considers
to be the dangerous state-centered legacy of the
nation's dynastic past. Of principal concern to
Terrill is China's continued territorial control over
the culturally alien border regions of Tibet, Xinjiang
and Inner Mongolia. This imperial expansionism is
driven in part by what Terrill identifies as an
arrogant sense of entitlement in the minds of China's
leaders, coupled with a military capability that he
overstates to buttress his provocative conclusion:
that China is a "misfit" in the international system
and is what Terrill calls a "semiterrorist outfit."
The author also argues that if malcontented minorities
on China's periphery don't tear apart the Communist
regime, then a faltering Chinese economy will.
Communist repression limits what Terrill crudely
describes as the "Chinese genius for business" and the
people's "industriousness," and, he expects, will
bring about a powerful backlash against the state. One
symptom of the coming collapse identified by Terrill
relates to a yawning gap in income among workers and
the fact that 1% of Chinese owns 40% of the country's
wealth. This is alarming, but hardly foreshadows the
country's collapse when one considers the size of the
economic gap in the U.S. Maps.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia
By Lutz Kleveman
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0871139065/qid=1069543213/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-1867587-0712105?v=glance&s=books#product-details
Conventional thinking on a possible confrontation
between the U.S. and China assumes that the geography
of conflict will be off of China's coast over the
Taiwan issue or as competition for the Spratly Islands
heats up. In his first book, veteran war correspondent
Kleveman makes the intriguing argument that the
challenge to U.S. primacy will in fact take place to
the west of China's hinterland province Xingjiang over
the resources of the energy-rich Caspian Sea and the
surrounding Central Asian republics. The central
thesis, that the U.S., China, Russia and Iran are now
engaged in a New Great Game, a power struggle for
control of the region's vast oil and gas reserves, is
thinly woven through the narrative in what is largely
a war zone travel diary. Kleveman, who readily admits
his conviction that the recent war in Iraq was
motivated by the interests of Houston oilmen,
similarly treats the war on terrorism as little more
than a pretext for the presence of U.S. troops in the
region to secure oil interests and pipeline routes.
Thus, the book gives the impression that Kleveman has
selectively presented interviews with oil ministers
and locals that lend his argument the most weight,
while giving short shrift to those with opposing views.
The work draws attention to a little understood and
increasingly important part of the world where oil,
Islam and terrorism converge to create havoc, but in
the end, Kleveman fails to show that competition and
not cooperation will mark the development of the
region's resources.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0465084125/102-1867587-0712105?v=glance&s=books
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
A book review from the Economist for this book.
The devil's tears
ACROSS Central Asia and the Caucasus, people
understand why oil is the "devil's tears". Lutz
Kleveman, a journalist who has criss-crossed the
region and met numerous oil barons, politicians and
warlords, as well as ordinary people, concludes that
the great powers are once again playing a cynical "great
game", leaving blood and tears in their tracks. The
prize and the players, however, have changed since the
19th century. What is at stake is not India, but
access to the region's abundant oil and gas
resources-possibly the world's largest untapped
reserves of energy. And tsarist Russia and colonial
Britain have been replaced by the United States,
post-Soviet Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan.
The United States, eager to satisfy its growing energy
hunger and ease its dependence on Middle East oil, has
been eyeing the region with growing interest since the
collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia is witnessing
America's creeping influence with unease and is
struggling to maintain the upper hand in its
traditional backyard. China has been pulled in by
energy prospects as well, but also by its desire to
quash support for Uighur separatists in its western
province of Xinjiang.
The oil has to be moved from its source to its market,
a problem of pipeline politics that has yet to be
solved and which affects not only producing countries,
but also their neighbours. The Americans are pushing
for a westward route from Azerbaijan via Georgia and
Turkey, bypassing Russia; Moscow wants to keep control
over pipelines delivering Caucasian oil; China has
been negotiating an eastward route with Kazakhstan;
Iran, whose oil is in the south of the country but
whose energy needs are in the north, is dreaming of
oil swaps with Central Asian countries, a nightmare
for any American administration. And Pakistan argues
for a pipeline to go, improbably, through Afghanistan.
Mr Kleveman links the instability of the region to oil
greed. Russia, he says, has been fuelling ethnic
conflicts in the newly independent countries of the
Caucasus to keep them on a tight leash and undermine
American plans. The United States, he says, has been
using the war against terrorism as an excuse to
establish a military presence in Central Asia.
Everyone has been meddling in Afghanistan.
But the newly independent republics also know how to
play the game. "We need the big oil pipeline so that
we will continue to have the United States on our side
against Russia," explains a Georgian diplomat. "You
see, Georgia has got nothing else to offer to the
world. We have to sell our geographical position." But
many people he spoke to also criticise the United
States, which is seen as a democratic country that now
supports Central Asia's despots in the name of oil.
Mr Kleveman feeds his argument with enlightening
historical background and colourful anecdotes from his
extensive travels and interviews. But by looking at
the region exclusively through the oil lens, he
reduces foreign policy to simplistic energy
imperialism, concluding with exaggerated visions of
endless energy wars, floods of refugees, oil price
shocks and ever-growing foreign military commitments.
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