Taming Sino-American Rivalry

Competition between America and China has intensified since 2009, creating even greater risks of conflict. Why is this so and what can be done about it? In Taming Sino-American Rivalry, Feng Zhang and Richard Ned Lebow reject the prevailing idea that competition between a dominant and a rising power must necessarily lead to conflict. Rather, they identify the mistakes that both countries have made and explain the causes and consequences of their missteps.Drawing on international relations theory and lessons from history, they develop a comprehensive approach to conflict management and resolution that balances deterrence, reassurance, and diplomacy. A challenge to the prevailing pessimism, Taming Sino-American Rivalry is essential reading for anyone interestedin understanding the world's most important bilateral relationship.

A useful introduction to theoretical questions and methods in international relations., In Taming Sino-American Rivalry, Zhang and Lebow, by drawing on extensive sources, engage with an abundance of debates on the role of social factors in Sino American relations. The authors have meticulously offered a fresh perspective on how both the US and China can formulate a diplomacy of normalization through trusted catalysts to manage conflicts gradually and adopt a sustainable type of diplomacy., Analyzes competition and conflict between the United States and China since 2009, explaining why it has intensified since the Barack Obama administration and how leaders in both countries can develop a constructive strategic framework to ease competition, manage conflict, and reach an accommodation without giving up any of their meaningful goals., This book empirically refutes the theoretical assumptions of balance of power and convincingly argues why policymakers are crucial in managing strategic rivalry between great powers. Chinese and American policymakers can benefit from reading its suggestion of adopting special diplomatic measures to manage the current China-US completion., In engaging and compelling study of the US-China relationship that brings people and politics back into the picture. Zhang and Lebow force the reader to reexamine the evidence and question long-held assumptions, in the process delivering a fresh and novel argument about what has gone wrong in the relationship between these two great powers and what can be done to fix it.

Feng Zhang is Professor of International Relations at the Institute of Public Policy in Guangzhou, China. Richard Ned Lebow is Professor of International Political Theory in the War Studies Department of King's College London; Bye-Fellow of Pembroke College, University of Cambridge; and James O. Freedman Presidential Professor, Emeritus, at Dartmouth College.