Fractured China : How State Transformation Is Shaping China's Rise

Fractured China reshapes the central debate in contemporary International Relations. Rejecting the flawed notion that everything Chinese actors do reflects a topdown strategy, this book highlights the fragmentation, decentralisation and internationalisation of the party-state, resulting in complex and even contradictory foreign policy behaviours.

Is China''s rise a threat to international order? Fractured China shows that it depends on what one means by ''China'', for China is not the monolithic, unitary actor that many assume. Forty years of state transformation – the fragmentation, decentralisation and internationalisation of party-state apparatuses – have profoundly changed how its foreign policy is made and implemented. Today, Chinese behaviour abroad is often not the product of a coherent grand strategy, but results from a sometimes-chaotic struggle for power and resources among contending politico-business interests, within a surprisingly permissive Chinese-style regulatory state. Presenting a path-breaking new analytical framework, Fractured China transforms the central debate in International Relations and provides new tools for scholars and policymakers seeking to understand and respond to twenty-first century rising powers. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in China and Southeast Asia, it includes three major case studies – the South China Sea, non-traditional security cooperation, and development financing–to demonstrate the framework''s explanatory power.