Fractured China with Professor Lee Jones
Channel: War Studies KCL
Date: 2021-11-09

Is China's rise a threat to international order? The book 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. Dr Nicola Leveringhaus discusses this exciting new book with one of the authors, Professor Lee Jones from Queen Mary University London.