Chinese Economic Statecraft: Commercial Actors, Grand Strategy, and State Control

William J. Norris, Chinese Economic Statecraft: Commercial Actors, Grand Strategy, and State Control, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016, 320 pp.A rising power's desired foreign policy outcomes, to be successful, is often reliant on the state's capability to utilize its military power. However, due to a globalized world, military power may no longer have the sole influence on how states can achieve their national interests overseas. China, one of the most dynamic players today in international politics, has used its economic power as leverage to achieve its desired foreign policy outcomes. Despite existing literature on economic statecraft as an alternative instrument in foreign policy decisions, majority would still assess China's foreign policy through separate lenses of military and economic powers. On the other hand, while many of these references have stressed the separation between politics and economics, there is a growing body of literature that links these two disciplines, including this new book of William J. Norris. The book provides a compelling argument of how economic statecraft and the state's limited power of control work within the context of China's foreign policy.Norris points out an important issue that may have been overlooked in the study of China's foreign policy: the state's effectiveness to manipulate international economic activities for strategic purposes depends on its capability to control the behaviour of its commercial actors. In this 10-chapter piece, the author convincingly proves his arguments by emphasizing economic statecraft in the context of China's grand strategy and the Cross-Strait relations, China's global search for strategic raw materials, and the country's sovereign wealth funds as one of its sources of state capital. Norris observes that the state finds it difficult also to manage the behaviour of commercial actors in an effort to achieve the state's strategic objectives. The Chinese state may find it more convenient to control its military actors yet commercial actors may tend to be more mobile and independent enough to veer away from state control. This, in turn, poses a challenge to China since most of the time commercial actors may not behave according to its interests due to their different goals. Fuelled by corporate interests, commercial actors may often stimulate conflict between the state and its neighbouring countries undetected and uncontrolled, putting the Chinese state at a disadvantageous position.Norris concludes that economic statecraft can be a challenging instrument to use for the state in pursuing its national interests. …