Shifting Superpowers: The New and Emerging Relationship between the United States, China, and India.

• Author: Kurlanzik, Matthew
• Position: Book review

SHIFTING SUPERPOWERS: THE NEW AND EMERGING RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES, CHINA, AND INDIA

Martin Sieff

(Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2010), 240 pages.

Throughout Shifting Superpowers, Martin Sieff laments American policymakers' simplistic views of China and India. For Sieff, China's rise is too often met with fear and suspicion, while India's rise is greeted with naive hope and optimism.

In order to deflate this view and create a more robust one, Sieff, a former U.S. Department of State correspondent for Washington Times and current editor-at-large at The Globalist, describes the significant events over the last two centuries that have shaped the policies and attitudes of China and India.

For China, the loss of Hong Kong to Britain in 1842 brought about a century of humiliation and wildly divergent policies. Sieff details the evolution of China's policies from the rule of Jiang Jieshi to the rise of Mao, the transition to Deng Xiaoping and the current government of Hu Jintao and the Fourth Generation. It becomes apparent that the most pressing policy goal for China is reunification, specifically the reintegration of Taiwan, a thorny issue in U.S.-China relations.

Sieff details the complex relations between the United States and India, and the...