ORCHESTRATION

“A central question associated with China’s rise is how it will use its economic resources for political ends. With detailed case studies and an engaging narrative, Reilly offers a superb account of how China practices economic statecraft. A must-read for anyone interested in China’s influence in the world today.” — M. Taylor Fravel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“Very few books achieve at this scale. Relying on years of extensive field research across Asia, Europe, and China — including remarkable work done in North Korea and Myanmar — James Reilly employs rich detail to insightfully reveal the whys and hows of China’s single-most important instrument of power: its economic statecraft. He finds Beijing effective in orchestrating economic statecraft, but then shows us why it often fails to advance the strategic goals that policy aims to achieve.” — Bates Gill, Macquarie University and Royal United Services Institute

“A timely contribution to our understanding of China’s role in a global economic order that faces new challenges in the mid-21st century. Reilly draws on social science theory, history, and an impressive set of cases illuminated by first-hand experiences across East Asia and Europe to present a nuanced view of China’s effort to harness its new economic might to the regime’s foreign policy goals. In contrast with images of a monolithic Chinese leadership commanding a threatening juggernaut, Reilly depicts the challenges Beijing has faced, including the difficulty of coordinating an array of domestic actors who are involved in formulating and implementing international economic policy. These challenges have shaped China’s distinctive approach to economic statecraft — orchestration — with mixed results that Reilly carefully documents.” — Avery Goldstein, University of Pennsylvania

“Reilly has written a theoretically tight and empirically rigorous analysis of China’s foreign economic policies. His social science training and area knowledge lead him to complex findings: First, there is variation in the success of the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign economic policies. Second, this variation depends in large measure on whether the Party can find, and then coordinate with, sub-state economic actors with independent but overlapping interests, in the face of variations in state practice in target states. Third, the reality of China’s foreign economic practices is quite distant from the U.S. policy makers’ unsophisticated stereotype of a monolithic Party-State dictating exploitative outcomes around the world.” — Alastair Iain Johnston, Harvard University