In her important new book, Elizabeth Economy makes a strong case that China is attempting to, as she puts it, “reorder the world order” (2). Over the past decade, she argues, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has moved to reshape the international environment to better suit its interests. In so doing, it has sought to both push countries to align their interests with China's own and to reshape institutions of global governance to adopt new norms, values, and standards. And yet, Economy argues, China's assertive push is creating a global backlash that may well undermine its efforts to achieve a more powerful position on the world stage.
The World according to China focuses on several areas of China's growing global influence. First, Economy analyzes the CCP's use of soft and hard power tools, both to shape the policy choices of national governments and also to influence global public opinion. Economy...
