248 Despite the Author's Effort at Being Comprehensive, However, There
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248 BOOK REVIEWS Despite the author's effort at being comprehensive, however, there are certain lapses which may not readily be apparent to the lay reader. For one thing, the book fails to offer a sustained analysis of the political and economic conditions which spawned the revolutionary movement in the first place. The author provides glimpses of the personal circumstances of many of his subjects but beyond this, the reader is left to infer about the general conditions that gave rise to the revolution. Furthermore, the author fails to elaborate on the ideological underpinnings of the revolution in any systematic way. Considering the vital role that ideology plays in the revolution, this should have been a prime topic beyond brief occasional quotes from Mao Zedong's Red Book or from Jose Ma. Sison's (a.k.a. Amado Guerrero's) Philippine Society and Revolution. While the author describes well the schism between the hardline Central Commit- tee of the CPP, on the one hand, and the independent-minded Manila-Rizal Commit- tee, on the other on the matter of electoral politics, he fails to explain other equally traumatic schisms. One of these was the split within the Kabataang Makabayan (KM, or Patriotic Youth) resulting to the formation of the breakaway Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan (SDK, or Democratic Youth Association). The author blames Sison's "confrontational leadership" (p. 26), but evidently the reasons go much deeper involving doctrinal differences and divergent tactics. Another schism which the author completely ignores is the matter involving the renegade priest, Fr. Conrado Balweg, who formed the breakaway group, Cordillera People's Liberation Front. By failing to even mention Fr. Balweg, the author missed the opportunity to address the CPP/NPA's relationship with minority groups, e.g., the Igorots of the Mountain Provinces and the Muslims in the Philippine South. Finally, the author is tentative on whether the revolutionary movement is resilient or inflexible. On one hand, he describes how the movement is controlled by hard-line doctrinnaires resulting to serious blunders, e.g., boycott of the February 1986 elec- tion, and, on the other, he credits the localization of NPA operations as a brilliant example of the movement's adaptability to the insular nature of Philippine geography. Consequently, he obscures his analysis about the prospects for success of the movement. The book, nonetheless, contains many poignant stories of love, friendship, betrayal, courage, and death to the point where one cannot deny that humanity is involved in this process of struggle, not just some faceless, nameless protagonists engaged in a protracted combat. Lynchburg College KENNETH E. BAUZON Lynchburg, VA, U.S.A. Samuel S. Kim, ed., China and the World: New Directions in Chinese Foreign Relations. 2nd edition (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989), 339 pp. Cloth $ 55.00; Paper $ 17.95. This book seeks to remedy "the dialogue of the deaf between China specialists and world politics analysts". Its second edition bills itself as a more timely exposition of "Dengist pragmatism", and the editor now speaks confidently of China as a "full- fledged member of the global political system". The "open door" and the impact of the global economy are discussed at length, but the volume stops before the Deng-Gorbachev summit and the denouement of the 249 student movement for democracy. The subsequent Party synthesis, "one focus, two basic points", yige zhongxin, liangge jiben dian attempts to transcend the conflicting implications of the "open door", economic reform and the four cardinal principles relating to socialist ideology and political leadership, and these implications are critical to the continuous analysis of the issues raised in Kim's volume Allen Whiting concludes that China will not retreat into xenophobic isolation in the name of "self-reliance"; however, his view that "the real obstacle to forecasting policy" lies, not in the "recurring past concern" about domestic political stability, but in the "instability of the world economy" now seems less compelling. With chronological reference to four orientations, "autarchy", "self-reliance", "interdependence" and "dependence", Kim's forthright behavioural approach measures "domestic/societal" and "external/systemic factors", policy continuity and discontinuity and the discrepancy between the ideal and real in policy formulation and performance. Kim, David Backman and Edward Friedman provide a cogent examina- tion of the relevance and theoretical correlation of domestic and global factors in Part One. Part Two includes related studies of Sino-American, Sino-Soviet, China-Second World and China-Third World relations by Steven Levine, Chi Su, Donald Klein and Kim. The third part on policies and issues by Paul Godwin, Bruce Cumings, William Freeney, Denis Simon is informative and largely focussed on international political economy. Robert Ross' review of the first edition (American Political Science Review, V. 79, No. 4, Dec., 1985, p. 897) noted that the theory was not consistently applied through- out the volume, and this edition reveals unevenness in the theoretical exploitation of the differences between "autarchy" and "self-reliance". Also, the authors sometimes disagree on fundamentals. Bachman argues that the domestic factor is overwhelmingly important, and Cumings regrets the lack of interest in external variables. Unfor- tunately, the book does not offer a critical summation of the contributors' specific views. Kim's focus on globalizing processes is manifest in his intriguing analysis of the Chinese shift from dependenciatheory to the "Western neorealist liberal theory of global interdependence". Arms sales demonstrate Deng's "rampant" and "unprincipled pragmatism"; however, China now has a "functional theory of world peace". Kim believes that the Chinese believe that the world is an integral whole. This "realism" is traced to Deng's credo, "seeking the truth from the fact", which marked the ascen- dance of "cognitive and experiential factors" over ideology. Recent Chinese academic speculation has often moved beyond policy. The late Huan Xiang discussed "one world" and two social systems. He was less interested in coopting Western theory than in understanding Western reality. His own "realism" forecast a general retreat of states into domestic affairs in the light of world recession and "competitive coexistence". More importantly, the Party has never endorsed "global interdependence" in Kim's terms, and "seeking the truth from the facts" is a "Maoist" ideological tenet which stubbornly invokes the issue of con- tinuity. The roots of Deng's "neorealist liberalism" are not obvious given his stand against "bourgeois liberalization", and the ideological notions behind his "pragmatism" cannot readily be explained in the pejorative metaphor of "cat theory", mao lun. Each essay, in its own terms, is competently written, but the bridge between China scholarship and world politics analysis has yet to be built. China is undergoing .