Much of Easternization focuses on increasing tension between the United States and China. Rachman attempts to examine the underlying reasons for a more confrontational Beijing. Noting that Xi Jinping’s ascent to the leadership in 2012 corresponded with a tougher Chinese line, he argues that deeper factors are also at work. An ‘aggrieved nationalism’ is not only cynically propagated by the regime: the Chinese people believe much of the narrative themselves. Beijing’s confidence in its new-found economic and international strength, combined with anxiety at its perceived domestic political vulnerability, is driving its assertiveness. Spectacular growth figures have buoyed the Chinese leadership, as has the performance of Chinese companies like Alibaba and Beijing’s increasingly successful wielding of influence. Their successful bullying of David Cameron, the British prime minister, after his meeting with the Dalai Lama, for example, was something they very much noticed, Rachman tells us. Simultaneously, fear of a ‘colour revolution’ – which Hong Kong’s mass demonstrations in 2014 appeared to validate – haunts them.

Discussing America’s parallel shift toward confrontation, Rachman shows notions of interdependence and ‘win-win’ outcomes dominant during the Bush Sr and Clinton presidencies giving way to Barack Obama’s militarised Asian ‘pivot’. Rachman says that Obama’s first summit in China was ‘disillusioning’ to the US administration, revealing Chinese intransigence, quickly reinforced at the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference. The United States, he says, has essentially been ‘reacting’ to a Chinese challenge. Rachman’s teleology feels overly neat – what about the climate deal of 2014? – and his analysis of precisely what is propelling US anxieties about China is less than satisfactory. In his discussion of US China policy, Rachman includes some sensational, and instructive, quotes from US officials. Kurt Campbell, Obama’s undersecretary for East Asia, says ‘the US will not go quietly into the night’ and that America ‘has grown accustomed, psychologically and politically’, to global leadership. Another official calls the US Navy ‘addicted to pre-eminence’. Such anecdotes suggest that, in attempting to explain US–China tension, more might usefully be said about the core ideology and worldview of American élites.

President Donald J. Trump and President Xi Jinping,ly 8, 2017 (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

The sole chapter on Southeast Asia is perplexing. Though Rachman mentions the ASEAN area’s rapid economic development in the 1970s and 1980s, when he surveys the contemporary region he doesn’t seriously examine any of the ASEAN states as economically rising and politically influential actors in their own right. Instead, he examines Southeast Asia simply as a zone of Chinese power projection. Given its economies and demographics – Vietnam’s growth is more than six per cent, Indonesia has 260 million people – and its consequent relevance to Rachman’s thesis, this is odd. Even if we were to accept such a US–China ‘Great Game’ focus for the chapter, Rachman has apparently carried out firsthand research on Southeast Asia only in Singapore and Australia (his account relies heavily on these two countries’ perceptions). A rationale for this approach, beyond less muddy boots, is difficult to see.

Indeed, Rachman cannot quite decide how much ‘Easternization’ means the rise of several Asian nations and how much it effectively means the rise of China. This is a big topic to deal with ambiguously: whether we are more likely to end up with a genuinely multipolar world or a ‘Pax Sinica’ is, needless to say, a profoundly important question. This book’s blurb specifies that ‘Easternization’ refers to multiple Asian powers. But 150 pages in – after the book’s section on Asia itself – Rachman admits he has been writing specifically about ‘the Chinese challenge’. His chapter on India is entitled ‘Asia’s Second Super-power’, but within it he qualifies bullish projections for India’s economy, then writes about Chinese influence in South Asia. The chapter on Japan describes Japanese economic malaise: because Japan is part of a Western-led set of alliances, the country’s decline is apparently evidence for, rather than against, ‘Easternization’.

The 25th APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting participants (kremlin.ru, via Wikimedia commons)

Rachman then describes what he calls ‘Easternization beyond Asia’. A weakened United States is ‘unable’ to ‘restore order’ in the Middle East. Western military budgets have been decreasing. Chinese trade and investment is increasing in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa, while politicians in those areas are defying Washington. These points, while broadly valid, require qualification. Countries thumbing their nose at the United States was common, even at the height of America’s Cold War power. Whether economic links will give Beijing greater clout than the United States in these regions is still unknown, though extensive Chinese trade relationships with Vietnam, Japan, and India certainly have not won those countries’ compliance. Meanwhile, Rachman says that both Russia and Turkey are ‘Easternizing’ – thus making it impossible to avoid questioning what, precisely, his idea of the ‘East’ constitutes.

‘[S]ome may find this book,’ Rachman admits, ‘excessively concerned with the machinations of the global governing elite.’ Indeed, there is a jarring number of references to the World Economic Forum at Davos: Rachman ‘bumped into’ one contact there, arranged meetings, or listened to presentations by others. ‘Viewed from the offices of the powerful’, he writes, ‘the world can at times resemble a giant chessboard’ – essentially the view Easternization provides. Yet, when considered from elsewhere, the rise of Asia is also about young Chinese women moving to Shenzhen for better-paying work, young Indonesian men signing up to be drivers for Go-Jek (like Uber, but for motorbike taxis) in Jakarta. Surely some attention to the net effects of these ‘Easternizing’ forces on human lives other than academics and government officials – people from Mumbai to Hanoi with a dramatically expanded sense of possibility – is necessary for a complete, and properly contextualised, window onto Asian events?

Easternization remains a comprehensive, lucidly written overview of how the West’s ‘centuries long domination of world affairs is coming to a close’, and how a more Asian-influenced globe beckons.