Review by Choice Review
When Russia and China began their "strategic cooperation" about ten years ago, the conventional wisdom declared that this posed no serious threat to the US. Tsai does not challenge that judgment. Instead he seeks to explain the limits of the cooperation and succeeds in accomplishing his goal. The book contains a couple of surprises. First, Russia has made very little if any profit from its arms sales to China. Second, many of China's best military technology advances have come from illicit hiring of underemployed Russian military experts. Tsai's sources are good, and he supplements written materials with interviews--primarily with Chinese officers and officials. Problems with the book include repetition--it would have made an excellent Foreign Affairs article. Tsai burdens the reader with numerous and annoying acronyms: in this volume, the WTO is not the World Trade Organization; it is the Warsaw Treaty Organization. Overall, Tsai has made a significant contribution to the literature on Sino-Russian relations. While this is not a book for general readers, most university libraries will want to have it in their collections. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. H. Nelsen University of South Florida
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
