China's Galaxy Empire Wealth, Power, War, and Peace in the New Chinese Century

In China's Galaxy Empire, John Keane and Baogang He target a development of enormous significance: China's return, after two centuries of decline and subjugation, to a position of prominence in world affairs. The daring thesis is that China is a newly rising empire of a kind never before witnessed: a galaxy empire. The first to be born of the digital communications era, this young empire is economically and politically powerful, and heavily armed. Its gravitational, push-pull effects are impacting every continent--and even outer space, where China is competing with the United States, India, and Europe to become the leading power.

The galaxy empire interpretation rejects clichéd misdescriptions of China as a "big power" or monolithic "autocracy", and it explains why China defies older definitions of land, sea, and air-based empires. The book charts the developments that have made its rising empire so novel, including the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative, the rapid rise of a global Chinese middle class, and internal colonialism in Tibet and Xinjiang. The book notes the protean, shapeshifting qualities of this young empire. It therefore warns against the political and military perils of simple-minded, friend-versus-enemy thinking and "Big China, Bad China" politics. But it also proffers a forewarning to China's rulers: while every rising empire aims to shift the balance of power in its favour, no empire lasts forever, and some are stillborn, because they indulge illusions of greatness and reckless power adventures.

John Keane is Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney and the WZB (Berlin), and recently taught at Beijing Foreign Studies University. He is renowned globally for his creative thinking about politics, history, media and democracy, and is the author of many distinguished books including the bestselling Tom Paine: A Political Life (1995) and The Shortest History of Democracy (2022), which has so far been published in 15 languages. He has contributed to The New York Times, Al Jazeera, the Times Literary Supplement, Financial Times, The Guardian, Die Zeit, Hindustan Times, and the South China Morning Post. He was nominated for the 2021 Balzan Prize (Italy) and the Holberg Prize (Norway) for outstanding global contributions to the human sciences.

Baogang He is Alfred Deakin Professor at Deakin University and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. Professor He is widely known for his work in Chinese politics, in particular the deliberative politics in China as well as in regionalism, international relations, federalism, and multiculturalism in Asia. His publications are found in top journals including Science, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Peace Research, Political Theory, Political Studies, and Perspectives on Politics. His published books include Rural Democracy in China (2007), Governing Taiwan and Tibet (2015), and China and North Korea's Human Rights (2021, co-edited with David Hundt and Chengxin Pan).

Part One: China's New Empire Defined
The Idea of Empire
Belt and Road
A Galaxy Empire
Land and Sea
Maritime and Air Power?
Empire and Communications
Tencent
State Capitalism
Middle Classes
Building Across Borders
Finance Matters

Part Two: Resilience, Resistance
A Ruling Ideology? The Poetics of Power
Chairman of Everything?
Abusive Power
Phantom Democracy
Domestic Troubles
Faraway Troubles
Borderlands
Ecological Civilisation
Cold Peace, Hot War

Further Reading
Index