Before the Chinese Communist Party came to power, China lay broken and fragmented. Today it is a force on the global stage, and yet its leaders have continued to be haunted by the past. Drawing on an array of sources, Sulmaan Wasif Khan chronicles the grand strategies that have sought not only to protect China from aggression but also to ensure it would never again experience the powerlessness of the late Qing and Republican eras.

The dramatic variations in China’s modern history have obscured the commonality of purpose that binds the country’s leaders. Analyzing the calculus behind their decision making, Khan explores how they wove diplomatic, military, and economic power together to keep a fragile country safe in a world they saw as hostile. Dangerous and shrewd, Mao Zedong made China whole and succeeded in keeping it so, while the caustic, impatient Deng Xiaoping dragged China into the modern world. Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao served as cautious custodians of the Deng legacy, but the powerful and deeply insecure Xi Jinping has shown an assertiveness that has raised both fear and hope across the globe.

For all their considerable costs, China’s grand strategies have been largely successful. But the country faces great challenges today. Its population is aging, its government is undermined by corruption, its neighbors are arming out of concern over its growing power, and environmental degradation threatens catastrophe. A question Haunted by Chaos raises is whether China’s time-tested approach can respond to the looming threats of the twenty-first century.

Biography

Sulmaan Wasif Khan is Assistant Professor of International History and Chinese Foreign Relations at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.  He also directs the Water and Oceans program at the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy (CIERP). He received a PhD in History from Yale University in December, 2012. His book, "Haunted by Chaos: China’s Grand Strategy from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping," will be published in July 2018 by Harvard University Press. He has published articles in Cold War History and Diplomatic History; his research has been supported by the Cold War International History Project at the Wilson Center. He has also written for The Economist, The American Interest, Prospect, e360, and YaleGlobal, on topics ranging from Burmese Muslims in China to dolphin migration through the Bosphorus. Prior to his time at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, he spent nine months living in Turkey.