Recent Books
220 μ¢¤³£ ¬μμ¬
“informationized local wars,” recogniz-
ing the importance o information and
data to modern warfare. The authors o
this edited volume are leading observers
and analysts o the §¬ and Chinese
defense aairs. Eighteen meticulously
researched chapters examine all aspects
o the reforms, including their motiva-
tions, the changes to command struc-
tures they have brought about, and their
eect on civil-military relations. The
reforms are unprecedented in their scale
and scope, abolishing the old general-
sta system, strengthening the party’s
Central Military Commission, and
creating new theater commands to make
the armed forces more agile in war.
«. ¡¬Ý§¢ 쬥¤§Africa
Nicolas van de Walle
African Americans and Africa: A New
History
BY NEMATA AMELIA IBITAYO
BLYDEN. Yale University Press, 2019,
280 pp.B
lyden has produced a fascinating
book on the relationship be-
tween African Americans and
the African continent from the era o
slavery, to the late-nineteenth-century
movements to return African Ameri-
cans to West Africa, to the twentieth-
century civil rights movement, to the
eventual presidency o Barack Obama
in the twenty-Ärst century. She skill-
fully reveals the emergence and evolu-
tion o a distinctly African Americanthat it was an authentic vision—however
murky and evolving—for a new kind o
regional order. Drawing on what were
then widely accepted ideas about racial
hierarchies, regional economic blocs, and
economic planning, the sphere’s advo-
cates envisioned Asia as a “familial
community” that would free itsel from
European exploitation under the leader-
ship o an advanced Japan. Each nation
would perform its economic role accord-
ing to its natural abilities, coordinated by
a planning system that would ensure a
share in common prosperity for everyone.
Nationalist elites in Burma and the
Philippines—two case studies Yellen uses
to illustrate Asian responses to this
vision—thought they would be freer in an
empire run according to those principles
than in the British and American empires,
to which their countries belonged,
respectively, at the time. This study
suggests that Japanese thinking during
the war was not so dierent from that o
other ambitious powers throughout
history, which believed they were helping
other peoples by dominating them.
Chairman Xi Remakes the PLA: Assessing
Chinese Military Reforms
EDITED BY PHILLIP C. SAUNDERS,
ARTHUR S. DING, ANDREW SCOBELL,
ANDREW N. D. YANG, AND JOEL
WUTHNOW. National Defense
University Press, 2019, 782 pp.
This terriÄc book deÄnitively assesses
the ongoing reforms to China’s armed
forces that General Secretary Xi Jin-
ping announced in late 2015. The
reforms seek to strengthen the People’s
Liberation Army’s operational eective-
ness and ability to conduct joint opera-
tions in what Chinese strategists call