Recent Books186 leaders to the International Criminal
Court. In 2005, China used an absten-
tion to allow a referral o the Sudanese
leader Omar al-Bashir to the , and in
2007, it voted for a peace-enforcement
operation in Darfur; in 2011, it voted
for an referral o the Libyan leader
Muammar al-Qadda and refrained
from vetoing the no-y zone that led to
his fall from power. But between 2012
and 2014, China vetoed a series o
resolutions that would have authorized
interventions against Bashar al-Assad in
Syria. What explains these carefully
modulated choices, in Fung’s view, is
Beijing’s eort to balance its commit-
ment to the principle o sovereignty
with its desire to play a major role on
the international stage alongside West-
ern powers while also maintaining
solidarity with key regional actors, such
as the African Union and the Arab
League. She thinks that in the future,
Beijing will mostly resist what it sees
as Washington’s fetish for regime
change. But her analysis also suggests
that Beijing would more willingly
authorize interventions i it saw
them as serving its own interests
instead o Washington’s.Migration in the Time of Revolution:
China, Indonesia, and the Cold War
BY TAOMO ZHOU. Cornell University
Press, 2019, 318 pp.This impressively researched study o
Sino-Indonesian relations from 1945 to
1967 links three levels o diplomacy:
state-to-state relations between China
and Indonesia’s leftist leader Sukarno,
party-to-party relations between the
Chinese Communist Party and the
Indonesian Communist Party, and theis more philosophical than empirical:
the book oers no assessment either o
the level o popular support for the
regime or o the looming challenges to
the regime’s performance.Last Days of the Mighty Mekong
BY BRIAN EYLER. Zed Books, 2019,
384 pp.Eyler’s vivid travelogue and elegy to
the Mekong River explores the threats
to the river’s diversity. The Mekong
supports more sh species, more
livelihoods, and more distinct ethnic
groups than any other river system. But
dams, roads, railways, and tourists are
changing all that—so quickly that Eyler
was able to observe the process o
destruction personally during the 15
years in which he led study tours
through the region. China is a prime
driver o the changes, with its scores o
upstream hydropower dams and swarms
o newly rich tourists. But governments
and developers all along the water-
course are scrambling to exploit its natural
and social resources. It seems too late
for them to repair the resulting damage:
mass displacement, reduced sh catches,
stunted agricultural yields, and the loss
o local cultures as young people leave
the highlands “to melt into emerging
modern lifestyles.”China and Intervention at the UN Security
Council: Reconciling Status
BY COURTNEY J. FUNG. Oxford
University Press, 2019, 304 pp.Fung makes sense o China’s seemingly
confused voting record at the
Security Council on issues involving
armed interventions and the referral o21_Recent Books_Blues.indd 186 1/20/20 5:12 PM