Review of China’s Next Act: How Sustainability and Technology are Reshaping China’s Rise and the World’s Future by Scott Moore. Oxford, 2022.

America was once proclaimed to be the indispensable nation, without which no problem of consequence could be solved. Today, it and China are seemingly competing to be the intractable nation, core to both the causes of and potential solutions to global challenges such as climate change, yet stymied by systems that thwart ready resolution.
In China’s Next Act, Scott Moore, who is affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania, surveys the public health, environmental, science, and technology frontiers in search of opportunities for bilateral collaboration. Written with an admirable commitment to nuance, Moore nonetheless concludes that “if liberal societies fail to lead” in these areas, “the illiberal values Beijing increasingly relies on are more likely to hold sway.”
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