YONG DENG: China’s Struggle for Status: The Realignment of International Relations New York 2008 Cambridge University Press, 312 pp. G iven the intense, ongoing debates on the implications of China’s rise to great power status in the international system, coupled with Beijing’s unprece­dented and much-celebrated hosting of the 2008 Olympic Games, Yong Deng’s latest book,»China’s Struggle for Status«(which was also, notably, published around the time of the Beijing Olympiad), could not have come at a more oppor­tune time. A prolific scholar on China’s international relations, Yong Deng does not fail to deliver a persuasive and thought-provoking analysis of the nature of China’s international engagement in this ambitious book.»China’s Struggle for Status« challenges conventional – particularly realist – perspectives on Chinese foreign policy by taking a critical look at the»status-driven« considerations guiding China’s relations with the contemporary world. Unlike mainstream realist ac­counts of China’s foreign policy, Yong Deng’s study adopts a more nuanced and unique approach that draws on sociological and constructivist insights to shed light on the dynamics behind China’s often mixed foreign-policy signals. In other words, rather than emphasizing the unmitigated struggle for power between states in an anarchic international system, Yong Deng highlights the significant roles that»identity-centered« ideas, such as status, reputation, and legitimacy, play in world politics and, more specifically, the ideational structures and con­straints they impose on the foreign policy of a reemerging power, such as the People’s Republic. The central argument motivating Yong Deng’s investigation is essentially the notion that»China’s struggle for status has been a struggle for great-power rec­ognition by balancing acceptance and autonomy, compliance and revisionism, power and legitimacy, and globalization and nationalism,« as China moves from the periphery of world politics to occupy centre stage(p. 2). Indeed, sensitivity to »international status«(»guoji diwei«) and the belief in the exigency of cultivating a positive reputation have long been an integral part of Chinese foreign policy. »Status« here refers to a»state’s concerns over its material wellbeing and interna­tional treatment with the goal of engineering mutually reinforcing growth in both«(p. 2). And as such, in adopting a status-driven policy, the state’s objective becomes primarily»upward mobility through participation in the globalized world«(pp. 2–3). At the heart of the analysis, therefore, is a concern with what can effectively be termed China’s»identity management« in the post-Cold War era, the main challenge facing Chinese elites being that of maintaining a peaceful and secure international environment within which it can further its moderniza­tion drive at home and ensure its steady rise to great power status abroad(p. 3). ipg 2/2010 Rezensionen/Book Reviews 167