Who's Afraid Of China?: The Challenge Of Chinese Soft Power

What role does China play in the Western imagination? The rise of China as an alternative model to Western liberalism has created a fear that developing countries will stray from Western standards of democracy, transparency, and human rights. However, such fears often say as much about those who hold them as they do about China itself. Who's Afraid of China? holds a mirror to Sino-Western relations in order to better understand how the West's own past, hopes, and fears shape the way it thinks about and engages with China. Focusing on three key areas -- models of development, soft power, and ethnocentrism -- this provocative new book argues that the rise of China touches a nerve in the Western psyche and presents a fundamental challenge to ideas about modernity, history, and international relations.

About The Author:

Michael Barr is Lecturer in International Politics at Newcastle University. He has lived and worked in the UK, US, Egypt, and China. He earned his PhD in Philosophy at the University of Durham and worked previously at the London School of Economics. In 2008, he was Visiting Fellow at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. His research investigates the implications of the rise of China, particularly issues impacting Sino-Western security relations. He has actively promoted awareness of the dual-use implications of biotechnology and has sought to help train life scientists and ethicists in China in order to minimize biosecurity risks. He has published on issues pertaining to Chinese soft power, biosecurity, the history of medical ethics, and dual-use bioethics.