Power is real, but it does not always prevail. This book explores how disparity structures international relationships. Beginning at the bilateral level, the relationship between the smaller side and the larger side can be normal as long as the smaller does not feel threatened and the larger can assume that its capabilities are respected. However, the smaller can be tempted to brinksmanship, while the larger can be tempted to bully. Asymmetric conflicts are often stalemated because the limited commitment of the larger side is met by the smaller's mortal resistance. In multilateral situations, asymmetry shapes patterns of uncertainty and attention. In global systems, how hegemons treat their subjects is the unobserved sand shifting beneath their feet as they look toward their challenger. Since 2008, the US has retained primacy but not dominance. The management of asymmetric relationships in a multinodal world will determine how power matters in the current era.

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In his article, 'Equilibrium Analysis of the Tributary System', Zhou Fangyin presents an important and stimulating application of the game theory of patterns of interaction to China's traditional diplomacy with its neighbors. 1 His analysis contradicts the realist expectation that the larger power would simply dominate smaller powers in the context of international anarchy. However, his explanation of the tributary system does not rely on a cultural explanation based on Confucian morality, but rather on processes of conflictual interaction that lead to mutual accommodation between China and its neighbors. Zhou rightly emphasizes the two-way character of the tributary system and the centrality of its basic idea for Chinese diplomacy. In contrast to John Fairbank, he argues that it is more than a diplomatic cover for a trade relationship. In contrast to the general assumption that tribute is a form of booty that a larger power requires from a smaller power, he emphasizes China's primary interest in stabilizing its relationships with neighbors through concessions. Indeed, it appears from Zhou's narration that China is at the disadvantaged side of tributary relationships: frustrated in conflicts and conceding to neighbors in order to pacify its borders. By providing a clear and plausible model for interaction and interesting, complex cases of processes through which to arrive at equilibrium, Zhou has, indeed, made a contribution to both theory and history. Perhaps, further progress can be made by separating the necessarily unique case of China from the general theory of relationships between large and small neighbors. It is certainly useful to view China's diplomatic history from the perspective of an analytic model, but the necessary simplification may lose features of the Chinese situation that are unique but no less

In their three thousand years of interaction, China and Vietnam have been through a full range of relationships. Twenty-five years ago they were one another's worst enemies; fifty years ago they were the closest of comrades. Five hundred years ago they each saw themselves as Confucian empires; fifteen hundred years ago Vietnam was a part of China. Throughout all these fluctuations the one constant has been that China is always the larger power, and Vietnam the smaller. China has rarely been able to dominate Vietnam, and yet the relationship is shaped by its asymmetry. The Sino-Vietnamese relationship provides the perfect ground for developing and exploring the effects of asymmetry on international relations. Womack develops his theory in conjunction with an original analysis of the interaction between China and Vietnam from the Bronze Age to the present.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Asian Survey.In spring 1989, several thousand Vietnamese living in the northern border region waded across the Beilun River and entered China. This wave of people came carrying such goods as rice, pieces of copper, scrap iron, and the like, which they traded on the streets of their destination, the frontier town of Dongxing located in China's Guangxi Province. These traders were followed soon thereafter by many thousands of more Vietnamese who chose to celebrate the Tet holidays then underway by shopping in Dongxing for a variety of consumer commodities. The Vietnamese at Dongxing were not alone, for many of their compatriots also had taken the holiday occasion to make similar trips across the border and enter Guangxi.These spring developments were representative of the overall trend in the resumption of economic and trading activities along the border between China and Vietnam that unfolded slowly at the end of 1988 and start of 1989. Such activities had come to a halt 10 years earlier, a casualty of the Sino-Vietnam War. The 1990s would see expanding contact and cooperation along the frontier that culminated in the December 30, 1999, signing of a treaty by the foreign ministers of China and Vietnam that demarcated the land border between the two countries. This was an important symbolic step signifying the attempt by both sides to place the normalization of relations on a stable and permanent footing and the logical outcome of a decade marked by cordial relations in the border regions.The purpose of this article is to describe the process of normalization on the border during the 1990s. It first outlines the general geography of the Gu Xiaosong is Professor and Director, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Guangxi Academy of Social Sciences, Nanning, Guangxi Province, China. Brantly Womack is Professor in the 1042 GU XIAOSONG AND BRANTLY WOMACK 1043 border area and then reviews the course of normalization between China and Vietnam. The third section details the policy history of border relations with respect to economic cooperation and development, while the fourth comments on the transformational consequences for the border economies. The last two sections will address the problems of the border relationship and prospects for the future. General Geography of the Sino-Vietnamese Border Area "Vietnam, China-mountains join mountains, and waters join waters"-so goes a saying that is well-known in both China and Vietnam, for it is these features that typify the topography of the border between the two countries. The border between Vietnam and China's Yunnan Province is mountainou...