World news headlines routinely proclaim China's status as a great power. But when it comes to explaining how new Chinese efforts to exercise global leadership, like the vaunted "Belt and Road Initiative," are likely to affect regional politics or play into the competition between the United States and China, sophisticated answers can be hard to find. In China's Western Horizon, scholar and former U. S. State Department policy planner, Daniel S. Markey, draws from extensive interviews, travels, and historical research to assess what China is doing, to explain how states along the historic Silk Road that once knitted Eurasia together are turning Chinese initiatives to their own purposes, and to offer thoughtful recommendations for U. S. policymakers.
