This goes out to the Sinologists on here. I recently read Kissinger's book, and while I'll preface by saying that I personally think Kissinger is a despicable human being that's putting it lightly... that this was a great look at Chinese foreign policy and outward thought through the lens of a master practitioner of realpolitik who interacted with them firsthand.
I am no Sinologist myself though, only a layman reader of various histories of China. If any of you have read Kissinger's aforementioned book, what did you think of the conclusions drawn? Some examples may be China's adherence to a policy of non-intervention in the internal policies of those it interacts with throughout its history.
Happy to hear any thoughts.
My take, and my take only.
It depends on what exactly we mean by "stand", and what we're looking at.
If it means, where do I stand on it as a heavily Realpolitik-leaning analysis of IR practices and methodologies of mostly contemporary China? Sure, it's as good an IR Realpolitik book as any book written by Kissinger, such as Diplomacy and World Order.
If it means as history? As a proper historiographical work on the history of IR? Unimpressed.
I'm not saying in any way that it's not mostly historically accurate. I'm also not saying that the fact that it heavilly relies on a Realpolitik approach is wrong, I'm against the idea of scientific neutrality.
The problem is twofold. First, the writter is one of the most self-referential people I've ever read. As such, a vast amount of what he writes about is filled with his own opinion on what he's talking about. Again, I'm not saying you shouldn't have an opinion as a historian. What I'm saying is that your opinion shouldn't be the main subject in a historical work.
On that same vein, we have a book that aims to be historiography, relying particularly on the work of Jonathan Spence. Thing is, that same book is filled with conclussions, some of them aim to hypothesize about the reasons behind the application of certain policies. Again, nothing inherently wrong with that, academics in IR theory do that all the time. But, unlike other books by Kissinger, On China intends to function as history more than IR theory, and therefore, should've included more history and less IR theory.