This is the most up-to-date assessment of all aspects of the People's Liberation Army. Leading specialists on the Chinese military cover military leadership, defense doctrine and military readiness, preparations for high-tech warfare, military expenditure, military logistics, the scientific and technological base for defense procurement, and China's security concerns in Northeast Asia.

Looking beyond the annual debate on MFN, the contributors to this book examine the complex economic, strategic and ideological issues confronting US policy-makers in this critical bilateral relationship.

James Lilley's life and family have been entwined with China's fate since his father moved to the country to work for Standard Oil in 1916. Lilley spent much of his childhood in China and after a Yale professor took him aside and suggested a career in intelligence, it became clear that he would spend his adult life returning to China again and again.

Lilley served for twenty-five years in the CIA in Laos, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Taiwan before moving to the State Department in the early 1980s to begin a distinguished career as the U.S.'s top-ranking diplomat in Taiwan, ambassador to South...