PLA Influence on China's National Security Policymaking EDITED BY PHILLIP C. SAUNDERS AND ANDREW SCOBELL. Stanford University Press, 2015, 360 pp.

Saunders and Scobell have assembled leading authorities on civil-military relations in China, a subject of great importance for U.S.-Chinese relations and East Asian security. This highly informative volume covers, among other things, the role of China's military in formal policymaking institutions and specifically in Chinese policy toward North Korea and Taiwan and in the South China Sea. Taken together, the essays suggest that the People's Liberation Army's interests and perspectives differ from those of other sectors of China's foreign policy apparatus and reflect the military's responsibility to defend the country's security and territorial integrity. …