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Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Reconsidering the PLA as an Interest Group -- 2. The PLA in the Party Leadership Decisionmaking System -- 3. The Riddle in the Middle -- 4. Top Leaders and the PLA -- 5. The PLA Role in China's Foreign Policy and Crisis Behavior -- 6. The PLA Role in China's Taiwan Policymaking -- 7. The PLA Role in China's DPRK Policy -- 8. The Rise of PLA Diplomacy -- 9. The PLA and National Security Decisionmaking -- 10. The PLA Navy Lobby and Its Influence oveer China's Maritime Sovereignty Policies -- 11. The PLA and Maritime Security Actors -- Index -- About the Contributors.

North Korea's isolation makes it difficult to obtain accurate information and develop the understanding necessary for an effective Korea policy. Policymakers sometimes compensate by using cognitive shortcuts that can lead to misperceptions and misunderstandings. Five main sources of US misunderstanding of North Korea are: linguistic barriers; ideological barriers that distort interpretations of developments; intellectual constructs that conceal important information; lack of imagination and a reluctance to acquire a deeper comprehension of the North Korean mindset; and deliberate misrepresentations for political or policy convenience. The resultant distorted picture of North Korea has produced confusion in Washington and contributed to a number of policy miscues and missed opportunities. (Survival / SWP)

China's rising power and increased global activism have attracted increasing attention, with particular focus on whether a stronger China is likely to be a revisionist or status quo state. Power transition theory highlights the potential for a dissatisfied rising power to challenge the existing international order, but it is difficult to evaluate whether a rising power is dissatisfied. Where Chinese leaders choose to travel can offer insights into whether China's behavior is more consistent with that of a revisionist or status quo state and into China's broader diplomatic priorities. We present a series of expectations concerning how the travel patterns of a challenger state are likely to differ from the travel patterns of a status quo state. Using a newly compiled data set, we then analyze the correlates of travel abroad by top Chinese leaders from 1998 to 2008. Our results are more consistent with a status quo conceptualization of China, though there are some important exceptions such as willingness to travel to rogue states. We also use travel data to test other hypotheses about Chinese foreign policy behavior. Adapted from the source document.