In recent years, China's assertive behavior has grabbed headlines and spawned a cottage industry of analysts and scholars documenting and analyzing Chinese coercion. Unsurprisingly, much of the media coverage has been anecdotal while, disappointingly, much of the scholarship has been unexceptional. This observation is less a critique of the quality of journalism or caliber of research and more a commentary on the inherent difficulty in portraying and assessing complex phenomena in a clear or rigorous way. After all, state-on-state coercion is far more challenging to characterize and study than interstate war.

Why do states engage in coercion? As Ketian Zhang makes plain, states coerce to achieve desired goals and/or message resolve “on the cheap” while avoiding the high-cost, high-risk alternative of outright military conflict. In other words, coercion is much more cost-effective and far less risky than actual war. Zhang differentiates between two types of coercion: military and nonmilitary, contending that only the latter constitutes “gray zone” activity. Zhang sees this as a critical distinction, because the author notes that nonmilitary coercion is much better at reducing “the likelihood of military escalation” (17).

A better understanding of China's use of coercion is of considerable importance. Unlike