Chapter XI, The Geography of Chinese Power Summary and Analysis

China is Kaplan's next subject. He argues that China has an obvious wealth of blessings with respect to their geography. It has a great many ports, great access to natural resources and a great deal of space. The only serious threat to China is the Eurasian steppe-land to the north and northwest. Due to their rivers, they have enormous agricultural lands, though there are important contrasts between their pastoral and agricultural populations. But China has spent a long time building barriers and bridges to unify itself, most famously the Grand Canal and the Great Wall. These changes made agriculture China's economic core, which tried to create buffers against nomadic peoples bordering it from Manchuria to Tibet. China was also populated from antiquity and was less militarized. It is in...