Wang Zhenping is associate professor at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
His treatment of the institutions and processes of Tang external
relations is the most thorough I have seen anywhere. His detailed
account of the Tang empire's seventh-century interventions in the
Korean peninsula, drawing on Chinese, Korean, and Japanese sources,
is also first rate, and his chapter on the northern nomads
brilliantly exposes the extent to which the military fortunes of
the Tang founders and their various rivals in the 610s and 620s
depended upon the favor of the Eastern T�rks. This book is
essential reading for students of Tang China and China's premodern
foreign relations.-- "Monumenta Serica"
Historians of Chinese diplomacy have produced frameworks to analyze
Chinese foreign relations in its own right, so it would not have
been necessary for Wang to impose one borrowed from political
science on the Chinese material and diminish his otherwise valuable
book.-- "Journal of World History"
The book has many strong points. The author is clearly familiar
with the relevant primary sources as well as the major scholarly
works in the field, particularly those published in Chinese,
Japanese, and English.-- "T'oung Pao"
Wang Zhenping's new monograph provides us with a comprehensive and
very useful study of Tang foreign relations on multiple frontiers.
Given its thoroughness (in conjunction with the exceptional level
of detail of the six-page table of contents), specialists of the
Tang will find it to be a must-have reference. Historians of other
Chinese dynasties interested in foreign relations will also find
this book to be a very handy one-stop overview of foreign relations
during the Tang.-- "Journal of Chinese Military History"
Based on exacting scholarship on the primary sources the book
provides detailed accounts of the relations between the Tang and
their neighbours, as well as an excellent analysis of the internal
processes that influenced foreign policy and strategic decisions.--
"Journal of Chinese Studies"
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