About the Author

Wang Zhenping is associate professor at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Reviews

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"