Modernizing China's Military: Progress, Problems, and Prospects. By David Shambaugh. [Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2003. xxviii+374 pp. £24.95; $34.95. ISBN 0-520-22507-4.]

The field of PLA studies is at a crossroads. Whereas specialists once pored over the few pages of a general political department Work Bulletin for hints of the inner workings of the military, experts now struggle with trying to drink from a fire hose of information. PLA publishing houses, cut off from subsidy and desperate to generate revenue, are flooding the market with military books of varying levels of authoritativeness, and the Internet is awash with the all-too-familiar flotsam and jetsam of truths, half-truths, and outright fiction. These new sources have overwhelmed a field with too few advanced linguists, and with only the most rudimentary tools and frameworks with which to process and assess this information.