Review Essay

How Communism Won China

The CCP presents its victory in 1949 as historical inevitability, hard-won after years of struggle. A new book suggests it had more to do with the Soviets, luck and brutal tactics — but overlooks some other key context.

The Runaways

Young Chinese have been moving away from big cities into rust-belt towns with cheap housing and less pressure. A new book asks what they’re running away from.

From the Archive

Islamic China with Rian Thum

Islam has been part of China’s religious and cultural fabric for over a millennium, yet often it is seen as a foreign element. The author of a new study explains just how wrong that is.

Zhang Feng on China's New Media

The social media blogger explains how censorship works in the era of WeChat, and talks us through a changing media landscape, in our new column on the biggest ideas out of China.

Logging Unpaid Hours

When a state-run sawmill from the Mao era privatized and eventually closed, its female workers were denied fair compensation. Its story doubles as an alternate history of China’s feminist protest movement.