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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...
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Chinese Comedy with Jesse Appell
The bilingual comedian talks us through the traditional “xiangsheng” form of Chinese comic repartee, and explains whether Beijing can take a joke.
The Totalitarian Gene
A new theory of China’s political DNA advances a dark thesis: that totalitarianism is institutionally encoded in the nation-state, and cannot be reformed.
Writing from the Margins
From Tibet to Taiwan, Yunnan to yonder, we recommend five Spring Festival reads with a focus on the periphery.
Did Peng Zhen Rebel Against Mao?
A startling Chinese-language biography of Mao’s one-time enforcer reveals the folly of hoping that Party officials will break ranks — and the importance of revisionist...
Sir Edmund Backhouse: Decadent Imagination
Historical witnessing or salacious slash fiction? The memoirs of an English eccentric in Beijing during the last days of the Qing remain controversial, but are...
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...
Yi-Ling Liu on the Changing Chinese Web
The author and journalist takes us behind, above and beyond China's Great Firewall for her book talk on "The Wall Dancers" in a China Books...
A Day in the Life of an Internet Censor
China’s social media boom let its people speak out — but its censorship network silenced them. One of those censors reveals what happens behind the...
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...
How China’s Independent Bookstores Survive
Even as restrictions tighten in Beijing, independent bookstores in Chengdu have flourished — showing how offline community and public debate can thrive. But it’s hard.
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...
