Essay Archives | China Books Review

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.

What Happened to China Travel Guides?

Guidebooks for China boomed from the 1980s to the 2010s. Then the Covid pandemic hit. With fewer visitors, and travel guides going out of print...

Dancing in Chains

Squeezed by both political and commercial pressures, China’s book publishers face an existential crisis. How can the industry survive, let alone publish anything interesting?

Life On a Blacklist

A scholar on China reflects on the moment he was denied access to the country — and the compromises others must make to maintain it.

Pai Hsien-yung’s New York

In “New Yorkers,” fiction writer Pai Hsien-yung captured the in-betweenness of immigrant identity in America. His stories still resonate with those who followed in his...

Is China’s Post-1978 Legal System a Mirage?

The scholar of Chinese law argues that post-Mao legal reform — as aided by Western lawyers including him — may yet prove enduring. Its critics...

Don’t Write Off the Mao Dun Literature Prize

Never mind the Booker, Pulitzer and National Book Award — China’s Mao Dun Prize, despite its behind-the-times reputation, can shift the reading habits of a...

How China’s New Left Embraced the State

China’s leftist intellectuals, once regime critics in the 1990s, have shifted from their socialist origins to embrace statism and the China model. Where does that...

Sunset of the Economists

Two decades ago, China’s reformist economists walked the halls of power and dictated policy. Now, they have been side-lined in favor of a new priority:...

China’s Economy: Cassandra vs. Pollyanna

Some analysts are performing an autopsy on the Chinese economy. Others say it has never had more potential for growth. Who will win in this...

Mao to Now

Communist China, once all but impenetrable, opened up only to tighten politically again. Has Xi circled back to the Mao era? And what can we...

How to Deal with the Chinese Revolution

In a 1966 essay, the American historian and father of Chinese Studies reflects on centuries-old cultural and political differences in the (then) early days of...

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