The Life of Saint Xi
China’s official Party press has published a series of oral histories about Xi Jinping’s career, from sent-down youth in Shaanxi to Party Secretary of Shanghai....
The Race to Type in Chinese
The Chinese typewriter was thought to be an impossible invention. Then they made one. In the computer age, creating a digital input system for Chinese...
Can Germany Find a Better China Strategy?
Under Merkel and Scholz, Germany was criticized as being soft on China. Three new books explain the backstory to Berlin’s relationship with Beijing, and how...
What If Hu Yaobang Had Lived?
The former Chinese Communist Party leader’s ousting and death led to the Tiananmen protests, but his life reveals a deeper push and pull between reformist...
The Curse of the “Good Premier”
Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong’s second-in-command, has been lionized as a moderating force who held back Mao’s excesses. But does he deserve that reputation, when he...
Is Xi Jinping a Marxist?
“Xi Jinping Thought” — articulated in texts by China’s leader and dissected in two new books — has the power to reshape China for decades...
Where the River Reaches Home
Three recent books narrate family histories that flow over time and space. But when identities evolve across borders, language holds the memory that carries us...
The Erasure of the Uyghurs
Oppression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang has slipped from headlines — but two recent memoirs by Uyghurs abroa attempt to portray the minority as more than...
The Martyrdom of Liu Xiaobo
China’s dissident writer was an exemplar of iconoclastic intellectual spirit, pursuing a more humane society despite state repression. A new biography draws the arc of...
In-Between City
Hong Kong has been caught between empires — and narratives — for almost two centuries. The diversity of its early migrants made the city what...
Party Man
China’s first paramount leader since Mao is, for all the ink spilled on him, a black box. But behind the speculation over his intent, Xi...
The Bones Remember
Three new books grapple with the suppressed histories of modern China, from the Cultural Revolution to the Covid pandemic. But for every state effort to...