Review Essay Archives | Page 2 of 3

The Trouble with Chinese Cookbooks

Despite the difficulty of translating Chinese cuisine for Western readers, Chinese cookbooks continue to sell. But just as their form has changed over the decades,...

Liang Qichao: Reformer or Revolutionary?

The legacy of the late Qing era intellectual, once exiled in Japan, is overlooked in the West. A new collection of his essays shows a...

How to Hide a Chinese Empire

After millennia of imperial history, China today has distanced itself from the concept of empire. But the new forms of Chinese imperium are more subtle...

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...

China Books Review

Review Essay

The Trouble with Chinese Cookbooks

Liang Qichao: Reformer or Revolutionary?

How to Hide a Chinese Empire

The Life of Saint Xi

The Race to Type in Chinese

Can Germany Find a Better China Strategy?

What If Hu Yaobang Had Lived?

The Curse of the “Good Premier”

Is Xi Jinping a Marxist?

Where the River Reaches Home

The Erasure of the Uyghurs

The Martyrdom of Liu Xiaobo

June 30, 6:30-8pm; Asia Society NYC

Panel: Hong Kong’s Past, Present and Future

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