A Record of Old Kashgar
The Uyghur city in Xinjiang has been disrupted by outside forces through history — of which Chinese rebuilding is the latest change. A book 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...
Brave Attempt
A new account tells the story of the 2019 Hong Kong protests, and their failures, through four individual lives. But we need more unmediated voices...
All We Have to Fear
The Western world has held an outsized fear of Chinese power for centuries. But why? A new book argues that alarmism began in the late...
What is Xi Jinping Thinking?
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...
One for the History Books
How Endymion Wilkinson’s encyclopedia of Chinese history grew from 70,000 words in 1973 to 1.75 million words for its 50th anniversary edition.
Washing History
A new novel about the Chinese Civil War feels true to the author’s experience of it, but also amplifies the Party’s preferred version of the...
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...
Professor Pangloss Goes to Shandong
Daniel A. Bell has been proposing a Confucian, meritocratic alternative to liberal democracy for decades. In a new memoir, his optimism for the China model...
The Shadow of Chiang Kai-shek
China’s nationalist former leader has a mixed legacy. Two new books present him in a revisionist light — but what inheritance did the Generalissimo really...
A Contested Century
In China, the 19th century is presented as an era of national humiliation. Two new books and an exhibition attempt to humanize it. But who...
Tears of Salt
Rural women in China have been disadvantaged and abused for millennia. A star Chinese journalist shows how in one village, little has changed.