Sima Qian: Records of the Grand Historian
History is supposedly written by the victors. Sima Qian, author of China's original historical classic, showed it could also be written by the condemned.
Ep. 23: Mark Kitto on Shanghai in the 2000s
The author and former media mogul explains why he chose fiction as the best way to capture Shanghai’s go-go years in his new novel.
Jane Gardam: The Old Filth Trilogy
A clever skewering of British colonials in pre-handover Hong Kong became a best-seller for its portrait of imperial ruin and class jockeying.
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...
Ep. 22: Michael Luo on the Chinese-American Story
The New Yorker writer discusses his new history of the Chinese in America, and immigrant identity from the Chinese Exclusion Act to Donald Trump.
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...
Joseph Torigian on Xi Zhongxun
The author and academic discusses his new biography of Xi Zhongxun, father of Xi Jinping, and the hidden history of the Chinese Communist Party.
What Xi Jinping Learnt from His Father
Xi Zhongxun was once a reformist voice within the Communist Party — and was purged multiple times for it. So how did his son Xi...
James Mann: Selling Jeeps in China
The autopsy of an American automaker’s failed dream of making and selling jeeps in China reveals much about the delusional thinking of joint ventures in...
Why “All Under Heaven” is Wrong
Tianxia, Beijing’s favorite theory of global power, is held up by Chinese scholars as an alternative to West-centrism. The latest work of its loudest cheerleader...
An American Marine In China’s Red Army
In 1937, a U.S. military officer set off with Mao Zedong’s troops to raid Japanese-occupied territory in the north of China. The Communist guerillas, he...
Ep. 20: Linda Jaivin on the Cultural Revolution
The writer and China watcher talks us through her microhistory of Mao’s last decade in power, and its relevance to Trump’s MAGA movement.