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The Bomb is Back

The myth of China's nuclear restraint obscures the dangers of its rapidly expanding arsenal. A trio of recent books take us from the bomb’s origins...

Xiang Biao on a Society at the Edge

An anthropologist with a wide youth following and a knack for popularizing academic terms explains how China’s stratified society led to social malaise amid economic...

The Totalitarian Gene

A new theory of China’s political DNA advances a dark thesis: that totalitarianism is institutionally encoded in the nation-state, and cannot be reformed.

Sins of the Father

Xi Zhongxun, one of China’s early communist revolutionaries, tried to balance reformist instincts with loyalty to the Party. His failure left an indelible mark on...

Empire of Engineers

China has been a nation of engineers, from imperial to communist rule. America’s lawyerly society could learn something from that — but civil and social...

China Conspiracy Theories

From Covid as a bioweapon to Chinese soldiers infiltrating America, Alexander Boyd discusses the right-wing conspiracy theories that lead our ranking of bestselling China books.
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May 27, 5:30-7pm; Asia Society NYC

Tahir Hamut Izgil: Waiting To Be Arrested at Night

Join our book club in May to discuss Uyghur poet-in-exile Tahir Hamut Izgil’s memoir, a harrowing account of one family’s escape from the persecution of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang, translated by Joshua L. Freeman and interspersed with Tahir’s own poems.
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