Book Talk: Edward Wong on the Edge of Empire
The New York Times journalist tells us how his father followed Mao's star in the 1950s — and how the frontiers he reported on in...
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...
How to Avoid Conflict in Taiwan
Xi Jinping has made clear his desire to "reunify" Taiwan. The U.S. and its allies should take him at his word, argues a former deputy...
Where are the Tiananmen Protest Leaders Today?
35 years after Tiananmen, the most-wanted student and worker demonstrators now live in America, Hong Kong and Taiwan. A journalist who covered the protests caught...
Ep. 9: Tiananmen Remembered
It has been 35 years since the violent crackdown on the Tiananmen protests of 1989. We talked to an activist whose work pushes for the...
China’s New Maritime Order
Asia contends with a complex history of unresolved disputes in the South China Sea. Two new books unpack the challenge posed by Beijing to maritime...
How China’s New Left Embraced the State
China’s leftist intellectuals, once regime critics in the 1990s, have shifted from their socialist origins to embrace statism and the China model. Where does that...
Dali Yang: How Covid Wasn’t Contained
The author of a new book on the early spread of Covid in Wuhan lays out what political factors prevented alarm bells from going off.
Minxin Pei: China’s Surveillance State
China's surveillance capabilities are often presented as feats of futuristic technology. But its true advantage lies in human networks of informers and state workers.
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...
Ep. 4: How ‘Leftover Women’ Reshape China
Educated, unmarried Chinese women have been dubbed “leftovers” by the state, who want them to focus on having children. Their independence is transforming China’s demographics...