This page lists all upcoming China books, defined broadly as any English-language book on or from China that is slated to be published in the next four months. We update this list every other Thursday. If you think we have missed a book, please contact us at listings@chinabooksreview.com, with the publisher link. The categories below are designed to present books by broad groupings, not as a perfect classification, and carousels are capped at 25 titles. Blurbs by Taili Ni, adapted from publisher copy.
Coming soon
Contemporary Chinese Celebrities
Moral Transgressions, Rights Defence and Public Concerns
Shenshen Cai
An exploration of how in today's China, celebrity figures embody, conflict with and engage with social, civil, moral and economic issues.
Buy
Appropriating the Dao
The Euro-American Esoteric Reception of China
Eds. Lukas K. Pokorny, Franz Winter
A collection of contributions addressing the Euro-American esoteric reception and appropriation of China.
Buy
Daughters of Shandong
A Novel
Eve J. Chung
A novel about a mother and her daughters' harrowing escape to Taiwan as the Communist revolution sweeps through China.
Buy
Shanghailanders
A Novel
Juli Min
A novel that follows a cosmopolitan Shanghai household backward in time, beginning in 2040 and moving through our present and the recent past.
Buy
Born Naughty
My Childhood in China
Jin Wang, Tony Johnston (illust. Anisi Baigude)
An illustrated memoir for young readers telling the author's story of growing up in Inner Mongolia.
Buy
Cinema Love
A Novel
Jiaming Tang
A novel about gay men in rural China and the women who marry them.
Buy
Their Divine Fires
A Novel
Wendy Chen
A novel interwoven with folktale and myth that tells the story of the love affairs of three generations of Chinese women across one hundred years of revolutions both political and personal.
Buy
The Boy From Clearwater Book II
Yu Pei-Yun (illus. Zhou Jian-Xin, tr. Lin King)
The second half of the story of Kun-lin, picking up after his imprisonment on Green Island during Taiwan's White Terror period.
Buy
Zhou Enlai
A Life
Jian Chen
A biography of Zhou Enlai, the first premier and preeminent diplomat of the People’s Republic of China, who protected his country against the excesses of his boss―Chairman Mao
Buy
Past Progress
Time and Politics at the Borders of China, Russia, and Korea
Ed Pulford
A history about the projections and disintegrations of forward-oriented ideas in the triple borderlands of China, Russia, and North Korea
Buy
Rebel Island
The Incredible History of Taiwan
Jonathan Clements
A history of Taiwan, from the flood myths of indigenous legend to its Asian Tiger economic miracle, and the renewed threat of invasion by China.
Buy
Buddhism in Court
Religion, Law, and Jurisdiction in China
Cuilan Liu
A look at the Buddhist campaign for clerical legal privileges that aimed to exempt monks and nuns from being tried and punished in government courts, and its continuing legacy today.
Buy
Form Follows Fever
Malaria and the Construction of Hong Kong
Christopher Cowell
An in-depth account of the turbulent years of initial urban settlement and growth of colonial Hong Kong across the 1840s.
Buy
In the Mind, in the Body, in the World
Emotions in Early China and Ancient Greece
Eds. Douglas Cairns, Curie Virág
A volume of essays investigating the discourses of emotions in ancient philosophy, medicine and literature in ancient Greece and China.
Buy
China’s Galaxy Empire
Wealth, Power, War, and Peace in the New Chinese Century
John Keane, Baogang He
An argument that China is a newly rising empire of a kind never before witnessed: a galaxy empire.
Buy
The Liu Kuo-sung Reader
Selected Texts on and by the Artist, 1950s-Present
Eds. Eugene Y. Wang, Valerie C. Doran, Alan C. Yeung
An anthology devoted to the painter Liu Kuo-sung, whose career spanned seven decades.
Buy
Growing Up under a Red Flag
A Memoir of Surviving the Chinese Cultural Revolution
Ying Chang Compestine
An illustrated picture-book memoir of the author’s childhood during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
Buy
Chop Fry Watch Learn
Fu Pei-mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food
Michelle T. King
A new history of Chinese food told through an account of the remarkable life of Fu Pei-mei, the woman who brought Chinese cooking to the world.
Buy
Performing Chinatown
Hollywood, Tourism, and the Making of a Chinese American Community
William Gow
An exploration of how in the 1930s, Los Angeles' Chinatown and Hollywood represented the two primary sites where Chinese Americans performed racial difference for popular audiences, and how those representations were connected to the restrictive immigration laws limiting Chinese entry into the U.S.
Buy
The Struggle for Taiwan
A History of America, China, and the Island Caught Between
Sulmaan Wasif Khan
An account of the events that have left Taiwan a political anomaly, with issues around its status and future continuing to threaten war
Buy
Chasing Hope
A Reporter's Life
Nicholas D. Kristof
A memoir about a life in journalism from New York Times columnist, Pulitzer Prize winnder and author Nicholas Kristof.
Buy
Consumer Nationalism in China
Examining its Critical Impact on Multinational Businesses
Maggie Ying Jiang
An analysis of the different waves of consume nationalism in China.
Buy
Skies of Thunder
The Deadly World War II Mission Over the Roof of the World
Caroline Alexander
An account of combat and survival in the China-Burma-India theater of World War II.
Buy
Rising Power, Limited Influence
The Politics of Chinese Investments in Europe and the Liberal International Order
Eds. Indrajit Roy, Jappe Eckhardt, Dimitrios Stroikos, Simona Davidescu
An edited volume investigating the ways in which China translates its growing resources into effective influence, with varying degrees of success.
BuyUpcoming Politics Books
China’s Galaxy Empire
Wealth, Power, War, and Peace in the New Chinese Century
John Keane, Baogang He
An argument that China is a newly rising empire of a kind never before witnessed: a galaxy empire.
Buy
The Struggle for Taiwan
A History of America, China, and the Island Caught Between
Sulmaan Wasif Khan
An account of the events that have left Taiwan a political anomaly, with issues around its status and future continuing to threaten war
Buy
Rising Power, Limited Influence
The Politics of Chinese Investments in Europe and the Liberal International Order
Eds. Indrajit Roy, Jappe Eckhardt, Dimitrios Stroikos, Simona Davidescu
An edited volume investigating the ways in which China translates its growing resources into effective influence, with varying degrees of success.
Buy
Carrying Capacity of China’s Resources, Environment, Population, and Economy
Dong Qiu (tr. Almin Zhang)
An examination of the progression of carrying capacity research and its correlation with sustainable development, and the links that has to China's challenges in achieving sustainable development.
Buy
Nationalisation, Peasantry and Rural Integration in China I
Xu Yong
An examination of the process of rural reconstruction in China over the course of the twentieth century, taking into account politics, labour and resources, administration, and institutional integration.
Buy
The Art of State Persuasion
China's Strategic Use of Media in Interstate Disputes
Frances Yaping Wang
A look into pacification campaigns to enhance understanding of Chinese state propaganda, challenging the traditional view of China's propaganda as uniformly aggressive.
Buy
Germany and China
How Entanglement Undermines Freedom, Prosperity and Security
Andreas Fulda
A close look at the increasingly interdependent relationship between Germany and China, and the danger of this increasing entanglement.
Buy
Crosswinds
Nehru, Zhou and the Anglo-American Competition Over China
Vijay Gokhale
An outline of India's efforts to craft a foreign policy in the context of the Anglo-American competition in the Far East, and how it hoped to enlist China as a partner.
Buy
Modernising the People’s Liberation Army
Aspiring to be a Global Military Power
Ed. James Char
An examination of the progress made by the Chinese military as it strives to transform itself into a more capable fighting force.
Buy
China’s Economic Miracle
Experiences for Russia and the World
Sergei Glazyev
A discussion of the Chinese economic miracle and how China has increasingly become the core of a new world economic order.
Buy
Lost Decade
The US Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power
Robert Blackwill and Richard Fontaine
An analysis of the American "Pivot to Asia" that argues that the US lacks a coherent approach to the Indo-Pacific
Buy
China in Global Capitalism
Building International Solidarity Against Imperial Rivalry
Kevin Lin, Rosa Liu, Eli Friedman, Ashley Smith
An argument that makes the case that workers and socially marginalized people in both the U.S. and China should oppose imperialism in all its forms and construct a movement that centers international solidarity
Buy
Pivot of China
Spatial Politics and Inequality in Modern Zhengzhou
Mark Baker
A look into how China's modern history has been marked by deep spatial inequalities, told through the story of the city of Zhengzhou.
Buy
The Latecomer’s Rise
Policy Banks and the Globalization of China's Development Finance
Muyang Chen
A close look at the nature and impact of Chinese development finance.
Buy
Aflame for Freedom in Tibet
The Origin and Development of the Self-Immolation Movement
Namloyak Dhungser (author, tr.), Joshua Esler (ed. tr.)
An examination of the origins and development of the protest movement in Tibet and around the world.
Buy
China under Xi Jinping
A New Assessment
Eds. Qiang Fang, Xiaobing Li
A look at Xi's China during the pandemic.
Buy
The Xi Jinping Effect
Eds. Ashley Esarey, Rongbin Han
A collection of contributions exploring the relationship between Xi Jinping and multiple areas of political and social transformation.
Buy
The Boiling Moat
Urgent Steps to Defend Taiwan
Ed. Matt Pottinger
A scholarly argument that a robust military strategy for Taiwan, the U.S., Japan, Australia, and Europe is essential for countering Beijing's aggression.
Buy
Why the World Needs China
Development, Environmentalism, Conflict Resolution & Common Prosperity
Kyle Ferrana
An argument presenting China as the de facto leader of a future multipolar world.
Buy
Cutting the Mass Line
Water, Politics, and Climate in Southwest China
Andrea E. Pia
An exploration of the growing water supply crisis through an ethnographic study of a rural minority community in China threatened by climate change.
Buy
Contender States and Modern Chinese International Thought
From the Republican Era until the "Chinese School of International Relations"
Ferran Perez Mena
An argument that the development of modern Chinese international thought has been shaped by the distinctive nature of the Chinese state as a contender state and its global positioning since 1912.
Buy
The War for Chinese Talent in America
The Politics of Technology and Knowledge in Sino-U.S. Relations in the 21st Century
David Zweig
A documentation of China's "no-holds-barred" effort to access U.S. technology, and America's vigorous counterattack and efforts to disrupt the transfer of U.S. technology to China.
Buy
Ocean Governance and Conflict in the East and South China Sea
Negotiating Natural Resources, Institutions and Power
Christian Schultheiss
An account of the negotiations between China, Japan, Taiwan the Philippines, Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries about the East and South China Sea disputes.
Buy
The Fragility of China
Breaking Points of an Invincible Regime
Dennis Unkovic
A look into the critical factors and developments that have the potential to derail Xi Jinping's ambitions for China.
BuyUpcoming History Books
Zhou Enlai
A Life
Jian Chen
A biography of Zhou Enlai, the first premier and preeminent diplomat of the People’s Republic of China, who protected his country against the excesses of his boss―Chairman Mao
Buy
Past Progress
Time and Politics at the Borders of China, Russia, and Korea
Ed Pulford
A history about the projections and disintegrations of forward-oriented ideas in the triple borderlands of China, Russia, and North Korea
Buy
Rebel Island
The Incredible History of Taiwan
Jonathan Clements
A history of Taiwan, from the flood myths of indigenous legend to its Asian Tiger economic miracle, and the renewed threat of invasion by China.
Buy
Buddhism in Court
Religion, Law, and Jurisdiction in China
Cuilan Liu
A look at the Buddhist campaign for clerical legal privileges that aimed to exempt monks and nuns from being tried and punished in government courts, and its continuing legacy today.
Buy
Form Follows Fever
Malaria and the Construction of Hong Kong
Christopher Cowell
An in-depth account of the turbulent years of initial urban settlement and growth of colonial Hong Kong across the 1840s.
Buy
In the Mind, in the Body, in the World
Emotions in Early China and Ancient Greece
Eds. Douglas Cairns, Curie Virág
A volume of essays investigating the discourses of emotions in ancient philosophy, medicine and literature in ancient Greece and China.
Buy
Performing Chinatown
Hollywood, Tourism, and the Making of a Chinese American Community
William Gow
An exploration of how in the 1930s, Los Angeles' Chinatown and Hollywood represented the two primary sites where Chinese Americans performed racial difference for popular audiences, and how those representations were connected to the restrictive immigration laws limiting Chinese entry into the U.S.
Buy
Skies of Thunder
The Deadly World War II Mission Over the Roof of the World
Caroline Alexander
An account of combat and survival in the China-Burma-India theater of World War II.
Buy
The Southern Tour
Deng Xiaoping and the Fight for China's Future
Jonathan Chatwin
An exploration of Deng Xiaoping's legendary "Southern Tour" and its legacies in China today.
Buy
Struggle for Empire
The Battles of General Zuo Zongtang
Kenneth M. Swope
A comprehensive modern biography of the late Qing dynasty statesman, strategist, and military commander Zuo Zongtang (1812-1885).
Buy
Mao Zedong and Contemporary China
Exploring the World Where Truth Falls from the Heavens
Katsuji Nakagane
An evaluation of Mao Zedong and what he brought to China.
Buy
The Chinese Computer
A Global History of the Information Age
Thomas S. Mullaney
The untold story of how the Chinese language overcame unparalleled challenges and revolutionized the world of computing
Buy
Media and Truth
French Media and the Depiction of China
Maxime Vivas
A picture of China drawn from the perspective of the French media and France's political class.
Buy
Destination Macao
Paul French
An investigation of Macao containing 18 true stories of people who lived in or visited Macao in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Madmen in Shanghai
A Social History of Advertising in Modern China (1914-1956)
Cécile Armand
A novel perspective on the emergence of Chinese consumer society through a historical investigation of the advertising industry in pre-Communist China.
Buy
The Great Wonders of China
Ed. Jonathan Fenby
An updated and multifaceted account of China's history, religion, philosophy, arts and sciences, and more.
Buy
Revolutionary Stagecraft
Theater, Technology, and Politics in Modern China
Tarryn Li-Min Chun
A history of Chinese theater that reveals the deep entanglement of technological modernization, political agendas, and the performing arts in modern China.
Buy
Chinese Workers of the World
Colonialism, Chinese Labor, and the Yunnan-Indochina Railway
Selda Altan
A history of worker struggles and labor conflicts along the Yunnan-Indochina Railway constructed between 1898 and 1910.
Buy
Dreaming the New Woman
An Oral History of Missionary Schoolgirls in Republican China
Jennifer Bond
An exploration of the experiences of girls who attended missionary middle schools in Republican China, based on extensive oral history interviews.
Buy
Contest for Citizenship and Collective Violence during China’s Cultural Revolution
Yang Lijun
An exploration of how political struggles within the state, competing sectarian interests and other complex factors intertwined to produce forms of collective violence during China's Cultural Revolution.
Buy
China in Seven Banquets
A Flavourful History
Thomas David DuBois
A journey spanning five thousand years of Chinese culinary heritage, exploring the essense of each era through seven extraordinary meals.
Buy
A History of Uyghur Buddhism
Johan Elverskog
A history of Buddhism among the Uyghurs from the ninth to seventeenth century.
Buy
Global History in China
Xin Fan
An exploration of global history as an emerging field of scholarly studies in China today.
Buy
To Be an Actress
Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong's Cross-Media World
Yiman Wang
A study of Chinese American actress Anna May Wong's cross-media and transnational career.
Buy
Hedging the China Threat
US-Taiwan Security Relations Since 1949
Shao-cheng Sun
A look at the history of US commitments to Taiwan since the presidency of Harry S. Truman.
BuyUpcoming Society/Culture Books
Contemporary Chinese Celebrities
Moral Transgressions, Rights Defence and Public Concerns
Shenshen Cai
An exploration of how in today's China, celebrity figures embody, conflict with and engage with social, civil, moral and economic issues.
Buy
Appropriating the Dao
The Euro-American Esoteric Reception of China
Eds. Lukas K. Pokorny, Franz Winter
A collection of contributions addressing the Euro-American esoteric reception and appropriation of China.
Buy
The Liu Kuo-sung Reader
Selected Texts on and by the Artist, 1950s-Present
Eds. Eugene Y. Wang, Valerie C. Doran, Alan C. Yeung
An anthology devoted to the painter Liu Kuo-sung, whose career spanned seven decades.
Buy
Growing Up under a Red Flag
A Memoir of Surviving the Chinese Cultural Revolution
Ying Chang Compestine
An illustrated picture-book memoir of the author’s childhood during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
Buy
Chop Fry Watch Learn
Fu Pei-mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food
Michelle T. King
A new history of Chinese food told through an account of the remarkable life of Fu Pei-mei, the woman who brought Chinese cooking to the world.
Buy
Chasing Hope
A Reporter's Life
Nicholas D. Kristof
A memoir about a life in journalism from New York Times columnist, Pulitzer Prize winnder and author Nicholas Kristof.
Buy
Consumer Nationalism in China
Examining its Critical Impact on Multinational Businesses
Maggie Ying Jiang
An analysis of the different waves of consume nationalism in China.
Buy
Start-up Wolf
The Shenzhen Model of High-Tech Entrepreneurship
Olivia Yijian Liu
An examination of how socially privileged entrepreneurial talents adopt and champion the "wolf culture", a fast-paced, competitive and aspirational work culture prevalent in China today.
Buy
The Transpacific Flow
Creative Writing Programs in China
Jin Feng
An account of university-based creative writing programs in China.
Buy
Textual Patterns and Cosmic Designs in Early China
Benoît Vermander
A construal of the textual patterns and rhetorical arrangements of the Chinese classics.
Buy
Chasing Traces
History and Ethnography in the Uplands of Socialist Asia
Eds. Pierre Petit, Jean Michaud
An historical ethnography of the connected highlands of southwest China, Vietnam, and Laos.
Buy
Chinese Museums
Strategies and Promotion of Contemporary Chinese Art
Ornella De Nigris
An exploration of a range of different approaches to exhibiting and curating art, while also investigating the crucial question of the cultural sustainability of art museums in China.
Buy
Roving Through Southern China
An American's Explorations of Hong Kong, Macao and Canton in the early 1920s
Harry A. Franck
The travel writings of American Harry A. Franck from his 1920s travels through Hong Kong, Macao and Guangzhou.
Buy
Disorienting Politics
Chimerican Media and Transpacific Entanglements
Fan Yang
An examination of how "Chimerican" (referencing the symbiosis of China and the U.S.) media co-create the figure of rising China and extend a political imagination beyond the conventional ground of the nation.
Buy
Games and Play in Chinese and Sinophone Cultures
Eds. Li Guo, Douglas Eyman, Hongmei Sun
A history of games and gaming in China.
Buy
It’s My Party
Tat Ming Pair and the Postcolonial Politics of Popular Music in Hong Kong
Yiu Fai Chow, Jeroen de Kloet, Leonie Schmidt
A study of the sonic history and present of Hong Kong through the prism of Tat Ming Pair.
Buy
The Precariat in Western China
Poverty, Risks and Influences
Xueyang Ma
An overview of the experiences and dynamics of precarious workers' in-work poverty in western China.
Buy
China’s Camel Country
Livestock and Nation-Building at a Pastoral Frontier
Thomas White
A look at how state environmentalism in China has transformed the lives of ethnic Mongol pastoralists and their animals.
Buy
Taiwan’s COVID-19 Experience
Governance, Governmentality, and the Global Pandemic
Eds. Ming-Cheng M. Lo, Yu-Yueh Tsai, Michael Shiyung Liu
An exploration of how Taiwan navigated the COVID-19 pandemic.
Buy
Queering Kinship
Non-heterosexual Couples, Parents and Families in Guangdong, China
Han Tao
An exploration of tactics queer people employ to have children and form queer families, and how they navigate cultivating or losing kinship relations, based on ethnographic fieldwork in Guangdong.
Buy
At the Edge of Empire
A Family’s Reckoning with China
Edward Wong
A dual narrative that tells the story of modern China by braiding an intergenerational family memoir with first-person contemporary reporting by the former New York Times Beijing bureau chief
Buy
Confucian Governmentality and Socialist Autocracy in Contemporary China
Chih-yu Shih
An exmaination of the relationship between citizens and leaders in Chinese autocracy, challenging the binary of authoritarianism and democracy.
Buy
Invisible Warfare
How Does a Book Defeat an Empire?
Liao Yiwu (tr. Michael M. Day)
A memoir from writer, poet, musician, and dissident Liao Yiwu, reflecting on his journey from imprisonment in Sichuan to his current life in Berlin.
BuyUpcoming Fiction Books
Daughters of Shandong
A Novel
Eve J. Chung
A novel about a mother and her daughters' harrowing escape to Taiwan as the Communist revolution sweeps through China.
Buy
Shanghailanders
A Novel
Juli Min
A novel that follows a cosmopolitan Shanghai household backward in time, beginning in 2040 and moving through our present and the recent past.
Buy
Born Naughty
My Childhood in China
Jin Wang, Tony Johnston (illust. Anisi Baigude)
An illustrated memoir for young readers telling the author's story of growing up in Inner Mongolia.
Buy
Cinema Love
A Novel
Jiaming Tang
A novel about gay men in rural China and the women who marry them.
Buy
Their Divine Fires
A Novel
Wendy Chen
A novel interwoven with folktale and myth that tells the story of the love affairs of three generations of Chinese women across one hundred years of revolutions both political and personal.
Buy
The Boy From Clearwater Book II
Yu Pei-Yun (illus. Zhou Jian-Xin, tr. Lin King)
The second half of the story of Kun-lin, picking up after his imprisonment on Green Island during Taiwan's White Terror period.
Buy
Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise
A Novel
Yi-han Lin (tr. Jenna Tang)
A fictional account of sexual violence, women's vulnerability and victimization in Taiwan.
Buy
Nothing but the Now
Seven Short Stories by Wen Zhen
Wen Zhen (tr. Dave Haysom)
A collection of of seven short stories that offer a look into various facets of contemporary life in China.
Buy
Souls Left Behind
A Novel
Fan Wu (tr. Honey Watson)
A novel about members of the Chinese Labour Corps working in France during World War I.
Buy
Tiananmen Square
A Novel
Lai Wen
A coming-of-age novel about young love and lasting friendships forged in the years leading up to the Tiananmen Square student protests.
Buy
Tongueless
Lau Yee-Wa (tr. Jennifer Feeley)
A psychological thriller that sheds light on the current political situation in Hong Kong.
Buy
Of Jade and Dragons
Amber Chen
A silkpunk fantasy about a girl who must disguise herself as a boy and enter the famed and dangerous Engineer’s Guild trials to unravel the mystery of her father’s murder.
Buy
The Night Ends with Fire
K.X. Song
A fantasy adventure inspired by the legend of Mulan that follows a young woman determined to choose her own destiny.
Buy
Soft Burial
A Novel
Fang Fang (tr. Michael Berry)
A literary portrait of historical trauma and the psychological toll of repressed violence, intercut through different generations, regions, and time periods.
Buy
Sinophagia
A Celebration of Chinese Horror
Ed./Tr. Xueting Christine Ni
An anthology of chilling tales from contemporary China, translated into English for the very first time.
Buy
The Unfilial
Four Tragic Tales from Modern China
Yao Emei (tr. Honey Watson, Martin Ward, Olivia Milburn, Will Spence)
Four short stories shining a light on the crumbling foundations of the Chinese family unit.
The Running Flame
A Novel
Fang Fang (tr. Michael Berry)
A short novel exploring the difficulties of one woman shackled by patriarchal tradition against the backdrop of social change.
Buy
Elephant Herd
A Novel
Guixing Zhang (tr. Carlos Rojas)
A novel following a young Malaysian-Chinese man's journey upriver deep into the Sarawak rainforest of northwest Borneo in search of his uncle, the leader of a Communist guerilla group.
Buy
Taiwan Travelogue
A Novel
Yang Shuang-zi (tr. Lin King)
A bittersweet story of love between two women, nestled in an exploration of language, history and power.
Buy