The book is surely man’s greatest invention. Sometimes, though, there’s a faulty leap in logic equating the civilizational glory of printed text with the arrival of Johannes Gutenberg’s movable-type printing press circa 1440. That’s a Eurocentric and modernity-skewed way of looking at things. Over the last two millennia, it is [...]
Bridging East & West is a fast-paced and fun account of Kathie Wei-Sender’s long, fascinating life, from childhood dangers during the Sino-Japanese War to an arranged marriage and move to the United States, to a career in nursing and then a reinvention as bridge champion mixing with world political leaders. [...]
Stefan Aust and Adrian Geiges – long-time China watchers and prolific authors – seek to lay out the facts about Xi Jinping without prejudice and bombast. And they succeed. Some might say the subtitle itself, “The Most Powerful Man in the World,” is bombastic. It’s not. It happens to be [...]
Aaron Friedberg would be justified in adopting an “I told you so,” attitude to the West’s belated waking up to its failed engagement project with China. In articles and books such as Contest for Supremacy (2011), the American political scientist has long warned about the China threat. However, in Getting [...]
The United States vs. China: The Quest for Global Economic is a sober, sensible warning about the potential dangers of various possible futures that lie ahead as China matches the United States in economic might and overtakes it in the coming decades. The China challenge will be different from the [...]
Is the English-language bookshelf already too full of novels set in pre-WW2 China? Has that rich seam of Shanghai ore not been thoroughly exhausted? And on a broader note, is it time to move on from the Second World War? No, no, and thrice no. Shanghai was by population count [...]
“No poetry or memoirs,” warn some publishers in their submission guidelines. To be paired with poetry – yes, cruel, but the truth is often cruel. The fact is that the general reading public is not interested in non-celebrity memoirs, and the number of sales (or copies given away) is usually [...]
Elizabeth Economy’s The World According to China joins an overcrowded bookshelf. But it’s a welcome addition, its breadth of coverage and insights into China’s push to attain global dominance making the book a must-read for journalists, business leaders, policymakers, and the interested general reader. The title is a little misleading – [...]
“Compared to…?” It’s a useful retort, a shorthand way of asking for context. “The world today is so unstable!” “Compared to when?“ “Is your mother-in-law nice?” “Compared to what?” And when it comes to an assessment of Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his era, a comparative approach is an efficient [...]
An ambitious debut novel from a handsome actor turned aspiring novelist? I must admit I started reading The Eunuch wondering if it would prove a triumph of fan sales expectations over the quality of writing. After an initial hook of interest from the set-up, it took a little time to get [...]