New Books in Chinese Studies
Episodes
Benno Weiner, "The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier" (Cornell UP, 2020)
25 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier (Cornell University Press, 2020) Benno Weiner provides an in-depth study of what happened when the...
Bill Sewell, "Constructing Empire: The Japanese in Changchun, 1905-45" (UBC Press, 2019)
25 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What happens to everyday-life in a city when it becomes subsumed into an empire? Who becomes responsible for the everyday building and management of t...
Ian M. Miller, "Fir and Empire: The Transformation of Forests in Early Modern China" (U Washington Press, 2020)
21 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Ian M. Miller’s book Fir and Empire: The Transformation of Forests in Early Modern China (University of Washington Press, 2020) offers a transform...
Roberta Zavoretti, "Rural Origins, City Lives: Class and Place in Contemporary China" (U Washington Press, 2016)
20 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Many of the millions of workers streaming in from rural China to jobs at urban factories soon find themselves in new kinds of poverty and oppression. ...
Els van Dongen, "Realistic Revolution: Contesting Chinese History, Culture, and Politics after 1989" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
18 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What is the role of the intellectual? Is violence, not to mention radical change, necessary? Can there be a revolution without them? Realistic Revolu...
Guojun Wang, "Staging Personhood: Costuming in Early Qing Drama" (Columbia UP, 2020)
14 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Much is known about the Qing sartorial regulations and how the Qing conquerors forced Han Chinese males to adopt Manchu hairstyle and clothing. But wh...
David Chaffetz, "Three Asian Divas: Women, Art and Culture In Shiraz, Delhi and Yangzhou" (Abbreviated Press, 2019)
14 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The “diva” is a common trope when we talk about culture. We normally think of the diva as a Western construction: the opera singer, the Broadway a...
Rachel Silberstein, "A Fashionable Century: Textile Artistry and Commerce in the Late Qing" (U Washington Press, 2020)
13 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Rachel Silberstein’s book A Fashionable Century: Textile Artistry and Commerce in the Late Qing (University of Washington Press, 2020) reveals how...
Nicholas Bartlett, "Recovering Histories: Life and Labor after Heroin in Reform-Era China" (U California Press, 2020)
08 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Heroin first reached Gejiu, a Chinese city in southern Yunnan known as Tin Capital, in the 1980s. Widespread use of the drug, which for a short period...
William C. Hedberg, "The Japanese Discovery of Chinese Fiction: The Water Margin and the Making of a National Canon" (Columbia UP, 2019)
07 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The classic Chinese novel The Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan) tells the story of a band of outlaws in twelfth-century China and their insurrection again...
Kelly A. Hammond, "China's Muslims and Japan's Empire: Centering Islam in World War II" (UNC Press, 2020)
30 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The 1930s-40s expansion of the Japanese empire was marked by significant interest among Japan-based scholars and policy-makers in China’s Muslim pop...
John Wei, "Queer Chinese Cultures and Mobilities: Kinship, Migration, and Middle Classes" (Hong Kong UP, 2020)
29 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
John Wei’s book Queer Chinese Cultures and Mobilities: Kinship, Migration, and Middle Classes (Hong Kong University Press, 2020) studies queer cul...
Enze Han, "Asymmetrical Neighbors: Borderland State-Building Between China and Southeast Asia" (Oxford UP, 2019)
21 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Asymmetrical Neighbors: Borderland State-Building Between China and Southeast Asia (Oxford UP, 2019) explains the variations in state building across...
Paul Goldin, "The Art of Chinese Philosophy: Eight Classical Texts and How to Read Them" (Princeton UP, 2020)
21 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Goldin's book The Art of Chinese Philosophy: Eight Classical Texts and How to Read Them (Princeton UP, 2020) provides an unmatched introduction...
Yuen Yuen Ang, "China's Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
18 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Yuen Yuen Ang, a Professor of political science and China expert at the University of Michigan. We spoke already in summer 2019 to ...
Sharon J. Yoon, "The Cost of Belonging: An Ethnography on Solidarity and Mobility in Beijing's Koreatown" (Oxford UP, 2020)
16 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How vulnerable can you be as a researcher? Why, in a commercially successful city like Wangqing, are Chinese Koreans more successful in their business...
Geoffrey C. Goble, "Chinese Esoteric Buddhism: Amoghavajra, the Ruling Elite, and the Emergence of a Tradition" (Columbia UP, 2019)
15 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In his recent book, Chinese Esoteric Buddhism: Amoghavajra, the Ruling Elite, and the Emergence of a Tradition (Columbia University Press, 2019), Ge...
Jack Meng-Tat Chia, "Monks in Motion: Buddhism and Modernity Across the South China Sea" (Oxford UP, 2020)
09 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Monks in Motion: Buddhism and Modernity Across the South China Sea (Oxford University Press 2020) is the first monograph in the English language to e...
Rana Mitter, "China's Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism" (Harvard UP, 2020)
08 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Although World War II had been largely remembered in the People’s Republic of China as an experience of victimization since its founding in 1949, th...
Eyck Freymann, "One Belt One Road: Chinese Power Meets the World" (Harvard UP, 2020)
02 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
China’s One Belt One Road policy, or OBOR, represents the largest infrastructure program in history. Yet little is known about it with any certainty...
Vince Cable, "China: Engage!--Avoid The New Cold War" (Bite-Sized Books, 2020)
02 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Anyone doing business with China will have been shocked by the speed with which political and economic relations with Western, and some other, countri...
Covell F. Meyskens, "Mao's Third Front: The Militarization of Cold War China" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
01 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1964, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) made a momentous policy decision. In response to rising tensions with the United States and Soviet Union, a...
Xiaowei Wang, "Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside" (FSG Originals, 2020)
25 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Most of our discussions about how “technology will change the world” focus on the global cities that drive the world economy. Even when we talk ab...
Sebastian Strangio, "In the Dragon's Shadow: Southeast Asia in the Chinese Century" (Yale UP, 2020)
23 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For centuries Southeast Asia has enjoyed a relatively pleasant relationship with China, its massive neighbor to the north. While Chinese merchants and...
David Chai, "Zhuangzi and the Becoming of Nothingness" (SUNY Press, 2018)
20 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Zhuangzi and the Becoming of Nothingness (SUNY Press, 2018) offers a radical rereading of the Daoist classic Zhuangzi by bringing to light the role ...
David Tobin, "Securing China's Northwest Frontier: Identity and Insecurity in Xinjiang" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
20 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Greater interest in what is happening in the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang in recent years has generated a proportional need for context, an...
Michael C. Davis, "Making Hong Kong China: The Rollback of Human Rights and the Rule of Law" (Columbia UP, 2020)
19 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
“Imagine you live in a freewheeling city like New York or London – one of the world’s leading financial, educational, and cultural centres. Then...
Anne Gerritsen, "The City of Blue and White: Chinese Porcelain and the Early Modern World" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
12 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We think of blue and white porcelain as the ultimate global commodity: throughout East and Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean including the African coas...
Southeast Asian Performance, Ethnic Identity and China’s Soft Power: A Discussion with Dr Josh Stenberg
12 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
From glove puppets of Chinese origin and Hakka religious processions, to wartime political theatre and contemporary choirs and dance groups, the diver...
Stephen H. Whiteman, "Where Dragon Veins Meet: The Kangxi Emperor and His Estate at Rehe" (U Washington Press, 2020)
11 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1702, the second emperor of the Qing dynasty ordered construction of a new summer palace in Rehe (now Chengde, Hebei) to support his annual tours n...
Andrew Liu, "Tea War: A History of Capitalism in China and India" (Yale UP, 2020)
04 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
After water, tea is the most widely consumed drink in the world. It is beloved by consumers in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, and it comes in...
Sujung Kim, "Shinra Myojin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian 'Mediterranean'" (U Hawaii Press, 2020)
03 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Shinra Myojin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian “Mediterranean” (University of Hawaii Press, 2020) is a fascinating study of the transcultur...
Thomas S. Mullaney, "The Chinese Deathscape: Grave Reform in Modern China" (Stanford UP, 2019)
23 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the past decade alone, more than ten million corpses have been exhumed and reburied across the Chinese landscape. The campaign has transformed Chin...
Li Zhang, "Anxious China: Inner Revolution and Politics of Psychotherapy" (U California Press, 2020)
22 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The breathless pace of China’s economic reform has brought about deep ruptures in socioeconomic structures and people’s inner landscape. Faced wit...
Christopher Lupke (trans.), "A History of Taiwan Literature" (Cambria Press, 2020)
20 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ye Shitao was a Taiwanese public intellectual who rose to prominence in the second half of the twentieth century. His encyclopedic A History of Taiwan...
Alan Chong, "Critical Reflections on China’s Belt and Road Initiative" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020)
16 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Political scientists Alan Chong and Quang Min Pham bring with their edited volume, Critical Reflections on China’s Belt and Road Initiative (Palgra...
C. Chan and F. de Londras, "China’s National Security: Endangering Hong Kong’s Rule of Law?" (Hart, 2020)
15 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On July 1, 2020, China introduced a National Security Law into Hong Kong partly in an attempt to quell months of civil unrest, as a mechanism to safeg...
Karl Gerth, “Unending Capitalism: How Consumerism Negated China’s Communist Revolution” (Cambridge UP, 2020)
25 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Karl Gerth’s new book, Unending Capitalism: How Consumerism Negated China’s Communist Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2020) details how t...
Brian R. Dott, “The Chile Pepper in China: A Cultural Biography” (Columbia UP, 2020)
23 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In China, chiles are everywhere. From dried peppers hanging from eaves to Mao’s boast that revolution would be impossible without chiles, Chinese cu...
Sean Roberts, “The War on the Uyghurs: China’s Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority” (Princeton UP, 2020)
11 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In today’s new episode, we speak with Sean Roberts about his brand new book The War on the Uyghurs: China’s Internal Campaign against a Muslim Mi...
Mary Augusta Brazelton, “Mass Vaccination: Citizens’ Bodies and State Power in Modern China” (Cornell UP, 2019)
31 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
While the eradication of smallpox has long been documented, not many know the Chinese roots of this historic achievement. In this revelatory study, Ma...
Philip Thai, “China’s War on Smuggling: Law, Illicit Markets, and State Power on the China Coast” (Columbia UP, 2018)
24 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Siobhan talks with Philip Thai about his book, China’s War on Smuggling: Law, Illicit Markets, and State Power on the China Coast ...
Ting Zhang, “Circulating the Code: Print Media and Legal Knowledge in Qing China” (U Washington Press, 2020)
14 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How could a peasant in Shandong in the Qing dynasty come to know enough about a specific law that he felt confident enough to kill his own wife and hi...
Postscript: A Deep Dive on China
10 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Todays begins a new set of podcasts from New Books in Political Science called POST-SCRIPT. Lilly Goren and I invite authors back to the podcast to re...
Mayfair Yang, “Re-enchanting Modernity: Ritual Economy and Society in Wenzhou, China” (Duke UP, 2020)
23 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Re-enchanting Modernity: Ritual Economy and Society in Wenzhou, China (Duke University Press, 2020), Mayfair Yang examines the resurgence of religi...
Andreas Fulda, “The Struggle for Democracy in Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong” (Routledge, 2020)
17 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The key question in The Struggle for Democracy in Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong: Sharp Power and its Discontents (Routledge, 2020), is to what...
Eugenia Lean, “Vernacular Industrialism in China”(Columbia UP, 2020)
17 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In early twentieth-century China, Chen Diexian (1879–1940) was a maverick entrepreneur—at once a prolific man of letters and captain of industry, ...
Yuhang Li, “Becoming Guanyin: Artistic Devotion of Buddhist Women in Late Imperial China” (Columbia UP, 2020)
14 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How did Buddhist women access religious experience and transcendence in a Confucian patriarchal system in imperial China? How were Buddhist practices ...
Gina Anne Tam, “Dialect and Nationalism in China, 1860-1960” (Cambridge UP, 2020)
07 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The question of how a state decides what its official language is going to be, or indeed whether it even needs one, is never simple, and this may be p...
He Bian, “Know Your Remedies: Pharmacy and Culture in Early Modern China” (Princeton UP, 2020)
02 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
He Bian’s new book Know Your Remedies: Pharmacy and Culture in Early Modern China (Princeton University Press, 2020) is a beautiful cultural histor...
Charlotte Bruckermann, “Claiming Homes: Confronting Domicide in Rural China” (Berghahn Books, 2019)
24 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Charlotte Bruckermann about her new book Claiming Homes: Confronting Domicide in Rural China (Berghahn Books, 2019). Chinese citizen...
Brian DeMare, “Land Wars: The Story of China’s Agrarian Revolution” (Stanford UP, 2019)
18 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Many people outside China, and indeed many urbanites living in the country, rarely think about its vast rural areas. Yet today’s People’s Republic...
Diana Fu, “Mobilizing Without the Masses: Control and Contention in China” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
27 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When advocacy organizations are forbidden from rallying people to take to the streets, what do they do? Diana Fu’s nuanced ethnography of Chinese la...
Julia C. Strauss, “State Formation in China and Taiwan: Bureaucracy, Campaign, and Performance” (Cambridge UP, 2019)
20 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
State Formation in China and Taiwan: Bureaucracy, Campaign, and Performance (Cambridge University Press, 2019) by Julia C. Strauss is a comparative st...
Courtney J. Fung, “China and Intervention at the UN Security Council: Reconciling Status” (Oxford UP, 2019)
19 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
China is a veto-holding member of the UN Security Council yet Chinese officials have been skeptical of using the powers of the UN to pressure nations ...
Yue Hou, “The Private Sector in Public Office: Selective Property Rights in China” (Cambridge UP, 2020)
30 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In China, roughly 60% of GDP and 80% of employment comes from the private sector – yet half of private entrepreneurs report that they faced expropri...
Chris Courtney, “The Nature of Disaster in China: The 1931 Yangzi River Flood” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
28 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For somewhat unfortunate reasons, many more people in the world now know about the existence and location of a city called Wuhan than was the case at ...
Gregory A. Scott, “Building the Buddhist Revival: Reconstructing Monasteries in Modern China” (Oxford UP, 2020)
16 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Gregory A. Scott‘s Building the Buddhist Revival: Reconstructing Monasteries in Modern China (Oxford University Press, 2020) is the first major work...
Margaret Hillenbrand, “Negative Exposures: Knowing What Not to Know in Contemporary China” (Duke UP, 2020)
02 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The fact that secrecy and the concealment of information is important in today’s China is hardly a secret in itself, yet the ways that this secrecy ...
Margaret E. Roberts, “Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China’s Great Firewall” (Princeton UP, 2020)
31 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We often think of censorship as governments removing material or harshly punishing people who spread or access information. But Margaret E. Roberts’...
Charlene Makley, “The Battle for Fortune: State-led Development, Personhood, and Power among Tibetans in China” (Cornell UP, 2018)
10 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Rebgong, in the Northeastern part of the Tibetan Plateau (China’s Qinghai Province), is in the midst of a ‘Battle for Fortune.’ That is, a battl...
Daniel C. Mattingly, “The Art of Political Control in China” (Cambridge UP, 2020)
04 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Tocqueville and Putnam insist that civil society helps individuals flourish and resist authority, but Daniel C. Mattingly’s decade of research in ru...
Eric Setzekorn, “The Rise and Fall of an Officer Corps: The Republic of China Military, 1942-1955” (U Oklahoma Press, 2018)
30 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Following the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911, two antipodal ideologies vied for control of China’s military. The first, advanced by Sun Yat-sen, l...
Filippo Marsili, “Heaven Is Empty: A Cross-Cultural Approach to ‘Religion’ and Empire in Ancient China” (SUNY Press, 2018)
17 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Heaven Is Empty: A Cross-Cultural Approach to ‘Religion’ and Empire in Ancient China (SUNY Press, 2018) offers a new comparative perspective on th...
Xiao Liu, “Information Fantasies: Precarious Mediation in Postsocialist China” (U Minnesota Press, 2019)
02 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
International and transnational historiography has given us vivid glimpses of the development and impact of cybernetics on a national scale in such co...
Charlotte Brooks, “American Exodus: Second-Generation Chinese Americans in China, 1901–1949” (U California Press, 2019)
30 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1901 and World War II, up to half of all U.S.-born Chinese Americans relocated to China in search of better lives due to the discrimination th...
Ayo Wahlberg, “Good Quality: The Routinization of Sperm Banking in China” (U California Press, 2018)
18 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
From its crude and uneasy beginnings thirty years ago, Chinese sperm banking has become a routine part of China’s pervasive and restrictive reproduc...
Taomo Zhou, “Migration in the Time of Revolution: China, Indonesia and the Cold War” (Cornell UP, 2019)
17 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
If tales of China’s radical ‘opening up’ to the world over the last 30 years imply that the country was somehow ‘closed’ before this, then o...
Lian Xi, “Blood Letters: The Untold Story of Lin Zhao, a Martyr in Mao’s China” (Basic Books, 2018)
21 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1960, a poet and journalist named Lin Zhao was arrested by the Communist Party of China and sent to prison for re-education. Years before, she had ...
Elisabeth Köll, “Railroads and the Transformation of China” (Harvard UP, 2019)
28 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Railroads and the Transformation of China (Harvard University Press, 2019) looks at the development of railroads in China from the late 19th century t...
Yan Li, “China’s Soviet Dream: Propaganda, Culture, and Popular Imagination” (Routledge, 2018)
27 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The warmth of China and Russia’s present-day relationship is sometimes said to reprise 1950s ties between Mao’s PRC and the Soviet Union, even if ...
Kyle A. Jaros, “China’s Urban Champions: The Politics of Spatial Development” (Princeton UP, 2019)
23 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Discussions of China’s 21st-century ‘rise’ often focus on the country’s dazzling megacities and the dizzying pace of urbanization which has pr...
Jenny Huangfu Day, “Qing Travelers to the Far West: Diplomacy and the Information Order in Late Imperial China” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
29 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Historians in the English-speaking world have long studied how European and American travelers and diplomats conceptualized China, but, especially in ...
Martin T. Fromm, “Borderland Memories: Searching for Historical Identity in Post-Mao China” (Cambridge UP, 2019)
16 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
With China’s northwestern and southern edges justifiably being sources of global attention at present, Martin Fromm’s Borderland Memories: Searchi...
Daniel Vukovich, “Illiberal China: The Ideological Challenge of the People’s Republic of China” (Palgrave, 2019)
22 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Illiberal China: The Ideological Challenge of the People’s Republic of China (Palgrave, 2019) by Daniel Vukovich analyzes the ‘intellectual politi...
Yuen Yuen Ang, “How China Escaped the Poverty Trap” (Cornell UP, 2016)
02 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
I spoke with Dr Yuen Yuen Ang, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She published in 2016 a great new bo...
Christopher Rea, “China’s Chaplin: Comic Stories and Farces by Xu Zhuodai” (Cornell UP, 2019)
01 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Hoaxes! Jokes! Farces and fun! Christopher Rea‘s China’s Chaplin (Cornell University Press, 2019) introduces the imagination of Xu Zhuodai (1880–...
Jonathan D. T. Ward, “China’s Vision of Victory” (Atlas Publishing, 2019)
28 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Someday we may say that we never saw it coming. After seventy-five years of peace in the Pacific, a new challenger to American power has emerged, on a...
Jennifer Hubbert, “China in the World: An Anthropology of Confucius Institutes, Soft Power, and Globalization” (U Hawaii Press, 2019)
24 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In recent years, Confucius Institutes—cultural and language programs funded by the Chinese government—have garnered attention in the United States...
Thomas S. Mullaney, “The Chinese Deathscape: Grave Reform in Modern China” (Stanford UP, 2019)
10 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Chinese landscape is dramatically changing. Modernization has drastically altered Chinese infrastructure, urban zones, waterways, and even rural s...
Megan Bryson, “Goddess on the Frontier: Religion, Ethnicity, and Gender in Southwest China” (Stanford UP, 2016)
05 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Megan Bryson, Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee, centers gender as an analytical framework in the study of Buddhism. The benefit of t...
F. Grillo and R. Nanetti, “Democracy and Growth in the 21st Century: The Diverging Cases of China and Italy” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
22 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Today I spoke with Francesco Grillo (co-authored with Raffaella Nanetti) about his latest book, Democracy and Growth in the 21st Century: The Divergin...
Kimberly Chong, “Best Practice: Management Consulting and the Ethics of Financialization in China” (Duke UP, 2018)
20 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What do management consultants do, and how do they do it? These two deceptively simple questions are at the centre of Best Practice: Management Consul...
Pang Yang Huei, “Strait Rituals: China, Taiwan, and the United States in the Taiwan Strait Crises, 1954-1958” (Hong Kong UP, 2019)
29 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Taiwan Strait Crises of 1954-55 and 1958 occurred at the height of the Cold War. Mao’s China bombarded Nationalist-controlled islands, and U.S. ...
Leta Hong Fincher, “Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China” (Verso, 2018)
12 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On the eve of International Women’s Day in 2015, five activists were detained by the police in China for their plans to distribute anti-sexual haras...
Levi S. Gibbs, “Song King: Connecting People, Places and Past in Contemporary China” (U Hawaii Press, 2018)
02 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How does music link people across time and space? How do singers modulate their repertoires to forge links with audiences both within and across local...
Emily Baum, “The Invention of Madness: State, Society, and the Insane in Modern China” (U Chicago Press, 2018)
08 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Emily Baum’s The Invention of Madness: State, Society, and the Insane in Modern China, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2018 as part ...
Jonathan Fulton, “China’s Relations with the Gulf Monarchies” (Routledge, 2018)
17 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jonathan Fulton‘s China’s Relations with the Gulf Monarchies (Routledge, 2018) sheds light on China’s increasing economic role at a moment that...
Anne Reinhardt, “Navigating Semi-Colonialism: Shipping, Sovereignty, and Nation-Building in China, 1860–1937” (Harvard U Asia Center, 2018)
02 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
At at time when trade between China and the outside world is rarely out of the news, it remains important to remember that in centuries past global co...
Judd C. Kinzley, “Natural Resources and the New Frontier: Constructing Modern China’s Borderlands” (U Chicago Press, 2018)
20 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As public knowledge grows of the Chinese state’s subjugation of the central Asian region of Xinjiang, many may find themselves wondering what Beijin...
Howard Chiang, “After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China” (Columbia UP, 2018)
17 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Howard Chiang’s new book is a masterful study of the relationship between sexual knowledge and Chinese modernity. After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, ...
Jinping Wang, “In the Wake of the Mongols: The Making of a New Social Order in North China 1200-1600” (Harvard Asia Center, 2018)
14 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On the background of widespread portrayals of China as a monolithic geographical and political entity moving through time, insights into the endlessly...
Thomas Borchert, “Educating Monks: Minority Buddhism on China’s Southwest Border” (U Hawaii Press, 2017)
07 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What makes a Buddhist monk? This is the motivating question for Thomas Borchert, Professor of Religion at the University of Vermont, as he explores th...
Jennifer Altehenger, “Legal Lessons: Popularizing Laws in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1989” (Harvard U Asia Center, 2018)
04 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, historian Jennifer Altehenger, a Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Chinese History at King’s College London, grapples with the comple...
Ching Kwan Lee, “The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment in Africa” (U Chicago Press, 2018)
25 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today we talked with Ching Kwan Lee, professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has just published The Specter of Glob...
Martin Saxer and Juan Zhang, eds., “The Art of Neighbouring: Making Relations Across China’s Borders” (Amsterdam UP, 2017)t
18 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
China’s growing presence in all of our worlds today is felt most keenly by those living directly on the country’s borders. They, together with the...
James M. Dorsey, “China and the Middle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
27 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
For all that China’s twenty-first-century ‘rise’ is a much-discussed notion both within the country and globally, it is an increasingly difficul...
Stephen R. Platt, “Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age” (Knopf, 2018)
24 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The reason for Great Britain’s war against China in the First Opium War (1839-42) is often taken as a given. British merchants wanted to “open” ...
Michael Szonyi, “The Art of Being Governed: Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China” (Princeton UP, 2017)
13 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
At the heart of Michael Szonyi’s new book are two questions: 1) How did ordinary people in the Ming deal with their obligations to provide manpower ...
Fabio Lanza, “The End of Concern: Maoist China, Activism, and Asian Studies” (Duke UP, 2017)
31 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
If you work in Asian studies as a scholarly field, you should read Fabio Lanza’s new book. The End of Concern: Maoist China, Activism, and Asian Stu...