New Books in East Asian Studies

Maren A. Ehlers, "Give and Take: Poverty and the Status Order in Early Modern Japan" (Harvard U Asia Center, 2018)

31 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Maren A. Ehlers’s Give and Take: Poverty and the Status Order in Early Modern Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2018) examines the ways in whic...

Dan Wang, "Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future" (Norton, 2025)

26 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Dan Wang is a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover History Lab, and previously a fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center. B...

Robert Cribb et al., "Detention Camps in Asia: The Conditions of Confinement in Modern Asian History" (Brill, 2022)

22 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why have Asian states - colonial and independent - imprisoned people on a massive scale in detention camps? How have detainees experienced the long m...

Nan Z. Da, The Chinese Tragedy of King Lear (Princeton UP, 2025)

21 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

I’m Nicholas Gordon, host of the Asian Review of Books podcast, done in partnership with the New Books Network. On this show, we interview authors w...

Chile’s Growing Interests in China

19 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Chile holds the distinction of being the first South American nation to forge diplomatic ties with the People's Republic of China, as well as the firs...

Isabella M. Weber, "How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate" (Routledge, 2021)

17 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

China has become deeply integrated into the world economy. Yet, gradual marketization has facilitated the country's rise without leading to its wholes...

Grace C. Huang, "Chiang Kai-Shek's Politics of Shame: Leadership, Legacy, and National Identity in China" (Harvard UP, 2021)

09 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Once a powerful figure who reversed the disintegration of China and steered the country to Allied victory in World War II, Chiang Kai-shek fled into e...

Ayo Wahlberg, "Good Quality: The Routinization of Sperm Banking in China" (U California Press, 2018)

08 Aug 2025

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...

Eiko Maruko Siniawer, "Ten Moments that Shaped Tokyo" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

07 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How did Tokyo—Japan’s capital, global city, tourist hotspot and financial center—get to where it is today? Tokyo–or then, Edo–had a rather u...

Ronald C. Po, "Shaping the Blue Dragon: Maritime China in the Ming and Qing Dynasties" (Liverpool UP, 2024)

06 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Shaping the Blue Dragon: Maritime China in the Ming and Qing Dynasties (Liverpool UP, 2024) offers a vivid look at China's dynamic and longstanding ...

Professional Chat: Home, Migrant Workers, and Decent Work in Supply Chains, with Bonny Ling

06 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Better Innovations, to talk about Taiwan as a home for migrant workers, and decent work in supply chains. After a brief overview of key risks in this ...

Toby Lincoln, "An Urban History of China" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

04 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In An Urban History of China (Cambridge UP, 2021), Toby Lincoln offers the first history of Chinese cities from their origins to the present. Despit...

William Marx, "Libraries of the Mind" (Princeton UP, 2025)

03 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Erich Auerbach wrote his classic work Mimesis, a history of narrative from Homer to Proust, based largely on his memory of past reading. Having left ...

Scott Pearce, "Northern Wei (386-534): A New Form of Empire in East Asia" (Oxford UP, 2023)

30 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Emerging from collapse of the Han empire, the founders of Northern Wei had come south from the grasslands of Inner Asia to conquer the rich farmlands ...

Benoit Berthelier and Immanuel Kim, "Hidden Heros: Anthology of North Korean FIction" (Anthem, 2025)

29 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hidden Heroes (Anthem Press, 2025) offers a rare and intimate glimpse into the lives of ordinary North Koreans through a collection of short stories b...

Frank Jacob, "Japanese War Crimes during World War II: Atrocity and the Psychology of Collective Violence" (Praeger, 2018)

28 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When you mention Japanese War crimes in World War Two, you’ll often get different responses from different generations. The oldest among us will ta...

Sarah Teasley, "Designing Modern Japan" (Reaktion Books, 2022)

27 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Sarah Teasley's Designing Modern Japan (Reaktion, 2022) unpicks the history of Japanese design from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of the twe...

Chiara Formichi, "Islam and Asia: A History" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

27 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Challenging the geographical narrative of the history of Islam, Chiara Formichi’s new book Islam and Asia: A History (Cambridge University Press, 20...

Ian Johnson, "The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao" (Pantheon, 2017)

26 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Ian Johnson’s new book, The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao (Pantheon, 2017),  was called "a masterpiece of observation and empath...

Christopher Marquis and Kunyuan Qiao, "Mao and Markets: The Communist Roots of Chinese Enterprise" (Yale UP, 2022)

26 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Mao and Markets: The Communist Roots of Chinese Enterprise (Yale University Press, 2022) by Dr. Christopher Marquis & Dr. Kunyuan Qiao presents a tho...

Ketian Zhang, "China's Gambit: The Calculus of Coercion" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

21 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Emerging from an award-winning article in International Security, China's Gambit examines when, why, and how China attempts to coerce states over pe...

Cara Wallis, "Social Media and Ordinary Life: Affect, Ethics, and Aspiration in Contemporary China" (NYU Press, 2025)

18 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Focusing on domestic workers, rural microentrepreneurs, disadvantaged young creatives, and young feminists, Social Media and Ordinary Life (NYU Pres...

James D.J. Brown, "Cracking the Crab: Russian Espionage Against Japan, from Peter the Great to Richard Sorge" (Hurst, 2025),

17 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Russians came late to Japan, arriving after the Portuguese and other European powers. But as soon as they arrived, Russia tried to use spies and e...

Kelly A. Spring, "SPAM: A Global History" (Reaktion, 2025)

16 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The year 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, a conflict that solidified SPAM’s place in global food culture. Created...

Lanlan Kuang, "Staging Tianxia: Dunhuang Expressive Arts and China's New Cosmopolitan Heritage" (Indiana UP, 2024)

15 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How can art shape historical memory and national identity? And how can cultural heritage and historical references be used to enact a vision of a nati...

Simon Butt, "Judicial Dysfunction in Indonesia" (Melbourne UP, 2023)

15 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Indonesia's judicial system has long been described as dysfunctional. Many of its problems developed out of decades of authoritarian rule, which began...

Tina Chen and Charlotte Eubanks, "Global Asias: Tactics & Theories" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)

11 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Global Asias: Tactics & Theories is the inaugural volume in an exciting new series that explores critical concerns animating Global Asias scholarship...

Paul French, "Destination Macao" (Blacksmith Books, 2024)

10 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Macau–onetime Portuguese colony, now casino hotspot–has long captured the imaginations of travelers, reporters, artists and writers. The city serv...

Alexus McLeod, "Myth and Identity in the Martial Arts: Creating the Dragon" (Lexington Books, 2025)

09 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Myth and Identity in the Martial Arts: Creating the Dragon (Lexington Books, 2025) is a study of the role of myth and ideology in the formatio...

Chinese Conceptualisation of the Rule of Law – a Conversation with Dr. Martin Lavicka

08 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What does the 'rule of law' really mean in China? How does it shape the country’s politics, both at home and on the world stage? And why should it m...

Nan Z. Da, "The Chinese Tragedy of King Lear" (Princeton UP, 2025)

08 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

At the start of Shakespeare's famous tragedy, King Lear promises to divide his kingdom based on his daughters' professions of love, but portions it ou...

Zev Handel, "Chinese Characters Across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese" (U Washington Press, 2025)

03 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For centuries, scribes across East Asia used Chinese characters to write things down–even in languages based on very different foundations than Chin...

Minxin Pei, "The Sentinel State: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China" (Harvard UP, 2024)

01 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Rising prosperity was supposed to bring democracy to China, yet the Communist Party’s political monopoly endures. How? Minxin Pei looks to the surve...

Tie Ning, Annelise Finegan trans., "My Sister's Red Shirt" (Sinoist Books, 2025)

25 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Growing up in a glittering new decade of possibility, Anran is radically different to her sister. Outspoken and idealistic, she relishes in challengin...

Lieba Faier, "The Banality of Good: The UN's Global Fight Against Human Trafficking" (Duke UP, 2024)

22 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In The Banality of Good: The UN’s Global Fight against Human Trafficking (Duke University Press, 2024), Dr. Lieba Faier examines why contemporary ...

Chris Horton, "Ghost Nation: The Story of Taiwan and Its Struggle for Survival" (MacMillan, 2025)

19 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Chris Horton is a freelance journalist who has been based in Taiwan since 2015, before many Western publications had any dedicated presence on the is...

John Man, "Conquering the North: China, Russia, Mongolia: 2,000 Years of Conflict" (Oneworld Publications, 2025)

19 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

China, famously, built the Great Wall to defend against nomadic groups from the Eurasian steppe. For two millennia, China interacted with groups from ...

Gregory N. Evon, "Salvaging Buddhism to Save Confucianism in Choson Korea (1392-1910)" (Cambria Press, 2023)

16 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Salvaging Buddhism to Save Confucianism in Chosŏn Korea (1392-1910) (Cambria Press, 2023) is a fascinating book that sits at the intersection of Bud...

Fyodor Tertitskiy, "Accidental Tyrant: The Life of Kim Il-sung" (Hurst UP, 2025)

12 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Kims, of North Korea, are perhaps the 21st century’s most successful family dictatorship–if only due to sheer longevity, having run North Kore...

Jeremy A. Yellen, "Japan at War, 1914-1952" (Routledge, 2024)

10 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Japan at War, 1914-1952 is a synthetic and interpretive history that highlights the centrality of war to the modern Japanese experience. The author ...

Joseph Torigian, "The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping" (Stanford UP, 2025)

06 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Often I will find in a chronology or a biography, you know, official materials, evidence that because I have other evidence, it’s meaningful in a wa...

Vappala Balachandran, "India and China at Odds in the Asian Century: A Diplomatic and Strategic History" (Hurst, 2025)

05 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

China and India have had a tense relationship, disagreeing over territory, support for each other’s rivals, and even, at times, leadership of the “...

NIAS Podcast from the University of Tartu Asia Centre China's Psychological Power

04 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This podcast episode is hosted by Toomas Hanso International Centre for Defence and Security (ICDS) who is talking to Urmas Hõbepappel. Urmas is an...

Xing Hang, "The Port: Hà Tiên and the Mo Clan in Early Modern Asia" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

30 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Port (present-day Hà Tiên), situated in the Mekong River Delta and Gulf of Siam littoral, was founded and governed by the Chinese creole Mo clan...

Gennifer Weisenfeld, "The Fine Art of Persuasion: Corporate Advertising Design, Nation, and Empire in Modern Japan" (Duke UP, 2025)

29 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Commercial art is more than just mass-produced publicity; it constructs social and political ideologies that impact the public’s everyday life. In ...

Jessica X. Zu, "Just Awakening: Yogācāra Social Philosophy in Modern China" (Columbia UP, 2025)

28 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Just Awakening: Yogācāra Social Philosophy in Modern China (Columbia University Press, 2025) uncovers a forgotten philosophy of social democracy i...

Luanjiao Hu, "Inclusion, Exclusion, Agency, and Advocacy: Experiences of Women With Physical Disabilities in China, With Worldwide Implications" (IAP, 2024)

25 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Inclusion, Exclusion, Agency, and Advocacy: Experiences of Women With Physical Disabilities in China, With Worldwide Implications (IAP, 2024) explore...

Jeffrey Wasserstrom, "Vigil: The Struggle for Hong Kong" (Brixton Ink, 2025)

24 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Given what has happened since – from a global pandemic to wars in Europe, Africa and the Middle East – events in Hong Kong in 2019-20 can seem ...

Lizhi Liu, "From Click to Boom: The Political Economy of E-Commerce in China" (Princeton UP, 2024)

23 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Alibaba. Tencent. JD. Pinduoduo. Run down the list of China’s most valuable companies and you’ll find, for the most part, that they’re all e-com...

Selda Altan, "Chinese Workers of the World: Colonialism, Chinese Labor, and the Yunnan-Indochina Railway" (Stanford UP, 2024)

22 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Chinese workers helped build the modern world. They labored on New World plantations, worked in South African mines, and toiled through the constructi...

Christopher Hanscom, "Impossible Speech: The Politics of Representation in Contemporary Korean Literature and Film" (Columbia UP, 2024)

21 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How does art engage with its social context? What does 'the politics of art' even mean? In his new book  Impossible Speech: The Politics of Represe...

Kai Shmushko, "Multiple Liminalities of Lay Buddhism in Contemporary China: Modalities, Material Culture, and Politics" (Leiden UP, 2024)

19 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the past decades, various forms of Buddhism have emerged in-between, above, and beyond conventional conceptions of religious and spiritual life in ...

Qingfei Yin, "State Building in Cold War Asia: Comrades and Competitors on the Sino-Vietnamese Border" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

18 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Departing from conventional studies of border hostility in inter-Asian relations, Yin Qingfei explores how two revolutionary states - China and Vietna...

Nicholas Borst, "The Bird and the Cage: China’s Economic Contradictions" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2025)

17 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Chinese Communist Party’s complex and contradictory embrace of capitalism has played a pivotal role in shaping China’s economic reforms since ...

Kin Cheung, "Teaching Asia during a Resurgence of Anti-Asian Racism" (ASS, 2025)

13 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

An open access Asia Shorts edited volume from AAS. The spring of 2020 will remain etched in collective memory as a moment of profound upheaval. The C...

Alison J. Miller and Eunyoung Park, "Transposed Memory: Visual Sites of National Recollection in 20th and 21st Century East Asia" (Brill, 2024)

09 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Transposed Memory: Visual Sites of National Recollection in 20th and 21st Century East Asia (Brill, 2024) explores the visual culture of national rec...

Cora Lingling Xu, "The Time Inheritors: How Time Inequalities Shape Higher Education Mobility in China" (SUNY Press, 2025)

08 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Can a student inherit time? What difference does time make to their educational journeys and outcomes? The Time Inheritors: How Time Inequalities Sha...

Zev J. Handel, "Chinese Characters Across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese" (U Washington Press, 2025)

03 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

While other ancient nonalphabetic scripts—Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Mayan hieroglyphs—are long extinct, Chinese characters, in...

Odd Arne Westad and Chen Jian, "The Great Transformation: China's Road from Revolution to Reform" (Yale UP, 2024)

01 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1968, Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution, asserting his control of China 15 years later, Deng Xiaoping launched the reform and opening up ...

Judith Vitale, "The Historical Writing of the Mongol Invasions in Japan" (Harvard UP, 2024)

30 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Although Japan was never conquered by the Mongol empire, the 1274 and 1281 Mongol invasions were commemorated, remembered, and imagined in Japanese hi...

Amy Zhang, "Circular Ecologies: Environmentalism and Waste Politics in Urban China" (Stanford UP, 2024)

28 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

After four decades of reform and development, China is confronting a domestic waste crisis. As the world's largest waste-generating nation, the World ...

Christopher Harding, "The Light of Asia: A History of Western Fascination with the East" (Allen Lane, 2024)

27 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Christopher Harding’s The Light of Asia: A History of Western Fascination with the East (Allen Lane, 2024) is a fascinating survey of two millenni...

Brian Masaru Hayashi, "Asian American Spies: How Asian Americans Helped Win the Allied Victory" (Oxford UP, 2021)

26 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Spies deep behind enemy lines; double agents; a Chinese American James Bond; black propaganda radio broadcasters; guerrilla fighters; pirates; smuggle...

Howard Chiang, "After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China" (Columbia UP, 2018)

25 Apr 2025

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, ...

Eike Exner, "Comics and the Origins of Manga: A Revisionist History" (Rutgers UP, 2021)

24 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Japanese comics, commonly known as manga, are a global sensation. Critics, scholars, and everyday readers have often viewed this artform through an Or...

Tadashi Ishikawa, "Geographies of Gender: Family and Law in Imperial Japan and Colonial Taiwan" (Cambridge UP., 2024)

23 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Geographies of Gender: Family and Law in Imperial Japan and Colonial Taiwan (Cambridge University Press, 2024) Dr. Tadashi Ishikawa traces percep...

Margherita Zanasi, "Economic Thought in Modern China: Market and Consumption, c.1500–1937" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

22 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Economic Thought in Modern China: Market and Consumption, c.1500–1937 (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Margherita Zanasi argues that basic...

Pil Ho Kim, "Polarizing Dreams: Gangnam and Popular Culture in Globalizing Korea" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)

21 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Gangnam is an exclusive zone of privilege and wealth that has lured South Korean pop culture industries since the 1980s and fueled the aspirations of ...

Christof Lammer, "Performing State Boundaries: Food Networks, Democratic Bureaucracy and China" (Berghahn, 2024)

20 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On the podcast today I am joined by Christof Lammer, a social anthropologist based at the University of Klagenfurt and inherit fellow at Humboldt Un...

Akiko Takenaka, "Mothers Against War: Gender, Motherhood, and Peace Activism in Cold War Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2025)

19 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Mothers Against War: Gender, Motherhood, and Peace Activism in Cold War Japan (U Hawaii Press, 2025) examines the shifting relationships among mother...

China’s Trade War Strategy: How Xi Jinping Uses Autocracy, Fear, and Innovation to Compete with the West

18 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hosts Nina dos Santos and Owen Bennett-Jones analyze the global fallout after Donald Trump plunged America and the world into a trade war with China. ...

Richard Overy, "Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima and the Surrender of Japan" (Norton, 2025)

17 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

September 2 will mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s formal surrender to the United States aboard the USS. Missouri, ending the Second World War. T...

Laura Miller, "Occult Hunting and Supernatural Play in Japan" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)

13 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Occult Hunting and Supernatural Play in Japan (Hawaii 2024), Laura Miller examines the intersections of ludic capitalism with formal and informal...

Katherine Ngo, "Unlocking the Treasury: Elementary Learning for Boys in Qing China" (Lever Press, 2025)

11 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How did young boys in premodern China learn? What educational texts did they use? What values informed their education? Katherine Ngo’s new book U...

Bin Yang, "Discovered But Forgotten: The Maldives in Chinese History, C. 1100-1620" (Columbia UP, 2024)

10 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Chinese travelers first made their way to the Maldives in the Indian Ocean in the 14th century, looking for goods like coconuts, cowries, and ambergri...

John Alekna, "Seeking News, Making China: Information, Technology, and the Emergence of Mass Society" (Stanford UP, 2024)

09 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Contemporary developments in communications technologies have overturned key aspects of the global political system and transformed the media landscap...

Queering the Asian Diaspora

08 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Have you ever heard of the Chinese gay god, the Rabbit god? How did queer Chinese artists use this icon in reclaiming their own stories, while resisti...

Becky Yang Hsu, "The Extraordinary in the Mundane: Family and Forms of Community in China" (Columbia UP, 2024)

07 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do individuals address serious challenges in a context where organized gatherings are subject to strict government control? This new edited volume...

David Dean Barrett, "140 Days to Hiroshima: The Story of Japan's Last Chance to Avert Armageddon" (Diversion Books, 2020)

06 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

During the closing months of World War II, two military giants locked in a death embrace of cultural differences and diplomatic intransigence. While d...

Xiaolu Ma, "Transpatial Modernity: Chinese Cultural Encounters with Russia Via Japan (1880-1930)" (Harvard UP, 2024)

05 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Transpatial Modernity: Chinese Cultural Encounters with Russia Via Japan (1880-1930) (Harvard Asia Center, 2024) offers the first detailed account of...

Angus Lockyer, "Exhibitionist Japan: The Spectacle of Modern Development" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

04 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From the second half of the nineteenth century, Japan has been a particularly enthusiastic user of exhibitions. Large-scale international exhibitions,...

Kornel Chang, "A Fractured Liberation: Korea Under U.S. Occupation" (Harvard UP, 2025)

03 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Four decades of Japanese colonialism in Korea ended abruptly in August 1945. It took three weeks for U.S. troops to arrive, which started almost three...

Stacie A. Kent, "Coercive Commerce: Global Capital and Imperial Governance at the End of the Qing Empire" (Hong Kong UP, 2024)

02 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1842, the Qing Empire signed a watershed commercial treaty with Great Britain, beginning a century-long period in which geopolitical and global eco...

Tana Li, "A Maritime Vietnam: From Earliest Times to the Nineteenth Century" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

01 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When we think of Vietnamese history, we tend to think of plucky peasant guerillas fighting for their independence against French colonial rule or Amer...

Ian Rapley, "Green Star Japan: Esperanto and the International Language Question, 1880–1945" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)

01 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Ian Rapley’s Green Star Japan: Esperanto and the International Language Question, 1880-1945 (U Hawaii Press, 2024) is a sociopolitical history of ...

Bin Yang, "Discovered But Forgotten: The Maldives in Chinese History, C. 1100-1620" (Columbia UP, 2024)

28 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Discovered but Forgotten: The Maldives in Chinese History, c.1100-1620 (Columbia UP, 2024) examines China's maritime activities in the Indian Ocean,...

Robert J. Antony, "Outlaws of the Sea: Maritime Piracy in Modern China" (Hong Kong UP, 2024)

27 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Did you know Hong Kong used to be a hub for pirates? That factoid has long been part of the popular history for Hong Kong—and for Southern China bro...

Yingyao Wang, "Markets with Bureaucratic Characteristics: How Economic Bureaucrats Make Policies and Remake the Chinese State" (Columbia UP, 2024)

18 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

China’s breathtaking economic development has been driven by bureaucrats. Even as the country transitioned away from socialist planning toward a mar...

Zhiying Ma, "Between Families and Institutions: Mental Health and Biopolitical Paternalism in Contemporary China" (Duke UP, 2025)

15 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In contemporary China, people diagnosed with serious mental illnesses have long been placed under the guardianship of close relatives who decide on th...

Joseph A. Seeley, "Border of Water and Ice: The Yalu River and Japan's Empire in Korea and Manchuria" (Cornell UP, 2024)

14 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Icy, unpredictable, and treacherous, the dangers of the Yalu River were heightened in the twentieth century when it became the longest non-maritime bo...

Michael J. Hatch, "Networks of Touch: A Tactile History of Chinese Art, 1790-1840" (Penn State UP, 2023)

13 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In early nineteenth-century China, a remarkable transformation took place in the art world: artists among China's educated elites began to use touch t...

Hye Seung Chung, "Cinema Under National Reconstruction: State Censorship and South Korea's Cold War Film Culture" (Rutgers UP, 2024)

12 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Cinema under National Reconstruction (Rutgers UP, 2024) calls for a revisionist understanding of state film censorship during successive Cold War mi...

Andrew G. Walder, "Civil War in Guangxi: The Cultural Revolution on China's Southern Periphery" (Stanford UP, 2023)

09 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Guangxi, a region on China's southern border with Vietnam, has a large population of ethnic minorities and a history of rebellion and intergroup confl...

Social Death by Debt: China's Lending Boom Reshapes Lives

07 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

China's household debt has exploded from 11% of GDP in 2006 to over 62% today—a profound transformation in a traditionally savings-focused society. ...

Joseph Jonghyun Jeon, "Bong Joon Ho" (U Illinois Press, 2024)

04 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Successful cult films like The Host and Snowpiercer proved to be harbingers for Bong Joon Ho's enormous breakthrough success with Parasite. In Bong ...

Kishore Mahbubani, "Living the Asian Century: An Undiplomatic Memoir" (Public Affairs, 2024)

27 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Kishore Mahbubani, longtime Singaporean diplomat and academic, opens his new memoir with a provocative line: “Blame it on the damn British.” Kisho...

Catherine Lila Chou and Mark Harrison, "Revolutionary Taiwan: Making Nationhood in a Changing World Order" (Cambria Press, 2024)

23 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Popular English-language discourse about Taiwan often contains tropes like how “Taiwan is the real China” or how Taiwan “split with China in 194...

Nordic Style on Chinese Social Media: Misinformation, Consumerism, and Digital Discourse

22 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How does social media shape perceptions of global cultural trends? On Chinese platforms like WeChat, the concept of Nordic Style (北欧风) has been ...

Mario Cams and Elke Papelitzky, "Remapping the World in East Asia: Toward a Global History of the 'Ricci Maps'" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)

20 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When we think of the sixteenth-century arrival of European missionaries in East Asia, there is a tendency to imagine this meeting as a civilizational ...

Xian Wang, "Gendered Memories: An Imaginary Museum for Ding Ling and Chinese Female Revolutionary Martyrs" (U Michigan Press, 2025)

19 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Gendered Memories: An Imaginary Museum for Ding Ling and Chinese Female Revolutionary Martyrs (U Michigan Press, 2025) takes readers on a journey th...