What a John le Carré novel can teach about China
John Le Carré’s Asia-set magnum opus is his 1977 novel "The Honourable Schoolboy." The book is one of le Carré’s most personal, offering us a number of insights into Asia and China that are key to...
View ArticleBeijing’s favorite Bolshevik
In this excerpt from Destination Peking, abridged and lightly edited for The China Project, author Paul French introduces us to Lev Karakhan, a Bolshevik whose work as the Soviet Union’s first...
View ArticleAnnouncing Paul French’s Ultimate China Bookshelf
The China Project is delighted to announce a new regular feature by Paul French: The Ultimate China Bookshelf.
View ArticleCarl Crow’s ‘400 Million Customers,’ forgotten for decades, still imparts...
American journalist Carl Crow was a man genuinely fascinated by China and the Chinese people. He felt strongly that a world well-informed about China was a safer and more mutually profitable planet.
View Article‘The China Dream’ and the hard truths of doing business in China
Book No. 2 on the Ultimate China Bookshelf is Joe Studwell's "The China Dream: The Quest for the Last Great Untapped Market on Earth."
View ArticleOn Jiang Zemin and inter-Party struggle, Willy Wo-Lap Lam’s book remains a...
‘The Era of Jiang Zemin’ is dense with detail, built up from a wide range of interviews with Chinese executives, officials, academics, diplomats, and businesspeople. In that sense, the book itself was...
View ArticleTelling the story of ordinary Chinese before it was cool: Graham Peck’s ‘Two...
Graham Peck identified and sympathized with the suffering of the Chinese people under a corrupt Nationalist government. His observations ran counter to popular China scholarship at the time, but then...
View Article‘A Dictionary of Maqiao’ dissects the Cultural Revolution with humor and wit
Han Shaogong’s novel is a collection of vignettes written by a sent-down youth during the Cultural Revolution. As Kirkus Reviews says, "The result is a subtle and smashingly effective critique of the...
View Article‘Will the Boat Sink the Water?’ investigated rural China like no one had before
Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao exposed much corruption and misbehavior through their investigations of rural villages — and saw their book banned despite its enormous influence on commoners and Party...
View ArticleInspector Chen defined 1990s Shanghai
A cop caught between Shanghai's capitalistic transition and traditional values: Qiu Xiaolong’s "Death of a Red Heroine" marked the first in a series of crime novels that defined a city and an era.
View ArticleThe Opium Wars through the lens of international law
To understand China’s “outrage” and subsequent negotiating stances in trade disputes, we all need to understand the original — and nastiest — trade dispute of them all: the Opium Wars.
View Article‘Midnight’: A gritty, unflinching portrait of pre-war Shanghai
Mao Dun's classic about 1930s Shanghai depicts a city built on violence and corruption, with great wealth sitting alongside low wages, awful conditions, and exploitation. This is Shanghai as a powder...
View ArticleShanghai through the eyes of one of Japan’s best writers
Japanese critics regarded Riichi Yokomitsu as the best of his generation. His novel "Shanghai," published in 1928, depicts a melting pot where cultures mixed and ideas were exchanged — including, yes,...
View Article‘Phantom Shanghai’ documents a city in the throes of change
Greg Girard documents, via photography, the street-by-street, lilong-by-lilong, shikumen-by-shikumen loss of Old Shanghai.
View Article‘China’s Kerouac’ documented the country’s cool underclass
Wang Shuo wrote "hooligan literature," a label meant as a compliment among international critics. The Beijing he depicted was one of vernacular, rebellion, and play, with antiheroes full of swagger and...
View Article‘China Shakes the World’ answered critical questions during an uncertain time
James Kynge wrote about China’s economic rise in the early-2000s and predicted its impact on the world. What was not necessarily apparent to readers back then was, in large part, made so by this book.
View ArticleJack Belden’s coverage of the Chinese Civil War offers enduring lessons in...
While Jack Belden wasn't the only Western journalist to write about the rise of Mao, he was the rare correspondent on the frontlines as the "agrarian revolution" unfolded, and his observations,...
View ArticleJonathan Spence’s book on Mao remains the standard
Many words have been written about Chairman Mao, but the one we're choosing for the Ultimate China Bookshelf is a short biography, at just 188 pages, by none other than the premier Sinologist of his...
View ArticleMao Zedong’s Little Red Book, the world’s second-most published book
The Little Red Book was everywhere during the Cultural Revolution, waved enthusiastically more than it was read closely, perhaps, but still a symbol of utmost importance.
View ArticleFrom influential to antiquated: Liu Shaoqi’s ‘How to Be a Good Communist’
"The question I shall discuss is how members of the Communist Party should cultivate and temper themselves," Liu Shaoqi wrote in the early days of the Chinese Communist Party. Is anyone still...
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