China Politics

A provocative case for why a better world is only possible with American power by Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid. From acclaimed author Shadi Hamid comes an urgent and deeply personal argument for why American dominance, despite its many flaws, remains the world’s best hope. Hamid...

An astonishing look inside the gilded gates of Mar-a-Lago, the palatial resort where President Trump conducts government business with little regard for ethics, security, or even the law. Donald Trump's opulent Palm Beach club Mar-a-Lago has thrummed with scandal since the earliest days of his...

Ancient China collides with newfangled America in this epic tale of opium smugglers, sea pirates, and dueling clipper ships. Brilliantly illuminating one of the least-understood areas of American history, best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin now traces our fraught relationship with China back to its roots: the unforgiving nineteenth-century seas that separated a brash, rising naval power from a battered ancient empire. It is a prescient fable for our time, one that surprisingly continues to shed light on our modern relationship with China.

Communist China is ambitious. It wants to replace the United States as the world’s leading superpower. And it is well on its way. It is dominant in the world economy. It is a master at intellectual property theft. It shows strategic genius at cornering essential markets. It has been staggeringly successful in buying influence among American elites. And its military buildup is astonishing. So far, China has been waging a cold war on the United States and its Asian allies. But, emboldened by American weakness and decline, that cold war is about to turn hot.

The world’s two great economic powers are on opposite trajectories. In the United States, decades of neoliberal policies produced a small class of rich elites and gutted the middle class. In China, the same global forces have created a massive new upper class. The result is the greatest reshuffling of global incomes since the Industrial Revolution—a dramatic shakeup of each country’s political order. As the two powers retreat from one another, the implications for their futures, and for the world economy, are uncertain.

Landing in Vancouver on a flight from Hong Kong on December 2018, Chinese telecom executive Meng Wanzhou was arrested by Canadian authorities with an American extradition warrant. The US Department of Justice accused Meng of fraud and bypassing sanctions against Iran. Nine days later, in an act...

The United States' approach to China since the Communist regime in Beijing that began the period of reform and opening in the 1980s was based on a promise that trade and engagement with China would result in a peaceful, democratic state. Forty years later, the hope of producing a benign People's Republic of China utterly failed. The Communist Party of China deceived the West into believing that its system and the Party-ruled People's Liberation Army were peaceful and posed no threat.

Chang believes it is time to take a page from Ronald Reagan’s playbook and work to bring down the enemy: the Communist Party. The Communist Party often talks about “win-win” solutions, but as its actions make clear, it believes there can be only one survivor, either the People’s Republic of China or the United States of America. China has a plan to destroy America. Does America have a plan to defend itself?

Colonel Matt Pontowski, grandson of a former US president, attempts to boost the morale of his pilots who know their killer A-10 Warthog aircraft are due to be phased out. When trouble erupts in Hong Kong and southern China, his wing volunteers for a dangerous undercover mission against the world's most feared and volatile superpower. A massacre is looming and millions of innocent people are at risk. Pontowski and his volunteers are now reluctant to withdraw, despite orders, as they initiate their own plans to overthrow the brutal regime that has been gaining power.

Author Jon Pelson explains how America invented cellular technology, taught China how to make the gear, and then handed them the market. Pelson shares never-before-told stories from the executives and scientists who built the industry and describes how China undercut and destroyed competing equipment makers, freeing themselves to export their nation’s network gear - and their surveillance state. He also reveals China’s successful program to purchase the support of the world’s leading political, business, and military figures in their effort to control rival nations’ networks.

In The People's Republic of Amnesia, NPR correspondent Louisa Lim charts how the events of June 4 changed China, and how China changed the events of June 4 by rewriting its own history. Lim reveals new details about those fateful days, including how one of the country's most senior politicians lost a family member to an army bullet, as well as the inside story of the young soldiers sent to clear Tiananmen Square.

Over the past four decades, China's remarkable transformation has garnered admiration but also sparked concern. George Magnus draws on his intimate knowledge of this dynamic nation to uncover the origins of its ascent and show why the economic traps it faces at home and the political challenges it faces abroad pose a serious threat to its continued rise.

A century ago, outsiders saw China as a place where nothing ever changes. Today, the country has become one of the most dynamic regions on earth. In Oracle Bones, Peter Hessler explores the human side of China's transformation, viewing modern-day China and its growing links to the Western world through the lives of a handful of ordinary people.

History didn't end. Democracy didn't triumph. America’s leading role in the world is no longer assured. Instead, authoritarian rule is on the rise, and the global order established after 1945 is under attack. This is the phenomenon Katie Stallard tackles in Dancing on Bones as she examines how the leaders of China, Russia, and North Korea manipulate the past to serve the present and secure the future of authoritarian rule.

Using granular data and authoritative Chinese sources, Oriana Skylar Mastro demonstrates that China was able to climb to great power status through a careful mix of strategic emulation, exploitation, and entrepreneurship on the international stage. This “upstart approach”—determined by where and how China chose to compete—allowed China to rise economically, politically, and militarily, without triggering a catastrophic international backlash that would stem its rise.

A sweeping case that, in a world of trade disputes, higher tariffs, and broader geopolitical uncertainty, a new age of economic localization will put an end to the last half century of globalization—by one of the preeminent economic journalists writing today “This invaluable book is as bold...

A “gripping and scrupulously reported” (The Washington Post) investigation into the battle over identity in China, chronicling the state oppression of those who fail to conform to Xi Jinping’s definition of who is “Chinese,” from an award-winning NPR correspondent. “Emily Feng’s...

Susan L. Shirk, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State responsible for China, knows many of today's Chinese rulers personally and has studied them for three decades. She offers invaluable insight into how they think—and what they fear. In this revealing book, you will see the world through the eyes of men like President Hu Jintao and former President Jiang Zemin. We discover a fragile communist regime desperate to survive in a society turned upside down by miraculous economic growth and a stunning new openness to the greater world.

Chinese society has been shaped by the interplay of the EAST—exams, autocracy, stability, and technology—from ancient times through the present. Beginning with the Sui dynasty's introduction of the civil service exam, known as Keju, in 587 CE—and continuing through the personnel management system used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—Chinese autocracies have developed exceptional tools for homogenizing ideas, norms, and practices. But this uniformity came with a huge downside: stifled creativity.

While there are many books that explore China’s history, public knowledge is still lacking. Many people can name more than one Roman Emperor, but how many can name a Chinese Emperor?