"Red Star Over China" was a massive coup for the young American journalist Edgar Snow. The book is still a gripping read, but it is also an abject lesson in the pitfalls of access in China.
From 2007 to 2015, she covered breaking news from Beijing for the Guardian newspaper. Then she went home to the U.K., and wrote a book about the Cultural Revolution and its lingering effects, which are still felt in China today.
A discussion with scholar Victor Shih about his recent book ‘Coalitions of the Weak: Elite Politics in China from Mao’s Stratagem to the Rise of Xi.’
Maoist campaigns — and to a large extent, the Mao era itself — were as much visual as they were literary. Stefan Landsberger recognized this, and collected a large stash of Chinese propaganda posters that would eventually become one of the most unique books in the China space.
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.
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 generation.
How have Chinese entrepreneurs been shaped by China’s past and the Maoist ideas that continue to shape the country’s present? Why does writing about China attract such vitriol even when the subject matter is business?
Frank Dikötter has made a career out of castigating the Chinese Communist Party and its leadership, starting from Mao Zedong. He remains unrelenting in his new book, "China After Mao," which covers the period of China's recovery and rise.
The sixth plenum, a top Communist Party leadership meeting that started in Beijing today, is expected to approve a resolution that codifies General Secretary Xi Jinping’s image as an indispensable figure in Chinese history and governance, and set the stage for his “third term” that would begin at the 2022 Party Congress.
Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek held nine private meetings in Chongqing, brokered by an American diplomat, following the conclusion of the Second World War. The two were civil to one another, even as each likely knew that a resumption of fighting was inevitable.