What is the price of development? On top of the necessary capital, there has also been a social and a cultural cost to China’s economic boom — one that has left marginalized communities and ethnicities behind and sullied China’s international reputation. Nowhere has this been more obvious in recent years than in Xinjiang, where hundreds of thousands of ethnic Uighurs have been interred in re-education camps to eradicate their culture. But it is also happening in Tibet, where this month’s top pick brings much-needed reporting and visibility to an opaque corner of the nation. Altogether, as this month’s books show, the human costs of China’s economic development has forced a moral calculation for anyone doing business there. From the standardization of China’s language, which is at the expense of local voices, to the forced labor in Xinjiang, which reportedly produces some of our goods, the below selection of books, almost all of which were published in 2020, includes es