With the ushering in of the year of the Ox, we said goodbye to the gengzinian, year of the metal rat. The gengzinian, which occurs once every 60 years according to the sexagenary lunar cycle of the Chinese calendar, has been associated with times of great suffering: in 1900, the violence of the Boxer uprising; in 1960, the famine of Mao’s Great Leap Forward; in 2020, it brought plague. With the novel coronavirus first spreading outside Wuhan during last Chinese spring festival, we are not sad to see the back of this year, and hope that the ox brings a steadier step as individuals, societies and economies recover. A fresh crop of books has also arrived, to make sense of past years and prognosticate ones to come. Our top pick is, unusually, a collection of short stories that offers insight into the interplay of Chinese politics and society (see a Q&A with the author here). The shortlist includes arguments about global pushback to China’s rise; the human price of some made-in-C