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-China goods; and personal, international and corporate narratives that speak to a larger story of China’s history and its future in the Xi era.
The One to Read
Land of Big Numbers by Te-Ping Chen
It is refreshing to see a talented observer of China — one with years of reporting experience in the country as a foreign correspondent — express her voice through fiction, rather than the more standard path of journalistic nonfiction. The familiar model of journalists’ books on China (often stitched together from past articles) elucidate but rarely surprise. Instead, Te-Ping Chen’s versatile virtuosity opens a window onto China’s raveled vistas, in the structured, storied way that sometimes only fiction can provide. Her short stories veer between the surreal and the satirical. Two twins take diverging life paths; a stock market speculator tries to win social value; a rural eccentric invents whimsical machinery; a government hotline worker negotiates the personal and the political. Readers are given hints of a deeper knowledge of how China works (the push-and-pull between individual aspiration and the will of the Party is a recurring theme) and an enjoyable swift read in the same breath.
Feb. 2, 2021 | Mariner Books. $15.99. | Buy
The Shortlist
How China Loses: The Pushback against Chinese Global Ambitions by Luke Patey
It has become cliché to talk about China’s rise or the Chinese century, but there is nothing inevitable about either. Academic Luke Patey methodically unpacks each aspect where China’s position is weaker than it may seem — military, economy and tech — and is meeting resistance as it expands. At the same time, he explains how Beijing’s aggressive influence operations abroad, economic agenda and bullish diplomacy may be backfiring, resulting in mistrust from its neighbors and international backlash. Accessible and well argued, based on extensive travel and interviews, this is one for the China bears out there.
Jan. 4, 2021 | Oxford University Press. $29.95. | Buy
Monkey King: Journey to the West by Wu Ch’eng-en, trans. Julia Lovell
Just as a student of the Anglophone West would do well to read Shakespeare, there is scant understanding of China’s society and culture without a passing knowledge of its classic texts. Journey to the West, as the best known among the ‘Four Great Classics’ of Chinese literature, is a good place to start — and this single-volume new translation is a rollicking read worthy of your bedside table. Julia Lovell, who previously gave us a Penguin translation of Lu Xun, handles the text with a deft touch, bringing her typical flair and fluidity while still giving a feel for the whimsical literariness of the original. The right kind of monkey business.
Feb. 9, 2021 | Penguin Classics. $30. | Buy
Made in China by Amelia Pang
It’s a story that could have come from a novel: an American consumer opens a cheap purchase, only to find an SOS letter from a Chinese prisoner forced to make the goods in question. Amelia Pang traces the backstory of one such political prisoner in question, Sun Yi, in this admirable work of investigative journalism that lifts the lid on the labor camps that produce many of our ‘Made in China’ goods. Presented with an eye for cinematic and gripping narrative, Pang also exhorts us to think twice about where our cheap products come from — a newly relevant concern these days.
Feb. 2, 2021 | Algonquin Books. $27.95. | Buy
Empire and Righteous Nation: 600 Years of China-Korea Relations by Odd Arne Westad
Korea, once a colony of Japan in the early 20th century, has had a long and storied relationship with China over the centuries. The first Korean script used Chinese characters; Confucianism was a pillar of the burgeoning Korean state; and in the Ming dynasty, Korea became a vassal state of China, in the hopes of protection against the Mongols. In this valuable work, a historian tells the full story of political and cultural relations between China and Korea over the last 600 years — all the way up to the divisive Korean war, and contemporary diplomatic tensions that threaten the Korean peninsula’s security in East Asia once more.
Jan. 12, 2021 | Belknap Press. $29.95. | Buy
One in a Billion: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey through Modern-Day China by Nancy Pine
There are many top-down histories of 20th century China, but often the most powerful accounts are personal. In this attempt, Pine tells the wider story of China through the life of one of its ordinary citizens: An Wei, a farmer’s son born in 1942 in the central rural plains, who suffered through hunger in the Great Leap Forward, ‘reeducation’ in the Cultural Revolution, and tried to find his place in the new China of Deng’s reforms, even founding a democratic grassroots organization in his village along the way. Buffeted by the changing winds of China’s politics, his life story is told patiently and with humanity.
Dec. 6, 2020 | Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. $32. | Buy
The Huawei Model: The Rise of China’s Technology Giant by Yun Wen
Chinese tech giant Huawei was not a brand name familiar to many, if any, outside of China before it became embroiled in Donald Trump’s trade war with China in 2019, eventually getting blacklisted. Since then, with the removal of Huawei 5G technology in the U.S. and Europe, questions of how the Chinese state exerts influence over its information and communications technology firms have become all-important for any businesses or governments concerned. In this thorough, academically-detailed book, Yun Wen lays out how the case model of Huawei has wider implications for the future of China’s digital economy and corporate globalization.
Nov. 30, 2020 | University of Illinois Press. $25. | Buy
In Case You Missed It
The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State by Elizabeth C. Economy
If you find categorization helpful, this book is a must. (See a Q&A with Elizabeth Economy here.) The history of the People’s Republic of China can be divided into three distinct periods. The first was the Mao era, from 1949 to 1978 or so; then came Deng Xiaoping’s reform years, also lasting 30 years. Now, we are in the third part of the story: the Xi era, from 2008 (or 2013, when he came into power). Elizabeth Economy’s scholarly but accessible book runs with this premise, examining how the Party’s role has expanded under Xi Jinping, controlling every aspect of the nation as it extends its footprint abroad. With Xi likely to stay in power after 2022, this book will continue to be relevant for decades to come.
May 3, 2018 | Oxford University Press. $19.95. | Buy
Alec Ash is the books editor for The Wire. He is the author of Wish Lanterns. His work has also appeared in The Economist, BBC, SupChina, and Foreign Policy. @alecash
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