Plenums of the Communist Party’s Central Committee are normally dull affairs that slip by largely unnoticed. Yet the sixth plenum of this National Congress, held in Beijing last month, was notable for the historical resolution it passed, only the third in the Party’s history. The document cemented Xi Jinping’s position as Party ‘core’, and Xi Thought as “the essence of the Chinese culture and China’s spirit.” As such, China’s leader has prematurely closed the history books, placing the Xi era in the pantheon alongside those of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.
A ream of recent books shed new light on the history that is being made (and rewritten) apace in China. Topping our list is Ai Weiwei’s long-awaited memoir, previously excerpted by The Wire, followed by books on Hong Kong’s fight, China’s 1970s, and views of the nation’s present and past all the way through to sci-fi visions of its future.
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The One to Read
1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: A Memoir by Ai Weiwei
“Don’t count on the earth to preserve memory,” reads the epigraph of Ai Weiwei’s memoirs, a line from one of his father’s poems (from where the title also derives). In a China where history is being retold as Party hagiography, Ai’s efforts to chronicle the past are invaluable. The story begins with his birth in 1957, when his father Ai Qing (then 47), a poet and early revolutionary who met Mao in Yan’an, was targeted in the Anti-Rightist Campaign. Later, during the Cultural Revolution, he was sent to “reform by labour,” accompanied by his young son. Reaching the 1980s, the second half of the book shifts focus to Ai Weiwei’s own creative development, at first in New York and then in Beijing, including his detention for 81 days in 2011 for ruffling the feathers of the powers-that-be. Scintillating and revealing, this is a swift read that shows how remembrance of the past can repudiate a nation’s collective amnesia.
November 2, 2021 | Crown. $26. | Buy.
The Shortlist
Freedom: How We Lose It and How We Fight Back by Nathan Law
What is freedom, and who gets to define or set laws around it? This is the question that has plagued Nathan Law since he first started calling for more of it in Hong Kong. In 2016, the 23-year-old democracy activist was elected to Hong Kong’s legislative council. By the next summer, he had been booted out for protesting during his oath-taking ceremony, and later imprisoned. Last year, he moved to London, fleeing the reach of the National Security law and an arrest warrant in his name. Law’s book is a reflection on the nature of freedom and how to preserve it, interwoven with his personal story and laced with apt quotes from Václav Havel: “We never decided to become dissidents.”
December 7, 2021 | The Experiment. $16. | Buy.
The Seventies: Recollecting a Forgotten Time in China by Theodore Huters
With all of the ink spilt on China’s chaotic 60s, transformative 80s and booming 90s, the 70s often get lost in the cracks — seen as an interregnum between Mao and Deng’s reigns. Yet, as argued in this collection of translated essays by intellectuals and artists who lived through it, the 70s were the formative years of a ‘new’ China as it cautiously cast off the Maoist path and allowed new possibilities, such as the critical Beijing Spring and Democracy Wall movement of 1978. Many of the writers were ‘educated youth’ sent down to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, and include familiar names such as Bei Dao and Yan Lianke. A valuable missing link in the China story.
December 6, 2021 | The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press. $50. | Buy.
The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics by Mae Ngai
As a fresh incarnation of the “Chinese question” fills the corridors of Washington and the websites of politicians up for re-election, it would behoove us to remember the last time the question was posed: during the gold rushes of the latter 19th century, when the migration of Chinese labor to America’s west coast (and Australia and South Africa) fueled a ‘Yellow Peril’ fear that led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Historian Ngai narrates the stories of these workers, and argues that the sentiment against them was part of a broader global trend as the world economy began to globalize — a parallel to today’s situation that is elucidatory for its differences as much as its resonances.
August 24, 2021 | W. W. Norton & Company. $25. | Buy.
Sinopticon: A Celebration of Chinese Science Fiction ed. Xueting Christine Ni
Your books editor has always held a solar-powered candle for Chinese science fiction, which illuminates the issues of contemporary China through a prism of its imagined future. This new collection of 13 stories, in fluid translation by Ni, further illustrates the value of the genre. Stories such as ‘The Great Migration’ by Ma Boyong are clear satire (in this case of China’s annual new year migration, transposed between Mars and Earth), with others taking their cue from Chinese history or folklore. The rest are more elliptical, or tackle universal topics such AI and social media. Most of the stories are relatively recent, with a few ‘oldies’ from the 90s thrown in, and would be well paired with Ken Liu’s collections Invisible Planets and Broken Stars.
November 9, 2021 | Solaris. $12. | Buy.
AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan
Some sci-fi premises are already reality, and China has made it clear that it wishes to lead the way. This is particularly the case for AI, whose revolutionary potential promises huge rewards for any nation that dominates the field. In this book, Kai-Fu Lee, former president of Google China (and author of AI Superpowers, on U.S.-Sino AI competition) teams up with science-fiction author Chen Qiufan to explore those possibilities. Ten short stories by Chen grapple with the effects of AI — from job displacement to autonomous vehicles, dating algorithms to ‘deep learning.’ Each story is paired with analysis and notes from Lee, putting the fiction in real context, with a wary eye to attendant risks.
September 14, 2021 | Currency. $24. | Buy.
In Case You Missed It
China in One Village: The Story of One Town and the Changing World by Liang Hong, trans. Emily Goedde
Part family memoir, part social critique, literary scholar Liang Hong’s indictment of China’s neglected countryside (through the prism of her own ancestral village) became a bestseller in China in 2010. Now an English translation, it brings fresh attention to an old issue: how the nation’s breakneck shift to modernity has left its villages polluted, deforested, devoid of opportunity, and depopulated of working-age adults who have all left for the cities, including the author. Hong places this in context of historic tragedies and atrocities that befell the countryside in the Mao years, and allows local officials to say their piece alongside farmers. A treasure trove of insight and empathy; one wonders if it would be possible for such a work to be published in the Xi era.
June 22, 2021 | Verso. $20. | 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
