Few in China have been as closely watched as the residents of Beijing were last week. Everywhere you went, your movements were tracked by Covid apps and code-scanning. Cameras on every corner, in every nook, blinked knowingly. The security system was on high alert, with every resident registered and accounted for. While this ‘new normal’ was partly in place to enforce the zero-Covid policy, it was also to ensure social control and stability during the Party Congress, where Xi Jinping was anointed for another five — likely ten — years at the helm of the nation. To understand this tightly controlled reality, topping our recommendations this month is a reported book on the surveillance state China has become. A close second is a wider lens take on the state of China — and how it has overreached in its ambition — along with an exposé of Beijing’s spy operations abroad, and three history books that put the changes of the present in perspective of the past. The O