logo for print

Alec Ash

China Books Review Editor

Alec Ash is editor of China Books Review, a partnership between The Wire China and the Asia Society Center on U.S.-China Relations. He is the author of Wish Lanterns (Picador, 2016), literary nonfiction about the lives of young Chinese people which was a BBC Book of the Week, and The Mountains Are High (Scribe,…

Read More

Alec Ash is editor of China Books Review, a partnership between The Wire China and the Asia Society Center on U.S.-China Relations. He is the author of Wish Lanterns (Picador, 2016), literary nonfiction about the lives of young Chinese people which was a BBC Book of the Week, and The Mountains Are High (Scribe, 2024) about city escapees moving to rural southwest China. He has written for The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic and elsewhere, and was a stringer for The Economist and The Sunday Times. He was editor of the China Channel at the Los Angeles Review of Books, contributing author to the book of reportage Chinese Characters, and co-editor of the anthology While We’re Here. He lived in China from 2008-2022, and is currently based in New York.

Read Less

Articles

Getting China Right

Getting China Right

The best new books on how to manage the U.S.-China competition, as well as titles on Chinese literature and even cooking.
China’s New Nationalism

China’s New Nationalism

Confident, vocal, and performative, China’s patriotic fervor has grown up a lot over the past decade. And with self-interest coexisting with sentiment, it will be dismissed or underestimated at our peril.