Showing titles in China

‘Impressive … Fascinating’ Sunday Times ‘An authoritative history’ Financial Times ‘Gripping and richly researched’ Rana Mitter A superb new history of the rise of China and the fall of Hong Kong to authoritarian rule. The rise of China and the fall of Hong Kong to authoritarian...

Brought to you by Penguin. An urgent, indispensable guide to why Taiwan matters – for China, the West and everyone’s future When the bloody Chinese Civil War concluded in 1949, two Chinas were born. Mao’s Communists won and took China’s mainland; Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists fled to...

In his retelling of a Chinese history stretching back 5,000 years, author and China-expert Jonathan Clements focuses on the human stories which led to the powerful transformations in Chinese society - from the unification of China under its first emperor, Qinshi Huangdi, to the Mongol invasion under Genghis Khan and the consolidation of Communist rule under Mao Zedong. Clements even brings listeners through to the present day, outlining China's economic renaissance under Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping.

Some of the cruelest deeds of Japan's war in Asia did not occur on the battlefield, but in quiet, antiseptic medical wards in obscure parts of China. Far from front lines and prying eyes, Japanese doctors and their assistants subjected human guinea pigs to gruesome medical experiments in the name of science and Japan's wartime chemical and biological warfare research. Author Hal Gold draws upon a wealth of sources to construct a portrait of the Imperial Japanese Army's most notorious medical unit, giving an overview of its history and detailing its most shocking activities.

Based on his observations over three decades, Henry Kamm, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times Southeast Asia correspondent, unravels the complexities of Cambodia. Kamm's invaluable document - a factual and personal account of its troubled history - gives the Western listener the first clear understanding of this magic land's past and present.

LONGLISTED FOR THE CUNDHILL HISTORY PRIZE 'An acerbic, compelling and always accessible account of how opium corrupted the world' TLS 'The writing is sublime, the research thorough, the eye for story superb' Sunday Telegraph 'A history of the opium poppy, which probes how the drug trade has...

The relationship between Britain and China has shaped the modern world. Chinese art, philosophy, and science have had a profound effect upon British culture, while the long history of British exploitation is still bitterly remembered in China today. But how has their interaction changed over time? From the early days of the East India Company through the violence of the Opium Wars to present-day disputes over Hong Kong, Kerry Brown charts this turbulent and intriguing relationship in full.

The Second World Wars examines how combat unfolded in the air, at sea, and on land to show how distinct conflicts among disparate combatants coalesced into one interconnected global war. Drawing on 3,000 years of military history, Victor Davis Hanson argues that despite its novel industrial barbarity, neither the war's origins nor its geography were unusual. Nor was its ultimate outcome surprising. The Axis powers were well prepared to win limited border conflicts, but once they blundered into global war, they had no hope of victory.  

More than fifty years on, the Cultural Revolution's scar runs through the heart of Chinese society, and through the souls of its citizens. Stationed in Beijing for the Guardian, Tania Branigan came to realise that this brutal and turbulent decade continues to propel and shape China to this day. Yet official suppression and personal trauma have conspired in national amnesia: it exists, for the most part, as an absence.

The Shaolin Monastery charts for the first time in any language the history of the Shaolin Temple and the evolution of its world-renowned martial arts. In this meticulously researched and eminently readable study Meir Shahar considers the economic political and religious factors that led Shaolin monks to disregard the Buddhist prohibition against violence and instead create fighting techniques that by the 21st century have spread throughout the world.

In his widely anticipated memoir, Ai Weiwei - one of the world's most famous artists and activists - tells a century-long epic tale of China through the story of his own extraordinary life and the legacy of his father, Ai Qing, the nation's most celebrated poet. Hailed as 'the most important artist working today' by the Financial Times and as 'an eloquent and unsilenceable voice of freedom' by the New York Times, Ai Weiwei has written a sweeping memoir that presents a remarkable history of China over the last 100 years while illuminating his artistic process. 

From one of China’s most acclaimed writers, his first work of nonfiction to appear in English: a unique, intimate look at the Chinese experience over the last several decades, told through personal stories and astute analysis that sharply illuminate the country’s meteoric economic and social transformation. Characterized by Yu Hua’s trademark wit, insight, and courage, China in Ten Words is a refreshingly candid vision of the “Chinese miracle” and all its consequences, from the singularly invaluable perspective of a writer living in China today.

Odd Arne Westad and Chen Jian chronicle how an impoverished and terrorized China experienced radical political changes in the long 1970s and how ordinary people broke free from the beliefs that had shaped their lives during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. These changes, and the unprecedented and sustained economic growth that followed, transformed China and the world.

The harrowing story of a woman who escaped famine and terror in North Korea, not once but twice. ‘A gripping, suspenseful and cathartic memoir that tells a story of pain and perseverance and makes the moral case for asylum.’ David Lammy MP North Korea is an open-air prison from which there...

For several decades Chinese ascendancy has been supported by an astonishingly broad and deep portfolio of soft power. The stories of their reach are breathtaking - Chinese-sponsored reporting in national newspapers and academia; the gagging of sports stars and huge Western brands; Hollywood self-censorship; and of course - communications firms. But these are just the most visible examples. Bethany Allen, an internationally recognized investigator into Chinese covert power, shows Western institutions have bowed to and even enabled Beijing's coercion.

A war between China and the US would be catastrophic, deadly, and destructive. Unfortunately, it is no longer unthinkable. The relationship between the US and China, the world’s two superpowers, is peculiarly volatile. It rests on a seismic fault—of cultural misunderstanding, historical...

Once described by Mao Zedong as a "needle inside a ball of cotton", Deng was the pragmatic yet disciplined driving force behind China's radical transformation in the late 20th century. He confronted the damage wrought by the Cultural Revolution, dissolved Mao's cult of personality, and loosened the policies that had stunted China's growth. Obsessed with modernization, Deng opened trade relations with the West, which lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. Yet he also answered to his authoritarian roots, most notably when he ordered the crackdown in 1989 at Tiananmen Square.

THE CHINESE "LORD OF THE RINGS" - NOW IN ENGLISH FOR THE FIRST TIME. THE SERIES EVERY CHINESE READER HAS BEEN ENJOYING FOR DECADES - 300 MILLION COPIES SOLD. China: 1200 A.D. The Song Empire has been invaded by its warlike Jurchen neighbours from the north. Half its territory and its historic...

Between 1958 and 1962, 45 million Chinese people were worked, starved or beaten to death. Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up with and overtake the West in less than fifteen years. It led to one of the greatest catastrophes the world has ever known. Dikotter's extraordinary research within Chinese archives brings together for the first time what happened in the corridors of power with the everyday experiences of ordinary people, giving voice to the dead and disenfranchised.

It has been a whirlwind few years for Li Yan and Margaret Campbell. Nowadays, both are busy juggling their huge professional workloads - Li as the newly promoted chief of Beijing's serious crime squad and Campbell as lecturer at the University of Public Security - with the day-to-day raising of their young son, Li Jon. When a desperate mother appeals to Campbell's own maternal instincts, Li agrees to look into the disappearance of a 17-year-old Beijing girl, Jiang Meilin.