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A deeply personal and shocking look at how China is coming to terms with its conflicted past as it emerges into a modern, cutting-edge superpower.

As the grandson of the one and only Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan had big shoes to fill. The Mongol Empire already spanned several countries and territories, but this didn’t satisfy Kublai. During his reign, he conquered southern China, Korea, and several other parts of southeast Asia, effectively doubling his empire. By the time of his death, people all over Asia and Europe knew his name. This book tells the life story of this infamous emperor of both Mongol and China who ruled from the legendary summer palace Xanadu.

Hablar del increíble desarrollo tecnológico y económico de la China moderna se ha convertido en un tópico en el mundo actual. Sin embargo, el crecimiento exponencial de la China moderna tiene raíces históricas muy fuertes que se remontan a miles y miles de años.

For most of its history, the People’s Republic of China limited public discussion of the war against Japan. It was an experience of victimization - and one that saw Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek fighting for the same goals. But now, as China grows more powerful, the meaning of the war is changing. Rana Mitter argues that China’s reassessment of the World War II years is central to its newfound confidence abroad and to mounting nationalism at home.

Conflicts over specific rules lie at the heart of the disputes, which are about much more than sovereignty over islands and rocks in the South and East China Seas. Instead, the main contests concern the strategic maritime space associated with those islands. To consolidate control over this vital maritime space, China's leaders have begun to implement "China's law of the sea": building domestic legal institutions, bureaucratic organizations, and a naval and maritime law enforcement apparatus to establish China's preferred maritime rules on the water and in the diplomatic arena.

Whether you approve or disapprove, globalization is an inescapable feature of the modern world. Trade between nations and continents is now commonplace, and this exchange of goods is inevitably accompanied by the exchange of ideas and cultures. This is not, as you might expect, a new phenomenon. A series of trade routes which were first established almost 2,000 years ago provided one of the first examples of intercontinental trade.

Why did a remote police station, built to combat pirates, find itself at the centre of a murder-suicide after a constable went on the rampage? How did Chinese gangsters avoid conviction after serving a deadly dinner to Frenchtown’s elite? And why is the Foreign Office still withholding a key document to solving a murder that took place in the Gobi desert in 1935? By delving deep into 12 of China’s most fascinating murder cases, Murders of Old China delivers a fast-paced journey through China’s early 20th-century history - including its criminal underbelly.

On October 25, 1947, the United States government helped the Chinese Nationalist Party, Kuomingtang (KMT) President Chiang Kai-Shek flee the overwhelming communist forces. President Chiang established the new democratic government known as the Republic of China on an island later to be known as Taiwan, previously a major trading center called the “the beautiful isle” or Formosa. This audiobook will not only account for the transformation of Taiwan in the eyes of the colonizers but understand the detrimental impact that the reshaping caused.

For centuries China's code of behavior was incomprehensible to Westerners, whom the Chinese viewed as irredeemable barbarians. Presenting historical events with an immediacy that makes you feel as if you were there, Hahn takes listeners through isolationist China's difficult and often costly adaptations to the invasions of Western "foreign devils".

Surviving the Dragon is the remarkable life story of Arjia Rinpoche, who was ordained as a reincarnate lama at the age of two and fled Tibet 46 years later. In his gripping memoir, Rinpoche relates the story of having been abandoned in his monastery as a young boy after witnessing the torture and arrest of his monastery family. In the years to come, Rinpoche survived under harsh Chinese rule, as he was forced into hard labor and endured continual public humiliation as part of Mao’s Communist "reeducation".

Reporting on China has long been one of the most challenging and crucial of journalistic assignments. Nonetheless, American media coverage of China has profoundly influenced U.S. government policy and shaped public opinion not only domestically but also, given the clout and reach of U.S. news organizations, around the world. This book tells the story of how American journalists have covered China—from the civil war of the 1940s through the COVID-19 pandemic—in their own words.

The history-making development of the Chinese economy has entered a new phase: China is moving aggressively from a strategy of imitation to one of innovation. Driven both by domestic needs and by global ambition, China is establishing itself at the forefront of technological innovation. Western businesses need to prepare for a tidal wave of innovation from China that is about to hit Western markets, and Chinese businesses need to understand the critical importance of innovation in their future.

George Macartney's disastrous 1793 mission to China plays a central role in the prevailing narrative of modern Sino-European relations. Summarily dismissed by the Qing court, Macartney failed in nearly all of his objectives, perhaps setting the stage for the Opium Wars of the 19th century and the mistrust that still marks the relationship today. The Last Embassy tells the story of the Dutch mission of 1795, bringing to light a dramatic but little-known episode that transforms our understanding of the history of China and the West.

In 1943, Austrian adventurer Heinrich Harrer escaped from a British internment camp in India and traveled through the rugged Himalayas seeking refuge from the war. He ended up in the Forbidden City of Lhasa in Tibet, with no money or permission to be in the country. His intelligence and his European ways intrigued the curious young Dalai Lama, and Harrer became his tutor and trusted confidant.

In a country where patriarchal favoritism and the primacy of sons survived multiple revolutions and an ideological earthquake, this epic novel is first and foremost about women, with the female body serving as the book’s central metaphor. The protagonist, Mother, is born in 1900 and married at seventeen into the Shangguan family. She has nine children, only one of whom is a boy—the narrator of the book. A spoiled and ineffectual child, he stands in stark contrast to his eight strong and forceful female siblings.

Exploring key episodes in that nation's long political, military, and cultural history, Clissold outlines five Chinese Rules, which anyone can deploy in on-the-ground situations with modern Chinese counterparts. These Chinese rules will enable foreigners not only to cooperate with China but also to compete with it on its own terms.

His grandfather was the bloodthirsty Mongol leader Genghis Khan, his mother a Christian princess. Groomed from childhood for a position of authority, Khubilai snatched the position of Great Khan, becoming the overlord of a Mongol federation that stretched from the Balkans to the Korean coast. His reign began the glorious Yuan dynasty that ruled over China for only 90 years but had a profound impact on Asian history, from international trade to cultural revolution.

Deemed scandalous at the time of its publication in 1944, Emily Hahn's now classic memoir of her years in China remains remarkable for her insights into a tumultuous period and her frankness about her personal exploits. A proud feminist and fearless traveler, she set out for China in 1935 and stayed through the early years of the Second Sino-Japanese War, wandering, carousing, living, loving - and writing. Many of the pieces in China to Me were first published as the work of a roving reporter in the New Yorker. All are shot through with riveting and humanizing detail.

Growing up in rural China during Mao's Cultural Revolution, Da Chen was part Horatio Alger, part Holden Caulfeld, befriending both a gang of young thugs, as well as an elegant, older Chinese woman who teaches him English - and opens the door to a new life. Chen's remarkable story of triumph is filled with the universal qualities that distinguish the very best memoirs as it masterfully recounts the concerns of childhood that transcend both time and place.

Historian and geopolitical expert Michael Auslin argues that far from being a cohesive powerhouse, Asia is a fractured region threatened by stagnation and instability. Here he provides a comprehensive account of the economic, military, political, and demographic risks that bedevil half of our world, arguing that Asia, working with the United States, has a unique opportunity to avert catastrophe - but only if it acts boldly.