Showing titles in Asia

In light of the intertwining logics of military competition and economic interdependence at play in US-China relations, Trading with the Enemy examines how the United States has balanced its potentially conflicting national security and economic interests in its relationship with the People's Republic of China (PRC). To do so, Hugo Meijer investigates a strategically sensitive yet under-explored facet of US-China relations: the making of American export control policy on military-related technology transfers to China since 1979.

More than twenty years after teaching English to China's first boom generation at a small college in Sichuan Province, Peter Hessler returned to teach the next generation. At the same time, Hessler's twin daughters became the only Westerners in a student body of about two thousand in their local primary school.

Written by the leading historian of modern Kashmir, this is a comprehensive portrayal of one of the most enigmatic politicians in modern South Asia, Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah, known as the Lion of Kashmir.

Rodrigo Duterte was elected President of the Philippines in 2016. In his first 18 months in office, 12,000 people were murdered on the streets, gunned down by police officers and vigilante citizens - all with his encouragement. Duterte is a serial womanizer and a self-confessed killer, who has called both Barack Obama and Pope Francis "sons of whores." He is on record as saying he does not "give a shit" about human rights. Yet he is beloved of the 16.6 million Filipinos who voted for him, seen as vulgar but honest, a breath of fresh air, and an iconoclastic, anti-imperialist rebel.

Der lächelnde Unbekannte. China wächst weiter unaufhaltsam, ist aus der Corona-Pandemie sogar noch gestärkt hervorgegangen. Der Westen hingegen versinkt in Krise und Chaos. Mächtigster Mann der Welt ist heute nicht mehr der Präsident der USA, sondern Xi Jinping, Generalsekretär der Kommunistischen Partei und Staatspräsident Chinas. Wie funktioniert der Funktionär, der eine Machtfülle auf sich vereint wie vor ihm nur Mao? Welche Rolle spielt seine Frau Peng Liyuan, Chinas bekannteste Volkssängerin und Sonderbotschafterin der Weltgesundheitsorganisation (WHO)?

Sampat Pal was married at twelve, essentially illiterate. Today she leads a vigilante group fighting for women's rights: the Pink Gang. When Sheelu was arrested for stealing from a powerful politician in the notoriously crooked region of Uttar Pradesh, she was sure that she would be forced to accept a prison sentence, not least because she had alleged that she had been assaulted by a man in the politician's household.

The Cold War seemingly ended in a decisive victory for the West. But now, Noah Feldman argues, we are entering an era of renewed global struggle: the era of Cool War. Just as the Cold War matched the planet’s reigning superpowers in a contest for geopolitical supremacy, so this new age will pit the United States against a rising China in a contest for dominance, alliances, and resources. Already visible in Asia, the conflict will extend to the Middle East (U.S.-backed Israel versus Chinese-backed Iran), Africa, and beyond.

Wer wissen möchte, wie wir und vor allem unsere Kinder bald schon leben, welche Technologien sie und die Welt prägen werden, muss durch Shenzhen streifen. Die 12-Millionen-Metropole in Südchina gehört zu den innovativsten Städten der Welt. Eine Megacity, die quasi aus dem Nichts entstand, wo Nachhaltigkeit und moderne Lebensqualität selbstverständlich sind, aber eben auch Gesichtserkennung und der gläserne Mensch. Die Cloud in Shenzhen weiß alles. Die Shenzhener Techies stellen inzwischen das Silicon Valley in den Schatten, ihre Start-ups zählen zu den wertvollsten der Welt.

In The Foresighted Ambedkar, Anurag Bhaskar argues that India’s Constitution was drafted not just between 1946 and 1950 but over the course of four decades. Dr Ambedkar was the only person to have been involved at all the stages related to the drafting of the Indian constitutional document since 1919. These stages bear the imprint of his contribution and role.

Throughout the post-Mao reform era, China has championed the principle of sovereign state control, which holds that states should not intervene in the affairs of other states. Yet, as Tim Nicholas Rühlig argues in China's Foreign Policy Contradictions, in recent years they have not actually acted this way. Chinese foreign policy actions fail to match up with official rhetoric, and these inconsistencies - in combination with China's growing power - will have dramatic effects on the future shape of international order.

Buddha's Child will flood the shadowy corners of South Vietnam's Byzantine political world with the bright light of truth. Ky will describe the Americans and their activities from the perspective of the Vietnamese patriot.

Condemned by US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara as "the absolute bottom of the barrel," Ky was not expected to survive a week in the office into which he was thrust. Instead, he lasted three years, until he wrote himself out of office by penning the country's first constitution.

Lawrence Freedman’s massive, ambitious new audiobook, Strategy, offers a personal take on an important term, one so overused that it has become almost meaningless.

In 1958, Richard Nixon described Afghanistan as "unconquerable." On August 15, 2021, he was proven right. After twenty years of intervention, US and NATO forces retreated, enabling the Taliban to return to power. Tens of thousands were killed in the long, unwinnable war, and millions more were displaced—leaving the future of Afghanistan hanging in the balance. Leading expert Amin Saikal traces the full story of America's intervention, from 9/11 to the present crisis.

Pakistan's pathway to developing nuclear weapons remains shrouded in mystery and surrounded by misconceptions. While it is no secret why Pakistan became a nuclear power, how Pakistan became a nuclear state has been obscured by mythmaking. In Pakistan's Pathway to the Bomb, Mansoor Ahmed offers a revisionist history of Pakistan's nuclear program and the bureaucratic politics that shaped its development from its inception in 1956 until the 1998 nuclear tests.

As the second-largest economy, China is now extending its influence across the globe. Joanna Chiu has spent a decade tracking China’s propulsive rise, from the complicity of democratic nations, to a new colonialism coming from its multibillion-dollar “New Silk Road” initiative, to its growing sway on foreign countries and multilateral institutions.

In Will Africa Feed China?, Deborah Brautigam, one of the world's leading experts on China and Africa, probes the myths and realities behind the media headlines. Her careful research challenges the conventional wisdom; as she shows, Chinese farming investments are in fact surprisingly limited, and land acquisitions modest. Defying expectations, China actually exports more food to Africa than it imports. Is this picture likely to change?

China's reform era is ending. Core factors that characterized it - political stability, ideological openness, and rapid economic growth - are unraveling.

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.

The Great Successor is an irreverent yet insightful quest to understand the life of Kim Jong Un, one of the world's most secretive dictators. Kim's life is swathed in myth and propaganda, from the plainly silly - he supposedly ate so much Swiss cheese that his ankles gave way - to the grimly bloody stories of the ways his enemies and rival family members have perished at his command.

Mao Zedong's labor reform camps were notoriously brutal; modeled after the Soviet gulag, their inmates were subject to backbreaking labor, malnutrition, and vindictive wardens. They were thought to be impossible to escape - but one man did. Xu Hongci, a young medical student, was a loyal member of the Communist Party until he fell victim to Mao Zedong's Anti-Rightist Campaign in 1957. After posting a criticism of the party, he spent the next 14 years in the labor camps.