Recommended books for understanding China
Year of Publication: 2024
The War for Chinese Talent in America: The Politics of Technology and Knowledge in Sino-U.S. Relations
By David Zweig
Upstart: How China Became a Great Power
By Oriana Skylar Mastro
Lost Decade: The US Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power
By Robert D. Blackwill, Richard Fontaine
New Cold Wars: China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion, and America’s Struggle to Defend the West
By David E. Sanger
The Belt and Road City: Geopolitics, Urbanization, and China’s Search for a New International Order
By Simon Curtis, Ian Klaus
China’s Rise in the Global South: The Middle East, Africa, and Beijing’s Alternative World Order
By Dawn C. Murphy
Living U.S.-China Relations: From Cold War to Cold War
By David M. Lampton
Pulitzer Prize China Coverage Over Eight Decades: From the Nationalist Chiang Kai-shek in 1941 to the Communist Xi Jinping in 2021
By Heinz-Dietrich Fischer
Year of Publication: 2023
Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and Their Battle for the Future
y Ian Johnson
Chinese Propaganda on Tibet: A Documentary History
Edited by Warren W. Smith Jr.
U.S.-Taiwan Relations: Will China’s Challenge Lead to a Crisis?
By Ryan Hass, Bonnie Glaser, Richard Bush
White Sun War: The Campaign for Taiwan
By Mick Ryan
China and Russia: Four Centuries of Conflict and Concord
By Philip Snow
China’s Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy
By Peter Martin
By Rush Doshi
Year of Publication: 2022
Prestige, Manipulation, and Coercion: Elite Power Struggles in the Soviet Union and China after Stalin and Mao
By Joseph Torigian
Outsourcing Repression: Everyday State Power in Contemporary China
By Lynette H. Ong
Innovate to Dominate: The Rise of the Chinese Techno-Security State
By Tai Ming Cheung
The Logic of Governance in China: An Organizational Approach
By Xueguang Zhou
China’s Next Act: How Sustainability and Technology are Reshaping China’s Rise and the World’s Future
By Scott M. Moore
Mao and Markets: The Communist Roots of Chinese Enterprise
By Christopher Marquis and Kunyuan Qiao
The Party Leads All: The Evolving Role of the Chinese Communist Party
By Jacques deLisle (editor) and Guobin Yang (editor)
Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise
By Susan L. Shirk
Surveillance State: Inside China’s Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control
By Josh Chin and Liza Lin
By Alex Joske
China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower
By
Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology
By Chris Miller
We Uyghurs Have No Say: An Imprisoned Writer Speaks
By Ilham Tohti
No Escape: The True Story of China’s Genocide of the Uyghurs
By Nury Turkel
Coalitions of the Weak: Elite Politics in China from Mao’s Stratagem to the Rise of Xi
By Victor Shih
Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China
By Hal Brands and Michael Beckley
Influence Empire: The Story of Tencent and China’s Tech Ambition
By Lulu Chen
The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping’s China
By Kevin Rudd
Getting China Wrong
By Aaron L. Friedberg
Great Wall of Steel: China’s Global Campaign to Suppress the Uyghurs
By Bradley Jardine
America Second: How America’s Elites Are Making China Stronger
By Isaac Stone Fish
By Hal Brands
The World According to China
By Elizabeth C. Economy
China Coup: The Great Leap to Freedom
By Roger Garside
The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict
By Elbridge A. Colby
China Inc.: Between State Capitalism and Economic Statecraft
By Aravind Yelery
By Henry Gao and Weihuan Zhou
How China Loses: The Pushback against Chinese Global Ambitions
By Luke Patey
The War on the Uyghurs: China’s Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority
By Sean R. Roberts
China: The Bubble that Never Pops
By Thomas Orlik
China’s Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism
By Rana Mitter
Year of Publication: 2021
Red Roulette: An Insider’s Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today’s China
By Desmond Shum
Organized Crime and Corruption Across Borders: Exploring the Belt and Road Initiative
Edited by T. Wing lo, Dina Siegel and Sharon Kwok
The Gate to China: A New History of the People’s Republic and Hong Kong
By Michael Sheridan
Fractured China: How State Transformation is Shaping China’s Rise
By Lee Jones and Shahar Hameiri
The Digital Silk Road: China’s Quest to Wire the World and Win the Future
By Jonathan E. Hillman
In The Camps: China’s High-Tech Penal Colony
By Darren Byler
Engaging China: Fifty Years of Sino-American Relations
By Anne F. Thurston
The Gate to China: A New History of the People’s Republic and Hong Kong
By Michael Sheridan
Rethinking Chinese Politics
By Joseph Fewsmith
China’s Leaders: From Mao to Now
By David Shambaugh
The Great Decoupling: China, America and the Struggle for Technological Supremacy
By Nigel Inkster
The World Turned Upside Down: America, China, and the Struggle for Global Leadership
By Clyde Prestowitz
Middle Class Shanghai
By Cheng Li
We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China’s Surveillance State
By Kai Strittmatter
Difficult Choices: Taiwan’s Quest for Security and the Good Life
By Richard C. Bush
Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the 21st Century
By Josh Rogin
Chinese Antitrust Exceptionalism: How The Rise of China Challenges Global Regulation
By Angela Zhang
Indo-Pacific Empire: China, America and the contest for the world’s pivotal region
By Rory Nedcalf
The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy
By Kenneth Pomeranz
Stronger: Adapting America’s China Strategy in an Age of Competitive Interdependence
By Ryan Hass
Is the Chinese Economy a Miracle or a Bubble?
By Lawrence Juen-yee Lau
Superpower Interrupted: The Chinese History of the World
By Michael Schuman
From Rebel to Ruler: One Hundred Years of the Chinese Communist Party
By Tony Saich
Year of Publication: 2020
The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21st Century
By Donald K. Emmerson
One Belt One Road: Chinese Power Meets the World
By Eyck Freymann
Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation
By Silvia M. Lindtner
China’s Search for ‘National Rejuvenation’: Domestic and Foreign Policies under Xi Jinping
By Jabin T. Jacob (editor), and The Ang Hoang (editor)
Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China’s Countryside
By Xiaowei Wang
Invisible China: How the Urban-Rural Divide Threatens China’s Rise
By Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell
Where Great Powers Meet: America and China in Southeast Asia
By David Shambaugh
China’s Quest for Foreign Technology: Beyond Espionage
By William C. Hannas (Editor) and Didi Kirsten Tatlow (Editor)
The Myth of Chinese Capitalism: The Worker, the Factory, and the Future of the World
By Dexter Roberts
Making Hong Kong China: The Rollback of Human Rights and the Rule of Law
By Michael C. Davis
U.S. Strategy in the Asian Century: Empowering Allies and Partners
By Abraham M. Denmark
The China Nightmare: The Grand Ambitions of a Decaying State
By Dan Blumenthal
The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics
By Ben Buchanan
The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare
By Christian Brose
Sensible Politics: Visualizing International Relations
By William A. Callahan
The Emperor’s New Road: China and the Project of the Century
By Jonathan E. Hillman
The Scientist and the Spy: A True Story of China, the FBI, and Industrial Espionage
By Mara Hvistendahl
Mao’s Third Front: The Militarization of Cold War China
By Covell Meyskens
Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World
By Clive Hamilton and Marieke Ohlberg
Spies and Scholar: Chinese Secrets and Imperial Russia’s Quest for World Power
By Gregory Afinogenov
China 2049: Economic Challenges of a Rising Global Power
By David Dollar, Yiping Huang and Yang Yao
Lie Machines: How to Save Democracy from Troll Armies, Deceitful Robots, Junk News Operations, and Political Operatives
By Philip N. Howard
Trade Wars Are Class Wars: How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace
By Matthew C. Klein and Michael Pettis
Year of Publication: 2019
Afterlives of Chinese Communism: Political Concepts from Mao to Xi
Edited by Ivan Franceschini, Nicholas Loubere, and Christian Sorace
End of an Era: How China’s Authoritarian Revival is Undermining Its Rise
By Carl Minzner
Red Flags: Why Xi’s China Is in Jeopardy
By George Magnus
China’s Grand Strategy: Weaving a New Silk Road to Global Primacy
By Sarwar A. Kashmiri
Deceiving the Sky: Inside Communist China’s Drive for Global Supremacy
By Bill Gertz
Communists Constructing Capitalism: State, market, and the Party in China’s financial reform
By Julian Gruin
Chinese Communist Espionage: An Intelligence Primer
By Peter Mattis and Matthew Brazil
The Age of Sharp Power: China, Russia and Iran. The Interference is not Soft. The Italian Case
By Paolo Messa
Year of Publication: 2018
The Huawei and Snowden Questions: Can Electronic Equipment from Untrusted Vendors be Verified? Can an Untrusted Vendor Build Trust into Electronic Equipment?
By Olav Lysne
Haunted by Chaos: China’s Grand Strategy from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping
By Sulmaan Wasif Khan
Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia
By Clive Hamilton
China’s Dream: The Culture of Chinese Communism and the Secret Sources of its Power
By Kerry Brown
China Rx: Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Medicine
By Rosemary Gibson and Janardan Prasad Singh
Year of Publication: 2015
China and Cybersecurity: Espionage, Strategy, and Politics in the Digital Domain
By Jon R. Lindsay, Tai Ming Cheung and Derek S. Reveron
