New Books in Chinese Studies

Jaksot

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  Ming-sho Ho, "Be Water: Collective Improvisation in Hong Kong's Anti-Extradition Protests" (Temple University Press, 2025) 13.09.2026 50min

  During the eventful summer of 2019 in Hong Kong, the Be Water Revolution formed to resist the proposed extradition of fugitives to mainland China’s courts. With its name derived from martial arts master Bruce Lee’s adage “formless and shapeless like water,” the incident turned out to be the city’s largest episode of contentious politics and was unique for using impromptu communication among participants and the absence of central leadership.  In Be Water: Collective Improvisation in Hong Kong's Anti-Extradition Protests (Temple University Press, 2025), Dr. Ming-sho Ho examines the dynamics of the city-wide uprising from the perspective of agency power. He seeks to understand how numerous and anonymous Hongkongers contributed to this epoch-making campaign as well as how they responded to the full-scale state repression that enveloped them. Dr. Ho praises and questions the durability of the inventive Be Water Revolution and how the activists encouraged protests spontaneously, through interpersonal networks and by voluntarily collaborating with strangers at great personal risk.  Dr. Ho posits a new concept of “collective improvisation” to make sense of such a decentralized yet creative way of protesting. Be Water seeks to understand the rise and long afterlife of this movement and illustrate its efficacy. As Dr. Ho shows, these dynamics of collective improvisation have implications for contemporary protest movements around the world.  This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies
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  Emeka Umejei, "China in African Media: Between Influence Operations and Decolonization" (Bloomsbury, 2026) 12.09.2026 41min

  At its core, China in African Media: Between Influence Operations and Decolonization (Bloomsbury, 2026) is a book about power, journalism, geopolitical influence, and knowledge production in China–Africa relations. It examines how the People’s Republic of China has moved beyond simply establishing Chinese media organizations such as Xinhua and CGTN in Africa toward a much more dispersed system of engagement. Conceptualizing these engagements collectively as a multimodal or mixed-media ecology of influence, Umejei highlights China’s ability to reach African audiences directly through Chinese media, indirectly through African news organizations, institutionally through partnerships, professionally through the journalists it trains, and infrastructurally through technologies implemented by Chinese firms.  Underlying the book is a strong normative concern about the implications of this expansion of Chinese media engagement for Africa’s democracy, leadership, developmental aspirations, and decolonization. In this regard, Umejei addresses the question: Is the emerging South–South media relationship helping to decolonize African journalism by weakening Western dominance, or is China principally replacing Western influence with a new form of Chinese influence? The book draws on semi-structured interviews with journalists across fourteen African countries, content analysis, policy documents, and publicly available materials. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies
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  Gavin Healy, "A Guide to Mao’s China: Showing the Nation to Foreign Guests" (Cornell UP, 2026) 11.09.2026 1t 2min

  A Guide to Mao’s China: Showing the Nation to Foreign Guests (Cornell UP, 2026) by Gavin Healy explores how tourism was reshaped during the Mao era. It follows the transformation of once-private travel agencies after 1949, the efforts of China's state tourism bureaucracy to reconcile welcoming foreign visitors with earning foreign currency, and the ways tourism workers reimagined service occupations such as tour guiding and waiting tables in the context of socialist ideology. By drawing on government archives, service worker manuals, and other kinds of ephemera, the book does a wonderful job of focusing on the people on the front lines of the tourism industry, showcasing the ordinary rank-and-file workers who were told to be polite and eager — but not fawn over guests — and to be prompt and attentive — but not servile. By looking at these service workers, this book showcases the important ideological work that tourism can do, both for the tourists being shown a new part of the world and for those doing the showing. A Guide to Mao’s China should appeal to readers interested in modern Chinese history, the history of tourism, Cold War international exchange, and the everyday workings of the socialist state. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies
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  Emily Matson, "China’s Date Debate: How Manchurian Scholars Rewrote World War II" (U Michigan Press, 2026) 06.09.2026 34min

  China’s Date Debate: How Manchurian Scholars Rewrote World War II (U Michigan Press, 2026) by Dr. Emily Matson is an in-depth investigation of the Chinese Communist Party’s remapping of China’s World War II timeline from eight years (1937–1945) to fourteen years (1931–1945). Instead of the previously accepted starting date of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on July 7, 1937, the Chinese Communist Party defined the war’s starting date as the Mukden Incident on September 18, 1931, which triggered the Japanese Kwantung Army’s invasion of Manchuria. Since the 1980s, scholars from Manchuria have demanded a fourteen-year war timeline to encompass the invasion of their homeland. By the 1990s, other scholars took notice and started to counter with claims that the eight-year timeline was the more accurate. Subsequently, a fierce “date debate” emerged between the two sides that was only resolved by the 2017 proclamation from the Ministry of Education. Dr. Matson demonstrates that the decision to set China’s World War II timeline at fourteen years was not merely a top-down decision, but was influenced by decades of Manchurian scholarship on the war. China’s Date Debate recenters Manchuria as a region of critical importance for China’s national identity today and the implications of this “date debate” on the Chinese Communist Party’s domestic legitimacy and international image. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies
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  Whistling Arrows and Heavenly Horses: The Han-Xiongnu War 02.09.2026 32min

  John Ross speaks with Scott Forbes Crawford about his book The Han-Xiongnu War, 133 BC–89 AD (Pen & Sword Military, 2024) For more than two centuries, Han China fought a bitter struggle against the Xiongnu, a powerful confederation of horse-riding nomads from the Asian steppe. This was far more than a border war. It helped shape the future of China, transformed Central Asia, and opened the routes that would become known as the Silk Road. In writing this history, Scott followed the example of China’s greatest historian, Sima Qian (the subject of BOA episode 82 ), and took a biographical approach. We learn about remarkable figures such as Modun, the ruthless founder of the Xiongnu Empire; Li Guang, the legendary “Flying General”; the explorer Zhang Qian; and Princess Jieyou, a royal diplomat/spy who spent decades advancing Han interests deep in Central Asia. Notes: The full title of Scott Crawford’s book is: The Han-Xiongnu War, 133 BC–89 AD: The Struggle of China and a Steppe Empire Told Through Its Key Figures (Pen & Sword, 2023) To learn more about Scott’s work, including his novel Silk Road Centurion, visit his website : https://www.scottforbescrawfor... The Books on Asia Podcast is co-produced with Plum Rain Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies
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  Nancy Yunhwa Rao, "Inside Chinese Theater: Community and Artistry in Nineteenth Century California and Beyond" (U Illinois Press, 2025) 31.08.2026 59min

  The first large number of Chinese immigrants began arriving in the United States in the 1840s, and Chinese opera troupes were not far behind. In Inside Chinese Theater: Community and Artistry in Nineteenth Century California and Beyond (U Illinois Press, 2025), Nancy Yunhwa Rao writes the story of the flourishing and resiliency of Chinese opera in America. Chinese opera troupes brought with them an important cultural reminder of China that helped immigrants to build community and maintain connections with their old home in their new one. At the same time, anti-Chinese violence, legislation, and prejudice was a constant and growing threat to Chinese immigrants and Chinese theater. As Chinese theater became part of California and San Francisco culture, popular Chinese actors advocated for their art alongside appeals for civil rights. Rao draws on personal accounts and artifacts to place theater within the everyday lives of Chinese people. She also describes the costumes, singing, staging, and storytelling that impacted mainstream reception and influenced how Chinese communities saw themselves. Rao makes a convincing argument that more attention to the transpacific connections between the US and Asia is vital to telling the true story of America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies
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  Corrado Neri, "Taiwanese Horror Cinema in the 21st Century: Spectral Narratives and Screen Culture" (Anthem Press, 2026) 30.08.2026 31min

  Taiwanese cinema is internationally celebrated for the auteurs of the Taiwan New Cinema. Yet over the past fifteen years, ghosts, demons, curses and haunted screens have become increasingly prominent, turning horror from a marginal genre into an important strand of Taiwan’s popular cinema. Professor Corrado Neri’s new book, Taiwanese Horror Cinema in the 21st Century: Spectral Narratives and Screen Culture (Anthem Press, 2026), explores this transformation. Neri argues that Taiwanese horror has reached a new stage of maturity: it is now an established industrial category, has diversified across genres and media, and has developed a sophisticated capacity to address Taiwan’s social, historical and technological anxieties. The book also launches the new short book series, ‘Anthem Impact in Asian Media, Cinema and Communications’. In this podcast conversation, Dr Ming-yeh Rawnsley talks with Professor Neri about what Taiwanese horror can tell us about Taiwan itself. Their discussion moves from ghosts and folklore to democracy, historical memory, digital culture and changing understandings of identity. Themes include: Why horror? – how a once-marginal genre became an important part of Taiwanese cinema. Taiwan as a ‘Ghost Nation’ – why ghosts offer powerful ways of thinking about Taiwan’s contested history and identity. Horror, democracy and historical memory – how liberalisation opened new possibilities for confronting difficult histories, notably the White Terror in Detention. Religion, folklore and the supernatural – how beliefs, rituals and local legends provide filmmakers with distinctive cultural resources. Digital ghosts – how smartphones, social media, gaming and screen culture have transformed haunting. Gender, sexuality and queer horror – how films such as Marry My Dead Body use supernatural conventions to explore changing social identities. Taiwan within Asian horror cinema – how Taiwanese filmmakers engage with regional traditions while developing recognisably local forms. One of the book’s most compelling arguments is that the supernatural provides a productive language for exploring Taiwan’s relationship with its past and present. Detention transforms the political violence of the White Terror into a spectral landscape of memory, guilt and historical reckoning. The Tag-Along, The Rope Curse and Incantation bring folklore and ritual into contact with cameras, smartphones and social media. Taiwanese horror is also transmedial. Detention moved from video game to feature film, television series and novel; The Bridge Curse and Incantation have extended into gaming, while The Tag-Along has expanded into webtoon and virtual reality. Horror thus forms part of a wider creative ecosystem in which cinema intersects with digital media, popular culture and Taiwan’s cultural-content industries. Taiwanese horror therefore deserves attention beyond horror enthusiasts or film specialists. These films frighten, surprise and sometimes make audiences laugh, but their ghosts also carry history. They negotiate memories of authoritarianism and democratisation, questions of gender and sexuality, and move between temples, cinemas, video games and smartphone screens. The ghosts haunting contemporary Taiwanese cinema are rarely just ghosts. They offer another way of asking questions about Taiwan: how the past survives in the present, how identities are continually remade, and how a rapidly changing society chooses to remember—and imagine—itself. Dr Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley is a Research Associate at the Centre of Taiwan Studies, SOAS University of London, and a host for the New Books Network. She is also a co-editor (with Professor Gary Rawnsley) of the short book series, ‘Anthem Impact in Asian Media, Cinema and Communications’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies
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  Catherine S. Chan, "Savage: The Making of Modern Dogs in British Hong Kong" (Cornell UP, 2026) 29.08.2026 45min

  Savage: The Making of Modern Dogs in British Hong Kong (Cornell University Press, 2026) explores the dark side of colonial modernity through canine eyes, showing the many ways that dogs involuntarily contributed to the modernization of twentieth-century Hong Kong. Dr. Catherine S. Chan follows the piecemeal transplantation of British animal humanitarianism as pedigree dogs accompanied hardening class differences, dogmeat became a contested racial issue, and dogs were roped into the long list of undesirables fabricated in the so-called golden era of reforms following the social disturbances of the 1960s. Dr. Chan reveals a fragmented civilizing project that constructed dogs as dangerous, filthy, and unnecessary nuisances in a burgeoning city, rationalizing the slaughter of tens of thousands of dogs alongside paradoxical criticism of the native population for perpetrating animal cruelty and the promotion of British animal humanitarianism. Departing from anthropocentric perspectives in understanding the use of Britishness in the molding of modern cities, Savage restores the presence and agency of dogs to encourage a rethinking of the patchiness of British colonial governance and the long-lasting repercussions that modernity can have on our relationship with animals. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies
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  China Office of Finnish Industries 27.08.2026 15min

  Why have Finland’s biggest multinationals teamed up to create a globally unique analysis hub just to decode the future of China? Meet the analysts who are nurturing the next generation of Finnish expertise to bridge the gap between Nordic business and Chinese policy. In this episode, Julie Yu-Wen Chen at the University of Helsinki talks to Kevin Broady, Marleena Makkonen and Anton Karppanen, three analysts from the China Office of Finnish Industries to understand their mission. The China Office of Finnish Industries acts as a unique nonprofit designed to assist Finnish multinational corporations in navigating the complex geopolitical and economic landscape of the People’s Republic of China. Established in 2022, the organization provides deep strategic analysis on shifting Chinese industrial policies, labor market trends, and the inherent risks of doing business in an increasingly politicized global market. Their work focuses on helping companies understand growing political complexities amid trade tensions while adapting to China's growing influence on international trade. The office is also dedicated to nurturing the next generation of Finnish China analysts through a specialized trainee program for university students. By bridging the gap between academic expertise and corporate decision-making, the team fosters a more sophisticated understanding of how Chinese domestic developments impact Nordic prosperity. Julie Yu‑Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Master’s Programme in Area and Cultural Studies at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Her new book, Global Knowledge Production about China, explores how the practice of “China‑watching” has evolved over the decades. The book is freely accessible online. The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners: Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia), Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland), Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania), Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland), Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden) and Centre for South Asian Democracy, University of Oslo (Norway). We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies
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  Yuri Pines, "China's Aristocratic Age: Politics and Power in the Springs-and-Autumns Period" (Princeton UP, 2026) 27.08.2026 46min

  The Springs-and-Autumns period is a strange period in Chinese history. Coming after the decline of the Zhou, and before the famous Warring States Period, this period of Chinese history features a large number of small states with no powerful hegemon, no strong sense of the mandate of heaven, rules of chivalry that wouldn’t seem out of place in medieval Europe, and roles passed down through lineage–and not awarded on the basis of merit. Historian Yuri Pines calls this period China’s "aristocratic age” in his book titled, appropriately, China's Aristocratic Age: Politics and Power in the Springs-and-Autumns Period (Princeton UP, 2026). Yuri Pines is the Michael W. Lipson Chair in Chinese Studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of The Everlasting Empire: The Political Culture of Ancient China and Its Imperial Legacy, The Book of Lord Shang: Apologetics of State Power in Early China, Zhou History Unearthed: The Bamboo Manuscript Xinian and Early Chinese Historiography, and other books. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of China’s Aristocratic Age. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies
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  Chenchen Zhang, "Easting the West: Theorizing the Postliberal Conjuncture from China" (Oxford UP, 2026) 25.08.2026 1t 10min

  With commentary on the emergence of a ‘multipolar’ world, of transatlantic rifts and the rise of ‘middle powers’ ubiquitous, tales of the decline of something called ‘the West’ seem to be everywhere. Yet the meanings the idea of ‘the West’ acquires in spaces beyond it tell us at least as much about the state of the world as portents of its demise. Based on a combination of cultural analysis of historical writings and—most strikingly—deep immersion in often very spicy Chinese social media fora, Chenchen Zhang’s new book Easting the West: Theorizing the Postliberal Conjuncture from China (Oxford University Press, 2026) theorises the shifting significations ascribed to ‘the West’ in China since the late-imperial collision with European empires. Whether imagined as a source of modernity, a colonial exploiter, geopolitical rival or—most recently—a civilisation sunk into decadence and decay, ‘the West’—Zhang shows—is a foil for China-based worldviews which, whatever their anticolonial or anti-Western sentiments, are also entangled with Eurocentric hierarchies of race, nation and gender whose patriarchal and civilisational histories are rooted at least partly that very same ‘West’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies
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  Edward Goldring, "Purges: How Dictators Fight to Survive" (Cornell UP, 2026) 24.08.2026 39min

  Purges: How Dictators Fight to Survive (Cornell University Press, 2026) by Dr. Edward Goldring delves into one of the key tactics that autocrats deploy to maintain power: the removal of individuals from within the regime. From Kim Jong Un's execution of his uncle to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's removal of over a hundred Turkish generals, purges bear significant consequences for the survival and endurance of autocrats. Yet much remains unknown about why dictators use purges and whether they achieve their intended effects. Drawing on an original global dataset on civilian and military elite purges in dictatorships in addition to case studies spanning North and South Korea as well as Turkey, Dr. Goldring examines the logic behind purges and their consequences. He shows that dictators purge to consolidate power, punish disloyalty, and scapegoat elites to alleviate popular threats. But even as purges help dictators consolidate power early in their tenure, purges actually weaken their position when they have been in power for a long time, prompting pushback. In the face of an increasing global shift toward authoritarian norms, Purges offers critical insight into how autocrats maintain—and sometimes lose—power. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies
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  Old Lhasa: A Biography of a Sacred City 23.08.2026 31min

  Michael Aldrich joins John Ross to discuss Old Lhasa: A Biography, his richly detailed portrait of Tibet’s historic capital. It’s the third book in his trilogy on Asian cultural centers. He wrote the first two, on Beijing and Ulaanbaatar, while living in those cities, where he worked as a lawyer. There was no opportunity for this with Lhasa, so he had to rely on multiple trips (from his home in Taiwan) and an incredible amount of reading and research. Rather than writing a conventional history, Aldrich set out to present Lhasa as a living character – a city whose temples, alleyways, legends and surviving traditions can still tell their own stories. Books mentioned M.A. Aldrich The Search for a Vanishing Beijing: A Guide to China’s Capital Through the Ages (Hong Kong University Press, 2006) Ulaanbaatar beyond Water and Grass: A Guide to the Capital of Mongolia (Hong Kong University Press, 2018) Old Lhasa: A Biography Originally published by Camphor Press in January 2023 and subsequently reissued in 2025 by Speaking Tiger Books with a new epilogue based on Aldrich’s 2024 return to Tibet. The episode touches on the amazing story of Ekai Kawaguchi (河口慧海 1866–1945), a Japanese Buddhist monk who spent time in Lhasa in the early 1900s. He is the subject of Scott Berry’s A Stranger in Tibet. The Books on Asia Podcast is co-produced with Plum Rain Press. Podcast host Amy Chavez is author of The Widow, the Priest, and the Octopus Hunter: Discovering a Lost Way of Life on a Secluded Japanese Island. and Amy's Guide to Best Behavior in Japan. The Books on Asia website posts book reviews, podcast episodes and episode Show Notes. Subscribe to the BOA podcast from your favorite podcast service. Subscribe to the Books on Asia newsletter to receive news of the latest new book releases, reviews and podcast episodes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies
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  Mark Leonard, "Surviving Chaos: Geopolitics When the Rules Fail" (Polity Press, 2026) 22.08.2026 1t 4min

  "Expansive visions. Universal institutions. Ideas of progress. It was on the back of these that the West surged ahead and built a global order. I was born into that world. But my children have entered a world of Un-order." We live in an explosive world. Trump is blowing up political order. Xi Jinping is scrambling the economy. And Putin is redrawing the map of Europe. At a time when every crisis bleeds into the next — from pandemics and wars to climate shocks and AI revolutions — the old rules of global order are collapsing. Mark Leonard reveals how geopolitics is being rewritten in an age of "Un-Order," where no one agrees on the rules, and even the concept of order itself is up for debate. Drawing on years of conversations with leaders and thinkers from Beijing to Washington, Leonard argues that we are witnessing a new divide in international politics between the grand "architects" who try to build a stable global system and the nimble "artisans" who adapt, improvise, and survive amidst disruption. China, he shows, has embraced the "artisan's" mindset while Europe and the West cling to the fading certainties of the "architects". Part analysis, part manifesto, ⁠Surviving Chaos: Geopolitics When the Rules Fail⁠ (Polity Press, 2026) offers a bold new framework for understanding power in the twenty-first century — and a call for leaders to stop defending yesterday's world and start learning how to thrive in tomorrow's. Mark Leonard is co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, the first pan-European think–tank. Lucas Tse is Examination Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies
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  China Comes to Town: Chinese Investment and Local Politics in the U.S. with Emily Conrad 21.08.2026 50min

  Chinese investment in the United States has become an increasingly contentious issue that is much more complicated than headlines suggest. In this episode, we reflect on recent debates in Michigan’s democratic primary and use it as a jumping-off point to examine more than 25 years of Chinese investment in the US and subnational relationships with Chinese business. We’re joined by Emily Conrad, whose research examines Chinese manufacturing investment in the US. We discuss where investment is concentrated and how local governments interact with investments, with attitudes ranging from facilitation to passivity to obstruction. We also discuss how Chinese companies navigate the present environment and varied contexts across the US. As federal scrutiny has intensified and states have introduced new restrictions on foreign land ownership and investment, Chinese firms face mounting political and regulatory headwinds. Yet, investments have not disappeared, and companies are adapting, raising questions about how geopolitics is reshaping investment, manufacturing and subnational policies and politics in the US. Sign up for Emily’s Substack Emily’s book The Faithless?: The Untold Story of the Electoral College Analysis of State Attitudes towards Chinese investments over time from Conrad’s research here Other resources from the episode: Rhodium Group’s China cross-border monitor YouTube podcast with Abdul al-Sayed that mentions some about China: here Wall Street Journal article about the State Armor organization: here NPR podcast with one of the best overviews on Gotion:here More on Gotion: ‘No CCP in USA!’: Inside a Michigan town's unhinged war over a Chinese battery plant A Chinese battery company bet on a small Michigan town for its U.S. expansion Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate primary debate audio used in this episode Tweet on the CCP by Sen. Elissa Slotkin Financial Times article, China’s assault on Europe’s car market has barely begun Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies
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  Po-Yi Hung, "Routes of Taiwan Tea: Mobility, Borders, and Territoriality" (U Washington Press, 2026) 19.08.2026 49min

  From misty mountain oolongs to the global boba boom, Taiwan’s teas carry far more than flavor. They embody contested borders, evolving identities, and the complexities of nationhood. Routes of Taiwan Tea: Mobility, Borders, and Territoriality (U Washington Press, 2026) by Dr. Po-Yi Hung traces tea varieties, processing expertise, and merchants across Taiwan and Southeast Asia to reveal how a simple leaf has become a force in global politics.Drawing on decades of fieldwork and extensive archival research, Dr. Hung delves deep into the history of Taiwan’s tea industry, from its roots in the Qing empire to its role in modern food nationalism. Hung shows how advocacy for Taiwanization—the movement to recover and celebrate the island’s unique history and culture—occurs not only within Taiwan’s food scenes but also through cross-border exchanges. Oolong cultivation in Thailand’s highlands and bubble tea’s rise in Vietnam demonstrate how tea acts as a nonhuman agent, fostering connections and unsettling conventional notions of sovereignty. Through these routes, tea becomes more than agriculture; it becomes an instrument of diplomacy, a marker of authenticity, and a symbol of cultural pride.Offering a fresh perspective on Taiwan’s geopolitical positioning, Routes of Taiwan Tea redefines how borders are imagined and lived. It is an essential contribution to food studies, political geography, and East and Southeast Asian studies, illuminating how everyday practices like drinking tea shape global relations. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies
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  Dan Du, "This World in a Teacup: Credit, Taste, and Power in the U. S.-China Tea Trade, 1784–1911" (U Nebraska Press, 2026) 18.08.2026 1t

  Popular history tells the story of how the tea boycott during the American Revolution caused a transition in American taste from tea to coffee, making the young country a coffee-drinking nation. In truth, Americans did not give up their tea so easily, and the United States grew to be the second-largest importer of tea from China. Diverging from British black tea traditions, U.S. consumers preferred green tea, cultivated a particular taste for Oolong tea, and invented the English Breakfast Tea brand to market Chinese black tea. This World in a Teacup: Credit, Taste, and Power in the U.S.-China Tea Trade, 1784–1911 (University of Nebraska Press, 2026) by Dr. Dan Du is the first book to detail the American tea trade with China after the American Revolution through the early twentieth century. Drawing on archival sources and perspectives from both sides of the Pacific, Dr. Du offers new insights to help understand fundamental developments in U.S.-China relations within a global context. This World in a Teacup shows that, rather than depending on hard-money transactions or a barter economy, a sophisticated credit system buttressed American tea purchases in China: Credit instruments such as promissory notes, bills of exchange, and checks financed the transactions between Chinese and U.S. tea merchants, crystallizing changing power dynamics in the global economy. This World in a Teacup explains how the circulation of these credit instruments challenged the conventional understanding of China’s economy as a primitive system and how the power structure of American, British, and Chinese tea trade in the credit economy reshaped American consumption patterns. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies
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  Ting Hui Lau, "Decolonial Endurance: Lisu Worldmaking Against Chinese Settler Colonialism" (Stanford UP, 2026) 17.08.2026 1t 3min

  A series of questions have been sparked by the indigenous urgency of the moment: What does it mean to live through a world coming undone? How do people carry on amid rupture, loss, and grief? Decolonial Endurance: Lisu Worldmaking Against Chinese Settler Colonialism (Stanford University Press, 2026) explores these questions through the turbulent lives of Indigenous Lisu subsistence farmers in China’s Eastern Himalayas, bordering Myanmar and Tibet. Like many of China’s Indigenous borderlands, this mountainous region has long borne the force of encroaching Chinese state power. Since the 1980s, the Chinese state has been compelling the Lisu to give up their subsistence lifeways, move into urban settlements, and send their children to government boarding schools. In exchange for the so-called gifts of development—healthcare, income, and education—they suffer environmental and social catastrophes such as mass landslides, strange new illnesses, and toxic food. Drawing on over a decade of engagement with the Lisu, Ting Hui Lau takes readers into the world of ex-shamans, heart-pained mothers, restless spirits, and demon-mad migrants as they grapple with the fallout from state development, which Lau argues is the latest phase in a centuries-long project of settler colonialism along China's Southwest frontier. At once a portrayal of loss and an ethnography of hope, Lau chronicles Lisu worldmaking amid this destruction, centering their quiet resistance through everyday acts of communal caretaking. In a time of escalating geopolitical and ecological crisis, this book calls for a new decolonial politics rooted in the transformative power of endurance. Ting Hui Lau (email address: [email protected]) is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the National University of Singapore. She studies sociocultural, psychological, and medical anthropology, development and environmental change, Indigeneity and colonialism, and the borderland areas of East and Southeast Asia. Yadong Li is an anthropologist-in-training. He is a PhD candidate of Socio-cultural Anthropology at Tulane University. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies
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  Máximo Badaró, "Pedagogies of Value: Marketing Foreign Goods in China" (Berghahn, 2026) 16.08.2026 51min

  Pedagogies of Value: Marketing Foreign Goods in China (Berghahn, 2026) by Dr. Máximo Badaró explores how China is reshaping global hierarchies of worth. Through ethnographic research among marketers, consultants, and brokers who promote foreign goods in Shanghai, Beijing, and beyond, this book investigates how value is taught, contested, and transformed in everyday encounters. From luxury brands and consumer ethnography to real estate, wine, and organic food, the book reveals how foreign intermediaries attempt to ‘educate’ Chinese consumers, only to confront shifting power dynamics that challenge Western authority. Blending vivid narratives with sharp analysis, this study argues that China has become a central arena for reimagining the very meaning of value.  This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies
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  Paul French, "The Last Emperor of China: Twilight of the Forbidden City" (St. Martin's Press, 2026) 13.08.2026 52min

  The life of Puyi, the last emperor of China, often feels like a spectacle—in no small part due to the 1987 Oscar-winning film The Last Emperor. Yet the true story being Puyi, as well as his wife, the empress Wanrong, is more complicated. Two foreigners were asked to tutor both Puyi and Wanrong: Reginald Johnston and Isabel Ingram, both of whom provide fresh insights into how China’s final emperor and empress lived their lives. Historian Paul French draws upon these sources, and others, for his latest work: The Last Emperor of China: Twilight of the Forbidden City (St. Martin's Press, 2026) to tell a very different story about the life of Puyi and Wanrong: their marriage, the political shenanigans of the early Republic, and how Johnson and Ingram shaped the final chapter of the imperial court. Paul is the author of many works of history, including Midnight in Peking, City of Devils, Destination Macao, Bloody Saturday: Shanghai’s Darkest Day, and Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties, and the Making of Wallis Simpson You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies