China’S Greatest Statesman

China’S Greatest Statesman
Author: Roy K. McCall
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 87
Release: 2015-10-13
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1491778008

Huaian born Zhou Enlai was contemporary Chinas greatest statesman, spymaster and negotiator - the one Henry Kissinger could not out-negotiate. The Peoples Republic of China would not exist today without Zhous skill as communicator and administrator. Yet Zhou had one fatal flaw which cost him his adopted children, his colleagues and the career of Xi Zhongxun - father of President Xi Jinping. While Zhou left Huaian, another group came to his birthplace to serve through medicine, education and evangelism. Chinas revolutionaries gained power; the missionaries - influence. Influence transcended power, and contrasted power politics vs. quiet service. This book can also be read backwards - through the index, which organizes over 100 footnotes and historical details. For example, President Xi Jinxings father, despite rescuing survivors of the Long March, was three decades later unfairly associated with the Gao Gang affair and denounced by the people he rescued. Another side story is the role of former missionary retreat, Kuling on Lu Shan. On Lu Shan George C. Marshall negotiated with Jiang Kaishek and Zhou Enlai. At a Lu Shan conference during the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong joked about being overweight and called his second son crazy.

Great State

Great State
Author: Timothy Brook
Publisher: Profile Books
Total Pages: 548
Release: 2019-09-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1782833471

China is one of the oldest states in the world. It achieved its approximate current borders with the Ascendancy of the Yuan dynasty in the 13th century, and despite the passing of one Imperial dynasty to the next, it has maintained them for the eight centuries since. Even the European colonial powers at the height of their power could not move past coastal enclaves. Thus, China remained China through the Ming, the Qing, the Republic, the Occupation, and Communism. But, despite the desires of some of the most powerful people in the Great State through the ages, China has never been alone in the world. It has had to contend with invaders from the steppe and the challenges posed by foreign traders and imperialists. Indeed, its rulers for the majority of the last eight centuries have not been Chinese. Timothy Brook examines China's relationship with the world from the Yuan through to the present by following the stories of ordinary and extraordinary people navigating the spaces where China met and meets the world. Bureaucrats, horse traders, spiritual leaders, explorers, pirates, emperors, invaders, migrant workers, traitors, and visionaries: this is a history of China as no one has told it before.

Lee Kuan Yew

Lee Kuan Yew
Author: Graham Allison
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2020-09-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0262539500

CNN “Book of the Week” Featuring a foreword by Henry Kissinger The grand strategist and founder of modern Singapore offers key insights and opinions on globalization, geopolitics, economic growth, and democracy in a series of interviews with the author of Destined for War, and others “If you are interested in the future of Asia, which means the future of the world, you’ve got to read this book.” —Fareed Zakaria, CNN When Lee Kuan Yew speaks, presidents, prime ministers, diplomats, and CEOs listen. Lee, the founding father of modern Singapore and its prime minister from 1959 to 1990, has honed his wisdom during more than fifty years on the world stage. Almost single-handedly responsible for transforming Singapore into a Western-style economic success, he offers a unique perspective on the geopolitics of East and West. American presidents from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama have welcomed him to the White House; British prime ministers from Margaret Thatcher to Tony Blair have recognized his wisdom; and business leaders from Rupert Murdoch to Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil, have praised his accomplishments. This book gathers key insights from interviews, speeches, and Lee’s voluminous published writings and presents them in an engaging question and answer format. Lee offers his assessment of China’s future, asserting, among other things, that “China will want to share this century as co-equals with the U.S.” He affirms the United States’ position as the world’s sole superpower but expresses dismay at the vagaries of its political system. He offers strategic advice for dealing with China and goes on to discuss India’s future, Islamic terrorism, economic growth, geopolitics and globalization, and democracy. Lee does not pull his punches, offering his unvarnished opinions on multiculturalism, the welfare state, education, and the free market. This little book belongs on the reading list of every world leader.

The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom

The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom
Author: John Pomfret
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
Total Pages: 705
Release: 2016-11-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1429944129

A remarkable history of the two-centuries-old relationship between the United States and China, from the Revolutionary War to the present day From the clipper ships that ventured to Canton hauling cargos of American ginseng to swap Chinese tea, to the US warships facing off against China's growing navy in the South China Sea, from the Yankee missionaries who brought Christianity and education to China, to the Chinese who built the American West, the United States and China have always been dramatically intertwined. For more than two centuries, American and Chinese statesmen, merchants, missionaries, and adventurers, men and women, have profoundly influenced the fate of these nations. While we tend to think of America's ties with China as starting in 1972 with the visit of President Richard Nixon to China, the patterns—rapturous enchantment followed by angry disillusionment—were set in motion hundreds of years earlier. Drawing on personal letters, diaries, memoirs, government documents, and contemporary news reports, John Pomfret reconstructs the surprising, tragic, and marvelous ways Americans and Chinese have engaged with one another through the centuries. A fascinating and thrilling account, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom is also an indispensable book for understanding the most important—and often the most perplexing—relationship between any two countries in the world.

Destined For War

Destined For War
Author: Graham Allison
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 389
Release: 2017-05-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0544935330

NATIONAL BESTSELLER | NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR. From an eminent international security scholar, an urgent examination of the conditions that could produce a catastrophic conflict between the United States and China—and how it might be prevented. China and the United States are heading toward a war neither wants. The reason is Thucydides’s Trap: when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling one, violence is the likeliest result. Over the past five hundred years, these conditions have occurred sixteen times; war broke out in twelve. At the time of publication, an unstoppable China approached an immovable America, and both Xi Jinping and Donald Trump promised to make their countries “great again,” the seventeenth case was looking grim—it still is. A trade conflict, cyberattack, Korean crisis, or accident at sea could easily spark a major war. In Destined for War, eminent Harvard scholar Graham Allison masterfully blends history and current events to explain the timeless machinery of Thucydides’s Trap—and to explore the painful steps that might prevent disaster today. SHORT-LISTED FOR THE 2018 LIONEL GELBER PRIZE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: FINANCIAL TIMES * THE TIMES (LONDON)* AMAZON “Allison is one of the keenest observers of international affairs around.” — President Joe Biden “[A] must-read book in both Washington and Beijing.” — Boston Globe “[Full of] wide-ranging, erudite case studies that span human history . . . [A] fine book.”— New York Times Book Review

Surveillance State

Surveillance State
Author: Josh Chin
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2022-09-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1250249309

Where is the line between digital utopia and digital police state? Surveillance State tells the gripping, startling, and detailed story of how China’s Communist Party is building a new kind of political control: shaping the will of the people through the sophisticated—and often brutal—harnessing of data. It is a story born in Silicon Valley and America’s “War on Terror,” and now playing out in alarming ways on China’s remote Central Asian frontier. As ethnic minorities in a border region strain against Party control, China’s leaders have built a dystopian police state that keeps millions under the constant gaze of security forces armed with AI. But across the country in the city of Hangzhou, the government is weaving a digital utopia, where technology helps optimize everything from traffic patterns to food safety to emergency response. Award-winning journalists Josh Chin and Liza Lin take readers on a journey through the new world China is building within its borders, and beyond. Telling harrowing stories of the people and families affected by the Party’s ambitions, Surveillance State reveals a future that is already underway—a new society engineered around the power of digital surveillance.

The China Mission: George Marshall's Unfinished War, 1945-1947

The China Mission: George Marshall's Unfinished War, 1945-1947
Author: Daniel Kurtz-Phelan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2018-04-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0393243087

An Economist Best Book of 2018 New York Times Book Review Editor’s Pick “Gripping [and] splendid.… An enormous contribution to our understanding of Marshall.”—Washington Post At the end of World War II, General George Marshall took on what he thought was a final mission—this time not to win a war, but to stop one. In China, conflict between Communists and Nationalists threatened to suck in the United States and escalate into revolution. Marshall’s charge was to cross the Pacific, broker a peace, and prevent a Communist takeover, all while staving off World War III. At first, the results seemed miraculous. But as they started to come apart, Marshall was faced with a wrenching choice—one that would alter the course of the Cold War, define the US-China relationship, and spark one of the darkest-ever turns in American political life. The China Mission offers a gripping, close-up view of the central figures of the time—from Marshall, Mao, and Chiang Kai-shek to Eisenhower, Truman, and MacArthur—as they stood face-to-face and struggled to make history, with consequences and lessons that echo today.

The Great Firewall of China

The Great Firewall of China
Author: James Griffiths
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2019-03-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1786995387

‘Readers will come away startled at just how fragile the online infrastructure we all depend on is and how much influence China wields – both technically and politically' – Jason Q. Ng, author of Blocked on Weibo 'An urgent and much needed reminder about how China's quest for cyber sovereignty is undermining global Internet freedom’ – Kristie Lu Stout, CNN ‘An important and incisive history of the Chinese internet that introduces us to the government officials, business leaders, and technology activists struggling over access to information within the Great Firewall’ – Adam M. Segal, author of The Hacked World Order Once little more than a glorified porn filter, China’s ‘Great Firewall’ has evolved into the most sophisticated system of online censorship in the world. As the Chinese internet grows and online businesses thrive, speech is controlled, dissent quashed, and attempts to organise outside the official Communist Party are quickly stamped out. But the effects of the Great Firewall are not confined to China itself. Through years of investigation James Griffiths gained unprecedented access to the Great Firewall and the politicians, tech leaders, dissidents and hackers whose lives revolve around it. As distortion, post-truth and fake news become old news James Griffiths shows just how far the Great Firewall has spread. Now is the time for a radical new vision of online liberty.

A Great Wall

A Great Wall
Author: Patrick Tyler
Publisher: Public Affairs
Total Pages: 510
Release: 2007-11-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1586486225

Hailed as "absorbing" by the New York Times and "suspense-filled" by Foreign Affairs, Patrick Tyler's A Great Wall became an instant classic; a must-read for anyone concerned with the complicated and combative relationship between the world's biggest and the world's most powerful nations. And no one could tell this story better than Patrick Tyler, veteran journalist and former Beijing bureau chief of the New York Times. Using brilliant original reporting from his years in China; interviews with presidents, secretaries of state, Chinese officials, and other key leaders; and 15,000 pages of newly declassified documents, Tyler illuminates a relationship usually shrouded in secrecy, miscommunication, rivalry, fascination, and fear. A Great Wall is essential reading for anyone interested in China and anyone concerned with the shifting dynamics of post-Cold War geopolitics.