New Books in Chinese Studies

EPISODE SUMMARY: What becomes visible when you shift the lens away from Beijing to how China’s Belt and Road projects unfold on the ground? Seeing China’s Belt and Road, edited by Edward Schatz and Rachel Silvey, answers this question by reorienting conversations on China’s global infrastructure development to their “downstream” effects. Instead of analyzing the BRI through grand geopolitical narratives or a national strategic lens, the book draws on fieldwork across Asia, Africa, and Latin America to show how local actors—mayors, contractors, migrant workers, and residents—shape and contest projects in practice. Contributing authors challenge simplified portrayals of the BRI as either neocolonial domination or benevolent development, instead revealing its fragmented, improvised, and negotiated nature. Our conversation touches on themes including the visual politics of infrastructure, how power flows through projects, and the agency of local people in shaping global connectivity. We also look ahead to emerging frontiers of China’s influence, including digital corridors and cleaner energy, offering a view of China’s evolving global presence. GUEST BIOS: Dr. Edward Schatz is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He is interested in identity politics, social transformations, social movements, anti-Americanism, and authoritarianism with a focus on the ex-USSR, particularly Central Asia. His publications include Slow Anti-Americanism (Stanford UP, 2021), Paradox of Power (co-edited with John Heathershaw, U. Pittsburgh Press, 2017), Political Ethnography (edited, U. Chicago Press, 2009), Modern Clan Politics (U. Washington Press, 2004), as well as articles in Comparative Politics, Slavic Review, International Political Science Review, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, and other academic journals. Current projects include a collaborative effort (with Rachel Silvey) to understand the downstream effects of China’s Belt & Road Initiative, as well as a book about the rise of shamelessness in global politics. Dr. Rachel Silvey is Richard Charles Lee Director of the Asian Institute and Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning. She is a Faculty Affiliate in CDTS, WGSI, and the Ethnic, Immigration and Pluralism Studies Program. She received her Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Washington, Seattle, and a dual B.A. from the University of California at Santa Cruz in Environmental Studies and Southeast Asian Studies. Professor Silvey is best known for her research on women’s labour and migration in Indonesia. She has published widely in the fields of migration studies, cultural and political geography, gender studies, and critical development. Her major funded research projects have focused on migration, gender, social networks, and economic development in Indonesia; immigration and employment among Southeast Asian-Americans; migration and marginalization in Bangladesh and Indonesia; and religion, rights and Indonesian migrant women workers in Saudi Arabia.LINKS TO RESOURCES Seeing China’s Belt and Road: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/seeing-chinas-belt-and-road-9780197789261?cc=us&lang=en& Overview with contributing authors on Seeing China’s Belt and Road: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULuHvAhUV_4 The Rise of the Infrastructure State How US–China Rivalry Shapes Politics and Place Worldwide: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-rise-of-the-infrastructure-state Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

At the start of Shakespeare's famous tragedy, King Lear promises to divide his kingdom based on his daughters' professions of love, but portions it out before hearing all of their answers. For Nan Da, this opening scene sparks a reckoning between King Lear, one of the cruelest and most confounding stories in literature, and the tragedy of Maoist and post-Maoist China. Da, who emigrated from China to the United States as a child in the 1990s, brings Shakespeare's tragedy to life on its own terms, addressing the concerns it reflects over the transition from Elizabeth I to James I with a fearsome sense of what would soon come to pass. At the same time, she uses the play as a lens to revisit the world of Maoist China--what it did to people, and what it did to storytelling. Blending literary analysis and personal history, Da begins in her childhood during Deng Xiaoping's Opening and Reform, then moves back and forth between Lear and China. In The Chinese Tragedy of King Lear (Princeton University Press, 2025), the unfinished business of Maoism and other elements of Chinese thought and culture--from Confucianism to the spectacles of Peking Opera--help elucidate the choices Shakespeare made in constructing Lear and the unbearable confusions he left behind. Nan Z. Da is associate professor of English at Johns Hopkins University. Caleb Zakarin is the Editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

In this important body of theology, key writings from the Chinese house church movement have been compiled, translated, and made accessible to English speakers. The documents in Faithful Disobedience: Writings on Church and State from a Chinese House Church Movement (IVP Academic, 2022) give readers an inside look at how the unregistered churches of China have endured despite government pressure and cultural marginalization. Wang Yi, the primary writer, is the pastor of a house church in Chengdu, China. He is currently serving a nine-year prison sentence for refusing to comply with People’s Republic of China (PRC) regulations regarding church registration. There are also works by prominent voices such as Jin Tianming, Jin Mingri, and Sun Yi. In our conversation, editor Hannah Nation proves to be an engaging and appreciative guide to these leaders’ theological, political and pastoral perspectives which are both uniquely Chinese and rooted in the historical doctrines of the Christian faith.  Dave Broucek is a lifelong student of and participant in the global mission of the church. He values research into the lesser-understood aspects of mission (singular) and missions (plural) as well as scholarship that addresses the big questions of mission theory and practice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

For centuries, scribes across East Asia used Chinese characters to write things down–even in languages based on very different foundations than Chinese. In southern China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam, people used Chinese to read and write–and never thought it was odd. It was, after all, how things were done. Even today, Cantonese speakers use Chinese characters to reflect their dialect with no issues, while kanji remains a key part of Japanese writing. Even in South Korea, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper uses Chinese characters for its title, even as most of Korea has turned to hangul. Zev Handel talks about how classical Chinese came to dominate East Asia in his book Chinese Characters across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese (University of Washington Press, 2025). How do Chinese characters even work? How did Chinese script spread across the region? And what was it like to read and write in a language that you couldn’t even speak? Zev Handel is professor of Chinese linguistics in the Department of Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Washington. He is author of Sinography: The Borrowing and Adaptation of the Chinese Script and associate coeditor of Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Chinese Characters Across Asia. 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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

Rising prosperity was supposed to bring democracy to China, yet the Communist Party’s political monopoly endures. How? Minxin Pei looks to the surveillance state. Though renowned for high-tech repression, China’s surveillance system is above all a labor-intensive project. Pei delves into the human sources of coercion at the foundation of CCP power, examining the historical development of China's surveillance state, its relationship to economic modernization and political liberalization, and what might destabilize it in the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

In this volume, leading specialists examine the affinities and differences between the pan-Soviet famine of 1931–1933, the Ukrainian Holodomor, the Kazakh great hunger, and the famine in China in 1959–1961. The contributors presented papers at a conference organized by the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium in 2014. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

Growing up in a glittering new decade of possibility, Anran is radically different to her sister. Outspoken and idealistic, she relishes in challenging hypocrisy, unlike the older Anjing, whose memories of a turbulent past remind her of the perils of going against the grain. When Anran is gifted a stylish red shirt that becomes the talk of their sleepy hometown, adolescent delight is construed by her cynical teachers as another act of defiance. As they decide the young firebrand’s future, certain lessons can’t be avoided. Should Anjing shield her sibling from life’s hard truths, or will she let her blaze her own path? First published in China in 1984, Tie Ning’s bestselling coming-of-age novella My Sister's Red Shirt (Sinoist Books, 2025), translated into English by Dr. Annelise Finegan, depicts the loss of innocence and the challenges of being true to yourself in an era of unpredictable transformation. 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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

What does it mean to be British? To answer this, Multiracial Britishness: Global Networks in Hong Kong, 1910–45 (Cambridge UP, 2023) by Dr. Vivian Kong takes us to an underexplored site of Britishness – the former British colony of Hong Kong. Vivian Kong asks how colonial hierarchies, the racial and cultural diversity of the British Empire, and global ideologies complicate the meaning of being British. Using multi-lingual sources and oral history, Dr. Kong traces the experiences of multiracial residents in 1910-45 Hong Kong. Guiding us through Hong Kong's global networks, and the colony's co-existing exclusive and cosmopolitan social spaces, this book uncovers the long history of multiracial Britishness. Dr. Kong argues that Britishness existed in the colony in multiple, hyphenated forms – as a racial category, but also as privileges, a means of survival, and a form of cultural and national belonging. This book offers us an important reminder that multiracial inhabitants of the British Empire were just as active in the making of Britishness as the British state and white Britons. 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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

Today I’m speaking with Bernd Roeck about his book, The World at First Light: A New History of the Renaissance (Princeton University Press, 2025). Bernd is professor of modern history at the University of Zurich and director of the German Centre for Venetian Studies in Venice. Translated by Patrick Baker, The World at First Light is a truly magisterial work. Much ink and paint has been spilled illuminating and interpreting the cultural flourishing known as Europe’s rebirth. The Renaissance was chiefly marked by a revival in classical literature and philosophy, artistic and scientific innovations embodied by polymaths like Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, and William Shakespeare. In exploring this historical period, Bernd offers the most authoritative and up-to-date treatment of the Renaissance. Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

Chris Horton is a freelance journalist who has been based in Taiwan since 2015, before many Western publications had any dedicated presence on the island. Over the last decade, he has contributed to the New York Times, Bloomberg, The Atlantic, and numerous other publications regarding Taiwan-related topics. In this episode of the New Books Network, we chat with Chris about his debut book, Ghost Nation: The Story of Taiwan and Its Struggle for Survival (Pan Macmillan, 2025). Ghost Nation weaves together figures and events from across Taiwan’s present and history to provide an approachable narrative about how Taiwan came to be the vibrant island nation it is today, and the challenges that it faces amidst an increasingly assertive China. Tune in as we chat with Chris about everything from stinky tofu, Chris’ go-to rechao stir-fry restaurant in Taipei (Eight Immortals Grill), how one of Taiwan’s former Presidents tried to “Make Taiwan China Again” (and sparked a protest movement in the process), and why democratic countries ought to stand in solidarity with the “Ghost Nation” of Taiwan. Ghost Nation will be released on July 17, 2025, and is available for pre-order today.  Anthony Kao is a writer who intersects international affairs and cultural criticism. He founded/edits Cinema Escapist—a publication exploring the sociopolitical context behind global film and television—and also writes for outlets like The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Diplomat, and Eater. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies