New Books in Chinese Studies

The Port (present-day Hà Tiên), situated in the Mekong River Delta and Gulf of Siam littoral, was founded and governed by the Chinese creole Mo clan during the eighteenth century and prospered as a free-trade emporium in maritime East Asia. Mo Jiu and his son, Mo Tianci, maintained an independent polity through ambiguous and simultaneous allegiances to the Cochinchinese regime of southern Vietnam, Cambodia, Siam, and the Dutch East India Company. A shared value system was forged among their multiethnic and multi-confessional residents via elite Chinese culture, facilitating closer business ties to Qing China. The story of this remarkable settlement sheds light on a transitional period in East Asian history, when the dominance of the Chinese state, merchants, and immigrants gave way to firmer state boundaries in mainland Southeast Asia and Western dominance on the seas. Xing Hang is Associate Professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The Port: Hà Tiên and the Mo Clan in Early Modern Asia Ghassan Moazzin is Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

The Silk Road may be the most famous trade network in history. But the flow of silk from China to the Middle East and Europe isn’t the only textile trade that’s made its mark on Central Asia, the subject of Chris Aslan’s latest book Unravelling the Silk Road: Travels and Textiles in Central Asia (Icon Books, 2024), recently published in paperback. Drawing on over a decade’s worth of experience in countries like Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, Aslan notes that there’s really three “roads”: In addition to the famed Silk Road, there’s also the Wool Road, tied to nomads across Central Asia, and the Cotton Road, a modern-day source of economic growth–and environmental damage. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Unravelling the Silk Road. 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

Just Awakening: Yogācāra Social Philosophy in Modern China (Columbia University Press, 2025) uncovers a forgotten philosophy of social democracy inspired by Yogācāra, an ancient, nondualistic Buddhist philosophy that claims everything in the perceptible cosmos is mere consciousness and consists of multiple karmically connected yet bounded lifeworlds. This Yogācāra social philosophy emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries among Chinese intellectuals who struggled against the violent Social Darwinist logic of the survival of the fittest. Its proponents were convinced that the root cause of crisis in both China and the West was epistemic—an unexamined faith in one common, objective world and a subject-object divide. This dualistic paradigm, in their view, had dire consequences, including moral egoism, competition for material wealth, and racial war. Yogācāra insights about plurality, interdependence, and intersubjectivity, however, had the capacity to awaken the world from these deadly dreams. Jessica Zu reconstructs this account of modern Yogācāra philosophy, arguing that it offers new vocabularies with which to reconceptualize equality and freedom. Yogācāra thinking, she shows, diffracts the illusions of individual identity, social categories, and material wealth into aggregated, recurring karmic processes. It then guides the reassembly of a complex society through nonhierarchical, noncoercive, and collaborative actions, sustained by new behavior patterns and modes of thought. Demonstrating why Chinese Buddhist social philosophy offers powerful resources for social justice and liberation today, Just Awakening invites readers to think with modern Yogācāra philosophers about other ways of building egalitarian futures. Jessica X. Zu is assistant professor of religion and East Asian languages and cultures at the University of Southern California, Dornsife. She received her Ph.D. in Religion from Princeton University in 2020, and her Ph.D. in Physics from the Pennsylvania State University in 2003. She is an intellectual historian and a scholar of Buddhist philosophy. Her research uncovers surprising ways that ancient Buddhist processual philosophy was reinvented by marginalized groups to seek justice, build community, and change the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

Inclusion, Exclusion, Agency, and Advocacy: Experiences of Women With Physical Disabilities in China, With Worldwide Implications (IAP, 2024) explores the lived experiences of six women, including the author herself, with physical disabilities in China. The book provides in-depth descriptions of each woman's experiences in different aspects and analyze the commonalities and differences in their experiences through their life courses. The book explores answers to some of these questions: How do physically disabled women make sense of their experiences? What are some of the empowering and/or disempowering moments/events in their lives, if any? What are disabled women's experiences in terms of education, employment, relationships, family life, and social activism? How does some of the disabled women in the book become motivated and mobilized to work on disability issues? This book serves to amplify Chinese disabled women's stories and make their presence more visible. Too often, dominant narratives and depictions of disability are written by people without disabilities, while disabled people's voices are either invisible or secondary. Sadly, this phenomenon is not new and disability advocates have been faced with these types of narratives for quite some years. To have one's own voice and speak up is to claim subjectivity, agency, and power. Different stories told by women with disabilities themselves can enrich our understanding of disability and gender. These stories have the potential to challenge dominant and oppressive narratives prevalent in our ableist societies. The stories included in this book could provide space and potential to connect with disabled people (people with either visible or invisible disabilities) elsewhere. Women's empowering experiences and encounters shown in this book could inspire relevant stakeholders to think of ways to better understand and support disabled women in their environments. This book will have wide implications for readers not only in China, but also in other parts of the world. Many disability stories of exclusion and/or empowerment of the world are still hidden and not reflected upon. The author invites readers to reflect on their own experiences and how societies have impacted the life courses of individuals with or without disabilities in their respective social, political, economic, and cultural environments. Cultural and social change around disability can start with anyone who are touched by genuine stories of vulnerability and reflexivity, as the ones to be shared in this book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

Given what has happened since – from a global pandemic to wars in Europe, Africa and the Middle East – events in Hong Kong in 2019-20 can seem remote when seen from today’s perspective. But the momentous scale and significance of the protests there during those years, and the ensuing crackdown and increasing restrictions on Hong Kong’s distinctive politics and society, continue to resonate, not least for the tens of thousands who have left the territory recently. Jeffrey Wasserstrom’s Vigil – a brilliant encapsulation of the mood in Hong Kong in 2019 and its pre-history and precedents – was published soon after the protests that year reached their zenith. Six years on, this new release of the book includes a foreword by Guardian senior China correspondent Amy Hawkins as well as an Afterword by journalist Kris Cheng. This conversation with Amy Hawkins discusses the book and events since. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

Alibaba. Tencent. JD. Pinduoduo. Run down the list of China’s most valuable companies and you’ll find, for the most part, that they’re all e-commerce companies—or at least facilitate e-commerce. The sector created giants: Alibaba grew from just 5.5 billion renminbi of revenue in 2010 to 280 billion last year. But how did Chinese e-commerce firms shut out their foreign competition? How did they build trust in the system? Lizhi Liu answers these questions in her latest book, From Click to Boom: The Political Economy of E-Commerce in China (Princeton University Press: 2024), where she also studies whether the “Taobao villages” really worked, and how we should think about the “crackdown” on China’s tech sector in 2020 and 2021. Lizhi Liu is assistant professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, where she is also a faculty affiliate of the Department of Government. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of From Click to Boom. 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

Chinese workers helped build the modern world. They labored on New World plantations, worked in South African mines, and toiled through the construction of the Panama Canal, among many other projects. While most investigations of Chinese workers focus on migrant labor, Chinese Workers of the World: Colonialism, Chinese Labor, and the Yunnan-Indochina Railway (Stanford UP, 2024) explores Chinese labor under colonial regimes within China through an examination of the Yunnan-Indochina Railway, constructed between 1898-1910. The Yunnan railway--a French investment in imperial China during the age of "railroad colonialism"--connected French-colonized Indochina to Chinese markets with a promise of cross-border trade in tin, silk, tea, and opium. However, this ambitious project resulted in fiasco. Thousands of Chinese workers died during the horrid construction process, and costs exceeded original estimates by 74%. Drawing on Chinese, French, and British archival accounts of day-to-day worker struggles and labor conflicts along the railway, Selda Altan argues that long before the Chinese Communist Party defined Chinese workers as the vanguard of a revolutionary movement in the 1920s, the modern figure of the Chinese worker was born in the crosscurrents of empire and nation in the late nineteenth century. Yunnan railway workers contested the conditions of their employment with the knowledge of a globalizing capitalist market, fundamentally reshaping Chinese ideas of free labor, national sovereignty, and regional leadership in East and Southeast Asia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

In the past decades, various forms of Buddhism have emerged in-between, above, and beyond conventional conceptions of religious and spiritual life in China. Multiple Liminalities of Lay Buddhism in Contemporary China: Modalities, Material Culture, and Politics (Leiden UP, 2024) is a qualitative study exploring manifestations of the massive revival of Buddhism among non-monastic people and communities. The book wishes to answer the central question: How do Chinese groups and individuals practice Buddhism under the socio-political and cultural circumstances of contemporary China?  This inquiry is based on a sample of case studies from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (Taiwan, ROC), exploring Buddhist communities, individual practitioners, materials, spaces, practice modalities and relationships. Each chapter examines a significant paradigm that plays a role in the revival of Buddhism in China, highlighting how lay practitioners negotiate their spaces, resources, moral and ethical beliefs, and values, in the face of rapid societal changes. The research reveals how state policies, economic shifts, local trends, and global developments, such as environmental concerns and technological advances impact and transform older Buddhist traditions. Overall, the author argues for the concept of multiple liminalities as a framework to describe the contemporary predicament of lay Buddhism in Chinese societies. Accordingly, lay Buddhist actors occupy liminal positions or operate across ambiguous boundaries where realms of in-betweenness, serve as avenues for religious responses to the complex challenges Buddhism in China faces. Dr. Tiatemsu Longkumer is a faculty in the Dept. of Anthropology at Royal Thimphu College, Bhutan. His academic pursuits center on the fields of Anthropology and the Philosophy of Religion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

This podcast episode, hosted by Kikee Doma Bhutia from the University of Tartu, features journalist and analyst Aadil Brar discussing India's foreign policy amidst rising global tensions. The conversation focuses on India’s balancing act between the US, China, and its own strategic autonomy in a contested Indo-Pacific region. Key topics include India’s evolving role as a middle power, responding to China's assertiveness along the India-China border and in the Indo-Pacific, while maintaining its traditional non-alignment stance. India’s foreign policy is at a crossroads, shaped by five tense years since the Galwan Valley clash with China. Despite rounds of talks, the border remains uneasy and trust is scarce. Today, China’s assertiveness drives nearly every major Indian strategic decision-from military deployments and Quad partnerships to concerns over Beijing’s mega-dams on the Brahmaputra. Meanwhile, the US sees India as a key counterweight to China in the Indo-Pacific, but Delhi is determined to maintain its independence and avoid being boxed into alliances. As India watches China’s moves from the Himalayas to Taiwan, the question is clear: Are we witnessing a true pivot in Indian foreign policy, or simply a sharp recalibration to meet new realities? The answer will shape Asia’s balance of power for years to come. The podcast was brought to you by host Dr. Kikee Doma Bhutia a Research Fellow and India Coordinator at the Asia Centre, University of Tartu, Estonia. Her current research combines folkloristics, international relations and Asian studies, focusing on the role of religion and culture in times of crisis, national and regional identities, and geopolitics conflict between India and China. The podcast guest speaker Aadil Brar is a journalist and international affairs analyst based in Taipei, currently a Reporter at TaiwanPlus News. His reporting focuses on international security, U.S.-China relations, and East Asian security. Previously, he was a China news reporter for Newsweek and has contributed to the BBC World Service, The Print India, and National Geographic. In 2023, he was a Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs Fellow and a visiting scholar at National Chengchi University in Taipei. Brar holds a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of British Columbia and an MSc. in International Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. ​ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

Departing from conventional studies of border hostility in inter-Asian relations, Yin Qingfei explores how two revolutionary states - China and Vietnam - each pursued policies that echoed the other and collaborated in extending their authority to the borderlands from 1949 to 1975. Making use of central and local archival sources in both Chinese and Vietnamese, she reveals how the people living on the border responded to such unprecedentedly aggressive state building and especially how they appropriated the language of socialist brotherhood to negotiate with authorities. During the continuous Indochina wars, state expansion thus did not unfold on these postcolonial borderlands in a coherent or linear manner. Weaving together international, national, and transnational-local histories, State Building in Cold War Asia: Comrades and Competitors on the Sino-Vietnamese Border (Cambridge UP, 2024) presents a new approach to the highly volatile Sino-Vietnamese relations during the Cold War, centering on the two modernising revolutionary powers' competitive and collaborative state building on the borderlands and local responses to it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies