Where statehood is contested, questions of identity and territory define the political landscapeDespite maintaining de facto sovereignty, states like Taiwan find themselves unrecognized in today’s international system because another power claims the state as part of their territory. This fraught status, in turn, significantly affects the domestic politics of these places.Lev Nachman’s exploration of Taiwan’s political landscape after the 2014 Sunflower Mov...

Where statehood is contested, questions of identity and territory define the political landscapeDespite maintaining de facto sovereignty, states like Taiwan find themselves unrecognized in today’s international system because another power claims the state as part of their territory. This fraught status, in turn, significantly affects the domestic politics of these places.Lev Nachman’s exploration of Taiwan’s political landscape after the 2014 Sunflower Mov...

No one in the twentieth century had a greater impact on world history than Deng Xiaoping. And no scholar is better qualified than Ezra Vogel to disentangle the contradictions embodied in the life and legacy of China’s boldest strategist—the pragmatic, disciplined force behind China’s radical economic, technological, and social transformation.

Premier Zhao Ziyang reveals the secret workings of China's government behind the Tiananmen massacre—and why he was deposed for trying to stop it.Prisoner of the State is the story of Premier Zhao Ziyang, the man who brought liberal change to China and who was dethroned at the height of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 for trying to stop the massacre. Zhao spent the last years of his life under house arrest. An occasional detail about his life would sl...

A Project Syndicate Best Read of the YearOn the centennial of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, the definitive history of how Mao and his successors overcame incredible odds to gain and keep power.Mao Zedong and the twelve other young men who founded the Chinese Communist Party in 1921 could hardly have imagined that less than thirty years later they would be rulers. On its hundredth anniversary, the party remains in com...

Winner of the Lionel Gelber PrizeNational Book Critics Circle Award FinalistAn Economist Best Book of the Year | A Financial Times Book of the Year | A Wall Street Journal Book of the Year | A Washington Post Book of the Year | A Bloomberg News Book of the Year | An Esquire China Book of the Year | A Gates Notes Top Read of the YearPerhaps no one in the twentieth century ...

Xi Jinping has proven to be one of the most transformative political leaders of the twenty-first century. After a long career that began at the village level, he became General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and China's paramount leader in 2012. Few expected what would come next: a sweeping restructuring of China's political economy and political culture which included anti-corruption campaigns against the Party, and a full recalibration of China's relations with the outside worl...

The Unknown Cultural Revolution challenges the established narrative of China’s Cultural Revolution, which assumes that this period of great social upheaval led to economic disaster, the persecution of intellectuals, and senseless violence. Dongping Han offers a powerful account of the dramatic improvements in the living conditions, infrastructure, and agricultural practices of China’s rural population that emerged in this period. Drawing on extensive local interv...

Chinese politics are at a crossroads as President Xi Jinping amasses personal power and tests the constraints of collective leadership.In the years since he became general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, Xi Jinping has surprised many people in China and around the world with his bold anti-corruption campaign and his aggressive consolidation of power.Given these new developments, we must rethink how we analyze Chinese politics-an urgent task as China now has ...

"The wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in neighboring Croatia and Kosovo grabbed the attention of the western world not only because of their ferocity and their geographic location, but also because of their timing. This violence erupted at the exact moment when the cold war confrontation was drawing to a close, when westerners were claiming their liberal values as triumphant, in a country that had only a few years earlier been seen as very well placed to join the west. In trying to account f...

Understanding Chinese politics has become more important than ever. Some argue that China's political system is 'institutionalized' or that 'win all/lose all' struggles are a thing of the past, but, Joseph Fewsmith argues, as in all Leninist systems, political power is difficult to pass on from one leader to the next. Indeed, each new leader must deploy whatever resources he has to gain control over critical positions and thus consolidate power. Fewsmith traces four decades of elite politi...

Renowned for his coverage of China's elite politics and leadership transitions, veteran Sinologist Willy Lam has produced the first book-length study in English of the rise of Xi Jinping--General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since November 2012. With rare insight, Lam describes Xi's personal history and his fascination with quasi-Maoist values, the factional politics through which he ascended, the configuration of power of the Fifth-Generation leadership, and the country'...