Most people are under the impression that Mao is a coarse and illiterate leader, perhaps because of his round and big Hunan facial features. That…
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Tag: Asian Politics
Day 1 & 2 Jiangxi tour (18 – 25 April 2026)—Part 1
The Soong Sisters are the most famous sisters in Chinese history. Sadly, the three sisters became estranged because of their husbands’ political beliefs. For that…
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Sir Robert Ho Tung – Part 2
The biography by May Holdsworth (2022) is noteworthy in two aspects. Firstly, she highlighted that Ho Tung was the person who put forward the idea…
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Red Dawn over China (2026)
This is a recent book by Frank Dikötter, a Dutch historian who became famous for his exhaustive and exhausting The People’s Trilogy. A reviewer has…
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Law, Religion, and Power
The main theme of The Fall of the Priests and the Rise of the Lawyers by Philip R. Wood (2016) is that religious authority had…
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The Struggle for Modern Tibet
The Struggle for Modern Tibet: The Autobiography of Tashi Tsering (1997) is an unvarnished history of Tibet from 1929 to the 1990s. Tashi wanted to…
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Red Star Over China
Red Star over China is now considered a classic work as it was the first account the world had of the Red bandits of China…
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A critical analysis of Mao’s achievements – Part 3
The Long March began with many defeats for the Reds. The Troika struggled to come up with a strategic plan for retreat. In January 1935,…
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How China Escaped the Poverty Trap
This 2016 book won two book prizes. It had been hailed as game-changing in its economic analysis of China from 1978 to 2016. Deng Xiaoping…
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China and Japan – Part 2
Japanese culture and arts only grew after absorbing Chinese traditions via Korea and China from 600 to 838 AD. Absorption was the most during the…
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