The Yangtze is the third longest river in the world after the Nile and the Amazon. The Yangtze is called in China merely as Cháng…
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Tag: Asian Politics
Truman and Global Conflicts
Vice President Truman played an outsize role in world history due to the untimely demise of FDR towards the end of WWII. Unfortunately, he was…
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Kino’s haul
I had a great harvest last Saturday. Not the harvest of souls as in Matthew 13:8. But of 4 excellent books at Kinokuniya. The House…
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1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline
1587 A Year of No Significance the Ming Dynasty in Decline, is an interesting micro view of Emperor Wan Li and 6 high officers of…
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The Age of Openness
The Age of Openness – China before Mao explores the Republican era from 1911 to 1949. Frank Dikotter in his long essay of 102 pages…
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The Handover of Hong Kong
Hong Kong was surrendered to the British for perpetuity by the Ching dynasty when Britain won the First Opium war. Kowloon was surrendered for perpetuity…
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Books on China
The Gate to China by Michael Sheridan and From Rebel to Ruler by Tony Saich are two newly published 2021 books on China. Both authors…
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China and the West
An excellent book slightly marred by an absence of endnotes. It’s a great pity as this really is a wonderfully narrated tale of a friendship…
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Mao: The Man Who Made China
This is arguably the best one-volume biography on Mao. Revised in 2017, Philip Short has written a very readable book backed up by tremendous research.…
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Mao Tse Tung (Part 1)
All biographies of Mao focus on his failures and foibles. They magnify his disastrous Hundred Flowers Campaign of Feb 1957, and the Anti-Rightist Movement that…
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