In Dilemmas of Victory (hardcopy 2007), Chen Jian, who wrote the chapter The Chinese Communist ‘Liberation’ of Tibet, mentioned very briefly the role played by…
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Tag: Chinese History (Books)
The Dilemmas of Victory
It is easier to conquer a country than to rule it. Napoleon learned it the hard way after he conquered vast stretches of Russia. The…
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Woodblock: From Print to Art
Woodblock printing originated in China in the Tang dynasty and spread to Japan. So why did it become more culturally prominent and enduring in Japan?…
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Yellow and two recent books on China
These 2 recent books were bought by me to understand how far China has progressed since 1949. China Resurrected (2025) is a political history from…
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Imperial China – Part 1
The stability of the Chinese civilisation pre-1900 compared to the instability of European civilisation in the same period is striking. In Europe, there were constant…
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The Chinese Experience
The Chinese Experience by Raymond Dawson is an old book. Written and published in 1978 by an Oxford lecturer in Chinese history, it is an…
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The Three Kingdoms and Chiang Kai-shek
It is a well-known fact that Chiang Kai-shek is steeped in the Chinese classics. One wonders, therefore, whether this famous quote from the Three Kingdoms…
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China’s Restless Heartland
Why do some peasants in China rebel? Why did rebellions occur more often in certain areas, like the bandits of the Shantung marshes, the pirates…
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The Empire’s Last Crime Scene
A British girl was murdered in Peiping (now Peking) around midnight next to the Tartar City walls in January 1937. Her face was brutally mutilated,…
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The Chinese Civil War 1946-1950—Part 1
Decisive Encounters by Odd Arne Westad, published in 2003, is the only English book on the entire span of the Chinese Civil War, from post-WWII…
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