Madame Mao by Ross Terrill is the only English-language biography of Jiang Qing, the last wife of Chairman Mao. First published in 1984, the one…
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Tag: Chinese History (Books)
The Gang of Four – Part 1
This book The Cultural Revolution on Trial, published in 2016, is the most recent book on the trial of The Gang of Four. The trial…
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Yongzheng
There are no English biographies on Emperor Yongzheng as far as I know. To the uninitiated, he is an unimpressive emperor compared to his father,…
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Gunboat Justice v Soft Power
Douglas Clark’s magnum opus 3-volume history of Britain and American Law Courts in China and Japan is an exploration of gunboat hard power and the…
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The Tiananmen Papers – Part 3
The Tiananmen Papers are fake documents. So asserts Alfred L Chan, [author of Xi Jin Ping, HC 2022 ed] [see p 277 Deng Xiao Ping…
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The Tiananmen Papers – Part 2
Are the Tiananmen Papers fake? Ezra F. Vogel, in his monumental Deng Xiao Ping and the Transformation of China [2011], has the best discussion. He…
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A Modern History of Hong Kong
Published in 2004, it is clear from the preface and Chapter 1 that the author is an Anglophile, despite his protestations that his intent is…
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The Steep Trail of Reform
Never Turn Back by Julian Gewirtz, published 2022, is a history of China in the 1980s. Julian using Chinese sources shows a China that was…
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China The Three Emperors – Part 1
The cover for the catalog of the famous exhibition of treasures from the Palace Museum of Beijing in the Royal Academy of Arts, London, held…
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Nine Centuries of Suzhou’s Evolution
Researchers into China’s imperial history can tap into a rich vein of historical data for two reasons. Firstly, Imperial China has a huge population of…
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