A digital magazine covering China, and books about and from China, publishing reviews, essays, lists and more

Murong Xuecun, formerly one of the last dissident writers left in China, is now living in exile. How does a novelist get to the point where he is one step from arrest?

China’s nationalist former leader has a mixed legacy. Two new books present him in a revisionist light — but what inheritance did the Generalissimo really leave behind?

Our round-up of recommended titles (and one anti-recommendation) from the past year, selected by our editors and various guests.

Our pick of five recent fiction books translated from Chinese into English, from donkeys that see ghosts to a dystopian vision of Hong Kong.

Our round-up of untranslated Chinese books from the Sinophone world, from “everyday feminism” to working-class struggles, and a globetrotting frog.

Three generations of China writers discussed how the nation, and the way outsiders observe it, has changed from the 1960s to today

This page lists all recent China books, defined broadly as any English-language book on or from China that was published in the last year. We update this list every other Thursday. If you think we...

The British adventurer’s 1936 account of his journey across the Tibetan Plateau and Xinjiang shows its age but remains a classic of travel writing.

Three new books grapple with the suppressed histories of modern China, from the Cultural Revolution to the Covid pandemic. But for every state effort to bury the past, there are those who seek to dig...

At the height of the Great Famine in 1960, a group of students exiled to the countryside launched a magazine that dared to tell the truth. Their convictions, and the love they bore for one another,...

The culinary writer discusses the history and diversity of Chinese food, and how it has been misrepresented in the West.

Introducing a new hub for intelligent commentary on all things China and bookish, publishing reviews, essays, lists and more.

When China opened up in the 1980s, how did fiction writers respond to their new-found — but fragile — freedoms of expression? The China Books podcast finds out

‘The Travels of Marco Polo’ is often held up as the earliest Western account of China and Asia. What’s actually inside the covers might surprise you.

Rural women in China have been disadvantaged and abused for millennia. A star Chinese journalist shows how in one village, little has changed.

This page lists all recent China books, defined broadly as any English-language book on or from China that was published in the last year. We update this list every other Thursday. If you think we...

Daniel A. Bell has been proposing a Confucian, meritocratic alternative to liberal democracy for decades. In a new memoir, his optimism for the China model rings false.

The veteran sinophile tells us about five books that shaped his relationship with China since the 1950s — and why ladders are an invaluable but treacherous conduit to the rafters.

Foreign correspondents have been instrumental in telling the story of how China has changed since World War II. So, we turned the microphone on them.

In early 2020, at the height of China’s early Covid epidemic, over a dozen American journalists were expelled from the nation. Where does that leave China coverage today?

In the first of our monthly book round-ups, we run through five recently published nonfiction titles to make sure are on your shelf.

In China, the 19th century is presented as an era of national humiliation. Two new books and an exhibition attempt to humanize it. But who gets to tell this story?

A 20th century Chinese public intellectual fell for the socialist dream, only to become disillusioned. His biographer tells us the full story.

Communist China, once all but impenetrable, opened up only to tighten politically again. Has Xi circled back to the Mao era? And what can we learn from six decades of China writings?

Join three generations of writers to mark the launch of the new China Books Review publication.

A new novel about the Chinese Civil War feels true to the author’s experience of it, but also amplifies the Party’s preferred version of the past.

From its earliest imperial history, China's bureaucratic system and civil service exams have ensured homogeneity and control. But at what price?

At the height of the Great Famine in 1960, a group of students exiled to the countryside launched a magazine that dared to tell the truth. Their convictions, and the love they bore for one another,...

A women’s rights activist, one of the 'Feminist Five' detained by authorities in 2015, discusses a banned Chinese book about the lives of female factory workers.

In a 1966 essay, the American historian and father of Chinese Studies reflects on centuries-old cultural and political differences in the (then) early days of Mao’s China.

In early 2020, at the height of China’s early Covid epidemic, over a dozen American journalists were expelled from the nation. Where does that leave China coverage today?

A Chinese novelist moves to New York. Uprooted in a new country, how can she make sense of her past? And why are they called garbanzo beans, after all?