How can a small democracy resist the influence of a powerful authoritarian neighbor? Taiwan is frequently praised for its successful economic development and peaceful transition to democracy, serving as a model for other developing countries. However, it faces substantial challenges, both from internal political divisions and external geopolitical pressures. As Stormy Seas reveals, Taiwan’s political…
Today, we’re welcoming novelist Tom Lin back to the show, whose new novel Babylon, South Dakota (Little, Brown, June 2026) moves his fascination with the American West into stranger and more uncanny territory. A Chinese family moves to a new farm in South Dakota; after the government takes an interest in a plot near their home for…
From Lab to Life: How AI Works in China argues that China built the world’s first governed AI ecosystem, a market in which regulation, commercial capability, and distribution developed together. Since August 2023, China has required consumer-facing generative AI services to clear government filing before public launch. The book traces how that machinery emerged and how it determines which models reach users and which companies gain distribution. Twenty chapters across…
What’s going on in the Chinese economy? China reported GDP growth of just 4.3% last quarter. Consumption is sluggish, exports are booming, electronics manufacturers and chipmakers are reporting huge profits as car sales slump. Joe Ngai and Nick Leung dive into the Chinese economy in their latest book The Next China Is Still China: An Insider’s…
The poetic tradition of China has historically found a warm welcome in Japan, and both cultures draw on a common well of poets, religious currents, and sacred texts. It is thus fitting that two new volumes by essential poets from each country should be published nearly side by side by New Directions. The first, Cold…
Among the earliest examples of sculptural art are representations of the human figure, like the 25,000-year-old Willendorf Venus discovered in Austria in 1908. In western art, fascination with portraiture and anatomical realism were features of the earliest sculptures around the Mediterranean, from Nefertiti and King Tut to Roman emperors and Greek gods. This important volume—the…
Born in Jiangsu Province in 1889, Xiong Yanghe grew up on his family’s estate. His early decades were marked by warfare among various factions within China and devastating encroachments by foreign powers as well. The worldview gave great impetus for his career choice and set him on a course that would affect all around him….
James Shea, whose day job is professor at Baptist University, is something of a fixture in the Hong Kong poetry scene. His latest collection Last Day of My Face, however, is published out of Iowa University Press, a result of it having won the Iowa Poetry Prize. It’s not a long collection, less than 60…
Many books about ancient Chinese history are written for those already in the know; there is a dearth of accessible narratives for the general reader. Happily, Andrew Meyer’s new book fills this gap. He skilfully recounts the Warring States Period (ca 470-221 BC), a chaotic era that followed the “slow moving crisis” of the Springs-and-Autumns…
East Asia’s Yuan Empire (1271–1368), led by the nomadic Mongol people and Qubilai Khan (1215–1294), was marked by cross-cultural exchange and significant developments in trade, technology, and infrastructure. The Mongol visual culture, however, has often been ignored or dismissed as insignificant in the operations of the Mongols’ own empire. The Woven Image: The Making of…
The norm in Chinese political thought for two thousand years has been, to quote Mencius, that “there cannot be two suns in the sky, nor two kings on earth.” Since only one faction can claim the Mandate of Heaven, there is no tolerance for rival claimants, nor for the notion that Chinese territory could be…
In 2012, China debuted its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, a refurbished Soviet-era ship from Ukraine. The debut of the Liaoning was largely thanks to a longtime pressure campaign by Liu Huaqing, the onetime leader of the People’s Liberation Army Navy and the man responsible for transforming China’s naval strategy. (China now has three carriers,…
The story of the Moy family—U.S.-born Chinese-American siblings who grow up in the first half of the 20th century—is one that spans the Pacific, covering New York, Chicago, and cosmopolitan Shanghai. It’s a story that spans the Great Depression, the Second World War, the Chinese Civil War, and the early Cold War—and stars one sibling…
In The Transpacific Chinese Diaspora, Chen examines the origins, rise, and reform of the Cantonese-dominated Chinese diaspora in Canada between 1788 and 1898. Combining a diasporic approach with both qualitative and quantitative analyses of Chinese and English documents, including previously untapped archival records of secret societies, community organizations, and family businesses, this book reveals the…
Tom Lin’s debut novel, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu, paid homage to the American Western, with a Chinese twist, and his lyrical writing style is well suited to the cowboy culture of the American Wild West. He’s back with Babylon, South Dakota, a novel just as colourful as his first. Where his first novel…