Notable Books About China That I Read in 2023
This is an expansion of a note I wrote in a group discussion on the
Sinocism Substack. I read a lot of books, but I spend far less time reflecting on them than I should, and I find that when I do pause to scroll back through the hundred or so titles for the year, that my mental responses run the gamut from “I read that this year?”… to “That was fantastic.”These books fall on the latter end of that spectrum, for sure.
So, while some of these titles were published this year, that’s not the defining criteria of this little list: it’s the China books that I read that were the most meaningful.
Links in the titles are to Amazon - I don’t use affiliate linking.
“Party of One: The Rise of Xi Jinping and China's Superpower Future” by Chun Han Wong. For a lot of people searching for a good primer about the CCP, “The Party” by Richard McGregor has been an excellent choice. “Party of One” focuses on how Xi has amassed power and remolded the Party in his image. It’s worth reading both books.
“Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and Their Battle for the Future” by Ian Johnson. Johnson, through this book and a new internet project China’s Unofficial Archives, is trying to document and preserve the work of Chinese writers and filmmakers who have dared to seek a more full accounting of the country’s history - a history that the Party has tried - with some success - to erase. Much of this work is about documenting the Cultural Revolution, which makes sense, given how catastrophic that era was to China’s people, culture and history. I came away with a much deeper appreciation of the work of these underground historians and the personal sacrifices they’ve made. Johnson is also so perceptive about the CCP - I found myself highlighting and learning from his observations.
“Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962” by Yang Jisheng. It’s fitting that Yang Jisheng is one of the writers profiled in Johnson’s book. He has meticulously and tirelessly documented in great detail two calamitous periods in China’s modern history: the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution. The English translators made large cuts to this text, as Yang dug deep into provincial records to discover the extent of the human loss and official actions in all of China’s provinces. But enough remains for a hefty book and a truly damning account of how Mao forced collectivization and whipped the Party into a frenzy over agriculture output, how provincial and local officials fought to outdo each other with their faked harvests, and how, as people in the countryside were reduced to eating dirt and tree bark and human flesh, almost no one did anything to stop it. The deep detail Yang includes about how officials at all levels of the Party reacted to the famine it largely created also provides a vital view of how a Leninist party functions. Devastating and captivating.
I also read Yang’s book “The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution” this year, and once again, Yang delivers an exhaustive account of how Mao unleashed a decade of upheaval on the country that Chinese people are still reckoning with today. I’ve read a number of books about the Cultural Revolution but this book really drove home how confusing, head-spinning and disastrous this era was for everyone.
Which brings me to:
“Red Memory: The Afterlives of China's Cultural Revolution” by Tania Branigan. Branigan’s book reveals not only how deep the wounds of that era go, and how they continue to impact the generations that have followed, but how much harder it’s become for anyone to discuss this era, outside the very narrow, approved Party story.
I also read “Wealth and Power: China's Long March to the Twenty-first Century” by Orville Schell and John Delury this year. The book was published 10 years ago, but it’s on so many lists of essential books about China, and now that I’ve read it, I understand why.
So those are some of my favorite books about China from this year - I’d love to hear your favorites, if you’d like to share.