Richard Baum

China Watcher: Confessions of a Peking Tom

University of Washington Press, 2010

This audacious and illuminating memoir by Richard Baum, a senior China scholar and sometime policy advisor, reflects on forty years of learning about and interacting with the People's Republic of China, from the height of Maoism during the author's UC Berkeley student days in the volatile 1960s through globalization. Anecdotes from Baum's professional life illustrate the alternately peculiar, frustrating, fascinating, and risky activity of China watching - the process by which outsiders gather and decipher official and unofficial information to figure out what's really going on behind China's veil of political secrecy and propaganda. Baum writes entertainingly, telling his narrative with witty stories about people, places, and eras.

Richard Belsky

Localities at the Center: Native Place, Space, and Power in Late Imperial Beijing

(Harvard University Asia Center, 2006)

“The book is a true monograph based on dense research, but framed by a clear and fair discussion of existing scholarship, comparative issues and a conclusion suggesting the significance of the subject. Mr. Belsky's study manages, in the best traditions of the series, to use an engaging case study to illuminate varieties of socially generated forms of management and political action in modern China, as well as to better document the sources of modern China arising from Chinese society.”

--Pamela Crossley, Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER)

Mary Brown Bullock

The Oil Prince’s Legacy: Rockefeller Philanthropy in China

Stanford University Press, 2011

This book describes how Rockefeller philanthropy came to focus on elite science and medicine and ensured their ongoing importance in the American-Chinese relationship. That importance is still seen today in the ties of the two countries in natural and social sciences, the humanities, economics, and higher education. The Rockefeller family's involvement with China continues in the fourth and fifth generations, even as Rockefeller philanthropy is reshaped in response to China's rise as a global power. Understanding the origin, evolution, Cold War interregnum, and post-Mao renewal of Rockefeller philanthropy brings new clarity to the nature and tenacity of this ongoing bilateral relationship.

Paul A. Cohen

Speaking to History: The Story of King Goujian in Twentieth-Century China

University of California Press, 2008

The ancient story of King Goujian, a psychologically complex fifth-century B.C.E. monarch, spoke powerfully to the Chinese through their turbulent twentieth century history, yet most Westerners are unfamiliar with the impact of the story on China’s modern development. Speaking to History provides a previously missing chapter of China’s recent history by tracing the Goujian story as a source of inspiration and hope during each of the major traumas of the last century, and by exploring more generally why such stories are often contained within a culture and remain unknown to outsiders. Dr. Cohen, a professor of history emeritus at Wellesley College and an associate at Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies investigates the relationship between past story and present reality, and how the shared narratives of a community help to define its culture and illuminate its history.

Andrew S. Erickson, Lyle J. Goldstein, and Carnes Lord

China Goes to Sea: Maritime Transformation in Comparative Historical Perspective

Naval Institute Press, 2009

China's turn toward the sea is evident in its stunning rise in global shipbuilding markets, its expanding merchant marine, its wide reach of offshore energy exploration, its growing fishing fleet, and its increasingly modern navy. This comprehensive assessment of China's potential as a genuine maritime power is both unbiased and apolitical. Unlike other works that view China in isolation, it places China in a larger world historical context. The authors, all authorities on their historical eras, examine cases of attempted maritime transformation through the ages, from the Persian Empire to the Soviet Union, and determine the reasons for success or failure. Dr. Andrew S. Erickson is an Associate Professor in the Strategic Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College and a founding member of the department’s China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI).

Melvyn C. Goldstein, Dawei Sherap, and William R. Siebenschuh

A Tibetan Revolutionary: The Political Life and Times of Bapa Phuntso Wangye

(University of California Press, 2004)

“This is the as-told-to political autobiography of Phüntso Wangye (Phünwang), one of the most important Tibetan revolutionary figures of the twentieth century. Informed by vivid firsthand accounts of the relations between the Dalai Lama, the Nationalist Chinese government, and the People's Republic of China, this absorbing chronicle illuminates one of the world's most tragic and dangerous ethnic conflicts at the same time that it relates the fascinating details of a stormy life spent in the quest for a new Tibet.”

Kenneth J. Hammond and Kristin Stapleton, editors

The Human Tradition in Modern China

Rowman & Littlefield, 2007

Through compelling biographies of a range of historical figures both famous and obscure, The Human Tradition in Modern China presents a panorama of modern Chinese history that illustrates the great social and political changes that have occurred over the past 500 years. The contributors explore enduring themes that include the flexibility of the definition of Chinese in an era of imperialism and revolution, the tremendous transformations in gender relations, and the wide gap between the lives of urban and rural Chinese. Dr. Stapleton is the director of Asian studies and an associate professor of history at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York.

Carol Lee Hamrin, Editor, with Stacey Bieler

Salt and Light: Lives of Faith that Shaped Modern China

Pickwick Publications, 2008

Salt and Light presents the life stories of Chinese Christians who served as early modernizers, promoting China’s nation building and progress in the early twentieth century. The collection of portraits, which include anecdotes and photographs, highlights the character of ten pioneers in the modern professions of education, medicine, journalism and diplomacy, and the ways they were motivated by faith to introduce practical social reforms to support the building of China’s civil society. The portraits touch on patterns of cooperation between foreign and Chinese partners, the contributions to China of Western-educated professionals and the transnational nature of modern Chinese Christianity. Dr. Hamrin is a research professor at George Mason University and a senior associate with Global China Center.

Sheila Melvin and Jindong Cai

Rhapsody in Red: How Western Classical Music Became Chinese

(Algora Publishing, 2004)

“A very rich study of China, Rhapsody in Red not only focuses on Western classical music, but also covers the events related to the importation of Western culture to China, from Matteo Ricci in the Ming dynasty to the present craze for building opera houses and symphony orchestra halls in Shanghai, Beijing and other big cities. Well informed and engagingly written, the book is a real treat for those who are interested in China and music in general.”

Graham Peck, Introduction by Robert A. Kapp

Two Kinds of Time

University of Washington Press, 2008

Graham Peck’s Two Kinds of Time, first published in 1950, is an engaging eye-witness narrative of China on the eve of revolution, and remains an important source of historical and political insights. Peck made his first trip to China in 1935 and served with the U.S. office of War Information in China throughout the 1940s. In a new introduction to this re-issued classic, Dr. Kapp highlights the book’s unique writing and illustrations and notes its role as a thought-provoking tool for Americans seeking to understand China and both the immense changes and profound continuities that today’s China embraces. Dr. Kapp, president of Robert A. Kapp & Associates, has spent four decades in the China field, including as president of the US-China Business Council from 1994 to 2004.

Edward J. M. Rhoads

Stepping Forth into the World: The Chinese Educational Mission to the United States, 1872-81

Hong Kong University Press, 2011

Some 130,000 students from China now study a variety of fields in colleges and universities around the United States. What about the first Chinese students in this country? A project of the self-strengthening movement during the late Qing dynasty, the Chinese Education Mission dispatched 120 students – some as young as 11 years old – to gain technological expertise in the American education system. They served as early ambassadors to the United States, lived with host families throughout New England, and many attended college at some of the nation’s most elite universities. The program was abruptly ended in 1881, sending most of the scholars into positions in the Chinese civil service. Though some of the “CEM boys” had difficulty reintegrating into Chinese society and earning professional advancement, they remain pioneers that paved the way for the many Chinese students in the United States today. This fascinating tale of one of the first meetings between East and West presents not only Chinese history, but also the history of U.S.-China relations and of Chinese in America. It documents the struggle the students faced to preserve their culture, heritage, values and beliefs while attempting to integrate into their adoptive homeland.

Roy Rowan

Chasing the Dragon: A Veteran Journalist’s Firsthand Account of the 1949 Chinese Revolution

(The Lyons Press, 2004)

"He illuminates a pivotal historical period with intelligence and passion."

--People Magazine

Ezra Vogel

Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

Rowman & Littlefield, 2011

Once described by Mao Zedong as a “needle inside a ball of cotton,” Deng Xiaoping was the pragmatic yet disciplined driving force behind China’s radical transformation in the late twentieth century. He confronted the damage wrought by the Cultural Revolution, dissolved Mao’s cult of personality, and loosened the economic and social policies that had stunted China’s growth. Obsessed with modernization and technology, Deng opened trade relations with the West, which lifted hundreds of millions of his countrymen out of poverty. Yet at the same time he answered to his authoritarian roots, most notably when he ordered the crackdown in June 1989 at Tiananmen Square. This exhaustively researched book required over a decade of scholarship and hundreds of interviews to complete.

Madeleine Zelin, Jonathan K. Ocko, and Robert Gardella

Contract and Property in Early Modern China

(Stanford University Press, 2004)

“This book is essential reading for scholars and graduate students interested in Chinese legal, social, and economic history.”

—History: Reviews of New Books