Here are 100 books that China Marches West fans have personally recommended if you like
China Marches West.
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I traveled to Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the summer of 2019, where I saw for myself many of the tools of surveillance and control that the Chinese Communist Party has used to turn the region into an open-air prison. Since returning to the United States, I have tried to draw attention to the Uyghur genocide through my published articles and through my book, Middle Country, where I tell the story of the Uyghur genocide by weaving facts, history, and analysis into a narrative account of the week I spent in Xinjiang. I hope that my book can make this profoundly complex and multifaceted issue more accessible to the average person.
This book provides the most accessible account of the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and the native peoples of Xinjiang. Holdstock draws on his own experience living in Xinjiang to show how the CCP’s failure to recognize the genuine grievances of the native peoples of the region helped to drive the terrorism problem that the CCP claims to be addressing today through its genocidal policies.
After isolated terrorist incidents in 2015, the Chinese leadership has cracked down hard on Xinjiang and its Uyghurs. Today, there are thought to be up to a million Muslims held in 're-education camps' in the Xinjiang region of North-West China. One of the few Western commentators to have lived in the region, journalist Nick Holdstock travels into the heart of the province and reveals the Uyghur story as one of repression, hardship and helplessness. China's Forgotten People explains why repression of the Muslim population is on the rise in the world's most powerful one-party state. This updated and revised edition…
I traveled to Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the summer of 2019, where I saw for myself many of the tools of surveillance and control that the Chinese Communist Party has used to turn the region into an open-air prison. Since returning to the United States, I have tried to draw attention to the Uyghur genocide through my published articles and through my book, Middle Country, where I tell the story of the Uyghur genocide by weaving facts, history, and analysis into a narrative account of the week I spent in Xinjiang. I hope that my book can make this profoundly complex and multifaceted issue more accessible to the average person.
Eurasian Crossroads is an essential resource for anyone seeking to learn about the complex historical context of the genocide taking place in Xinjiang today. James Millward, who is widely regarded as the leading historian of Chinese Central Asia, provides an accessible-yet-thorough examination of the various peoples and empires that have called the region home.
Since antiquity, the vast Central Eurasian region of Xinjiang, or Eastern Turkestan, has stood at the crossroads of China, India, the Middle East, and Europe, playing a pivotal role in the social, cultural, and political histories of Asia and the world. Today, it comprises one-sixth of the territory of the People's Republic of China and borders India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Mongolia.
Eurasian Crossroads is an engaging and comprehensive account of Xinjiang's history and people from earliest times to the present day. Drawing on primary sources in several Asian and European languages, James A. Millward surveys Xinjiang's…
I traveled to Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the summer of 2019, where I saw for myself many of the tools of surveillance and control that the Chinese Communist Party has used to turn the region into an open-air prison. Since returning to the United States, I have tried to draw attention to the Uyghur genocide through my published articles and through my book, Middle Country, where I tell the story of the Uyghur genocide by weaving facts, history, and analysis into a narrative account of the week I spent in Xinjiang. I hope that my book can make this profoundly complex and multifaceted issue more accessible to the average person.
This book is a concise examination of the pervasive ethnocentrism in contemporary Chinese society - which the authors refer to as “Han-Centrism.” Although it mentions Xinjiang and the Uyghurs specifically only a handful of times, one cannot hope to understand what is happening there today without also understanding the influence of Han-Centrism.
Han-centrism, a virulent form of Chinese nationalism, asserts that the Han Chinese are superior to other peoples and have a legitimate right to advance Chinese interests at the expense of other countries. Han nationalists have called for policies that will allow China to reclaim the prosperity stolen by foreign powers during the "Century of Humiliation." The growth of Chinese capabilities and Han-centrism suggests that the United States, its allies, and other countries in Asia will face an increasingly assertive China - and also one that thinks it possesses a right to dominate international politics.
I traveled to Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the summer of 2019, where I saw for myself many of the tools of surveillance and control that the Chinese Communist Party has used to turn the region into an open-air prison. Since returning to the United States, I have tried to draw attention to the Uyghur genocide through my published articles and through my book, Middle Country, where I tell the story of the Uyghur genocide by weaving facts, history, and analysis into a narrative account of the week I spent in Xinjiang. I hope that my book can make this profoundly complex and multifaceted issue more accessible to the average person.
In this book, Amelia Pang examines all aspects of China’s system of forced labor, which she explains has recently been deployed as a tool in the Uyghur genocide but has existed long before the genocide began. Importantly, she explains how Western consumers are complicit in Chinese forced labor through their choices to purchase the cheap goods that this system produces.
A Most-Anticipated Book of the Year: Newsweek * Refinery29 "Timely and urgent . . . Pang is a dogged investigator." --The New York Times
"Moving and powerful." --Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author
Discover the truth behind the discounts.
In 2012, an Oregon mother named Julie Keith opened up a package of Halloween decorations. The cheap foam headstones had been five dollars at Kmart, too good a deal to pass up. But when she opened the box, something shocking fell out: an SOS letter, handwritten in broken English. "Sir: If you occassionally buy this product, please kindly resend this…
I am a Professor Emeritus of Classical and Byzantine History, and I was fascinated by Attila and the Hun and Genghis Khan from early childhood when I decided that I would become a historian. I set out to write the history of the Eurasian nomads from their perspective, and so convey their neglected history to a wider readership.
This is the fundamental, well written work for the relationship between imperial China and the nomadic peoples.
I am impressed how Barefield perceptively analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of successive nomadic confederations from the Xiongnu down to the Mongols.
He argues convincingly, in my opinion, that often the Chinese Empire and the nomadic confederation often depended upon each other economically and militarily as is well seen in the alliance between later Tang emperors and the Uyghur Khans in the eighth and early ninth centuries.
Around 800 BC, the Eurasian steppe underwent a profound cultural transformation that was to shape world history for the next 2,500 years: the nomadic herdsmen of Inner Asia invented cavalry which, with the use of the compound bow, gave them the means to terrorize first their neighbors and ultimately, under Chingis Khan and his descendants, the whole of Asia and Europe. Why and how they did so and to what effect are the themes of this history of the nomadic tribes of Inner Asia - the Mongols, Turks, Uighurs and others, collectively dubbed the Barbarians by the Chinese and the…
There’s a surging Western school of thought which claims that there’s no Asia. Really? Just look at my personal cultural connections with all corners of Asia. As a Hindu Sindhi Singaporean, I can relate directly to India and Southeast Asia, which has an Indic base. My name, “Mahbubani”, has Arabic/Persian roots. “Mahbub” means “beloved”. My mother took me to Buddhist temples when I was a boy, too, giving me an intimate connection with China, Japan, and Korea. In short, Asia is intimately connected. The goal of my ten books has been to give voice to the larger Asian story in a world imprisoned by Western perspectives.
Global history is as yet a novel subject, even for the most insightful of historians. What Wang Gungwu, in his long conversations with Ooi Kee Beng, presents is a sweeping tapestry of human history that puts the focus on the Eurasian continent and its oft-forgotten actor, the Central Asian horseman.
"Modern Times," according to Wang Gungwu, "is Maritime." The ship took the place of the horse and thus changed the geopolitics of the world, bringing distrustful civilizational ends of the Eurasian Continent into uneasy contact with each other.
Ooi Kee Beng does a brilliant job of extracting Gungwu’s wisdom and making it accessible to lay readers. There is no better quick start for someone who wants to begin the journey of understanding Asia and Modern Times.
With China's transformation into a republic after two millennia as an empire as the starting point, Ooi Kee Beng prompts renowned historian Wang Gungwu through a series of interviews to discuss China, Europe, Southeast Asia and India. What emerges is an exciting and original World History that is neither Eurocentric nor Sinocentric. if anything, it is an appreciation of the dominant role that central Asia played in the history of most of mankind over the last several thousand years.
The irrepressible power of the Eurasian core over the centuries explains much of the development of civilizations founded on the fringes…
I was living in Xinjiang on 9/11 and got to witness the swiftness with which the state imposed strict regulations that harmed the Uyghur community. For me, this was an indelible lesson in the abuses of power and authority on people who just wanted to work, raise families, and enjoy their lives. Since then I’ve tried to raise awareness, first in my memoir, The Tree That Bleeds, then in my journalism. I hope my work helps people think about how to respond as both politically engaged citizens and consumersto one of the worst human rights violations of the 21st century.
Since 1949 the demographics of Xinjiang have been altered radically by waves of migration of Han Chinese, initially with the paramilitary bingtuan organisation, but in recent decades by economic migrants. Cliff’s book is an important reminder of how their presence functions in a neo-colonial fashion, and the influence that their needs and concerns have on official policy in the region – which to put it simplistically, is to keep them happy. Though he emphasises that Han in Xinjiang are far from a homogenous social group – something that often gets forgotten or obscured – the common viewpoints and concerns that emerge from his interviews are a sobering reminder of the difficulties in finding common ground between Han and Uyghur in the region.
For decades, China's Xinjiang region has been the site of clashes between long-residing Uyghur and Han settlers. Up until now, much scholarly attention has been paid to state actions and the Uyghur's efforts to resist cultural and economic repression. This has left the other half of the puzzle-the motivations and ambitions of Han settlers themselves-sorely understudied.
With Oil and Water, anthropologist Tom Cliff offers the first ethnographic study of Han in Xinjiang, using in-depth vignettes, oral histories, and more than fifty original photographs to explore how and why they became the people they are now. By shifting focus to the…
I was living in Xinjiang on 9/11 and got to witness the swiftness with which the state imposed strict regulations that harmed the Uyghur community. For me, this was an indelible lesson in the abuses of power and authority on people who just wanted to work, raise families, and enjoy their lives. Since then I’ve tried to raise awareness, first in my memoir, The Tree That Bleeds, then in my journalism. I hope my work helps people think about how to respond as both politically engaged citizens and consumersto one of the worst human rights violations of the 21st century.
This book is an ethnographic account of Uyghur suburban life in the mid-1990s, which might sound very far removed from the political and humanitarian crisis going on in the region today. Yet the portrait it offers of Uyghur family life, market trading, informal socializing, and forms of religious devotion has arguably never been more important, given that the Chinese state has been targeting precisely these benign, everyday practices and beliefs in recent years by separating children from their parents, sending officials to live with Uyghur families, and destroying traditional Uyghur homes. Reading it is an immersive, often funny, experience, which should make people understand the consequences of the state-sponsored violence these communities have been subjected to.
The Uyghurs, a Turkic group, account for half the population of the Xinjiang region in northwestern China. This ethnography presents a thick description of life in the Uyghur suburbs of Yining, a city near the border with Kazakhstan, and situates that account in a broader examination of Uyghur culture. Its four sections explore topics ranging from family life to market trading, from informal socializing to forms of religious devotion. Uniting these topics are an emphasis on the role folklore and personal narrative play in helping individuals situate themselves in and create communities and social groups, and a focus on how…
Like many Americans of my generation (boomer) who became China scholars, I witnessed the civil rights and anti-war struggles and concluded that we in the West could learn from the insights of Eastern thought and even Chinese Communism. I ended up specializing in modern political thought—I think of this field as the land of “isms”—nationalism, socialism, liberalism, and the like. I have lived in China and Japan, and spent twelve years as a historical researcher in Taiwan before returning to America to teach at the University of Connecticut. Today, I would not say China has the answers, but I still believe that the two most important world powers have a lot to learn from each other.
A good deal is known about the Westerners who dug up ancient artifacts in Central Asia (China’s Far West) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, not least because these explorers were great self-promoters. This book tells the story from the Chinese side, and it is a lot more interesting and complicated than you might expect. It is only with the birth of Chinese nationalism that the tens of thousands of artifacts now found in the museums and collections of the West came to be defined as Chinese and their loss defined as imperialist looting. By academic standards, this book is a page-turner.
From the 1790s until World War I, Western museums filled their shelves with art and antiquities from around the world. These objects are now widely seen as "stolen" or "plundered" from their countries of origin, and demands for their return grow louder by the day. In this pathbreaking study, Justin M. Jacobs challenges the longstanding assumption that coercion, corruption, and deceit were chiefly responsible for the exodus of cultural treasures from northwestern China. Based upon a close analysis of previously neglected archival sources in English, French, and Chinese, Jacobs finds that many local elites in China acquiesced to the removal…
I was living in Xinjiang on 9/11 and got to witness the swiftness with which the state imposed strict regulations that harmed the Uyghur community. For me, this was an indelible lesson in the abuses of power and authority on people who just wanted to work, raise families, and enjoy their lives. Since then I’ve tried to raise awareness, first in my memoir, The Tree That Bleeds, then in my journalism. I hope my work helps people think about how to respond as both politically engaged citizens and consumersto one of the worst human rights violations of the 21st century.
Roberts is one of the foremost authorities on the ‘terrorism’ issue in Xinjiang. The strong argument of this book is that the Chinese government has opportunistically used the US-led War on Terror as an excuse to repress all forms of dissent in the region by grossly exaggerating the threats they faced, which eventually became a self-fulfilling prophecy. In his view, the concentration camps, destruction of mosques, attacks on Uyghur intellectuals, and attempts to marginalise the Uyghur language amount to a ‘cultural genocide’. The book provides a concise and forceful recapitulation of Chinese policy in the region over the last two decades.
How China is using the US-led war on terror to erase the cultural identity of its Muslim minority in the Xinjiang region
Within weeks of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the Chinese government warned that it faced a serious terrorist threat from its Uyghur ethnic minority, who are largely Muslim. In this explosive book, Sean Roberts reveals how China has been using the US-led global war on terror as international cover for its increasingly brutal suppression of the Uyghurs, and how the war's targeting of an undefined enemy has emboldened states around the globe to persecute…
