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PODCAST

New Books in Chinese Studies

New Books Network

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox:

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58:03

Daniela Stockmann and Ting Luo, "Governing Digital...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/02/11

China's approach to digital governance has gained global influence, often evoking Orwellian 'Big Brother' comparisons. Governing Digital China (Cambridge UP, 2025) challenges this perception, arguing that China's approach is radically different in practice. This book explores the logic of popular corporatism, highlighting the bottom-up influences of China's largest platform firms and its citizens. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and nationally representative surveys, the authors track governance of

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62:27

Hang Tu, "Sentimental Republic: Chinese Intellectuals...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/02/11

How does emotion shape the landscape of public intellectual debate? In Sentimental Republic: Chinese Intellectuals and the Maoist Past (Harvard UP, 2025), Hang Tu proposes emotion as a new critical framework to approach a post-Mao cultural controversy. As it entered a period of market reform, China did not turn away from revolutionary sentiments. Rather, the post-Mao period experienced a surge of emotionally charged debates about red legacies, ranging from the anguished denunciations of Maoist

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29:27

China’s Climate and Air Quality Governance and...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/02/06

When it comes to the global challenges posed by climate change and environmental issues, China has been presented both as a source of problems and a provider of solutions. In this episode, we examine the current state of China’s climate and environmental policies with Dr. Hermann Aubié, whose research focuses on China’s climate and air quality governance and its policy relevance for EU-China relations. What is the on-the-ground reality of climate and air quality efforts in China at the moment, and

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55:45

Ning Leng, "Politicizing Business: How Firms Are Made...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/02/04

In her new book, Politicizing Business: How Firms Are Made to Serve the Party-State in China (Cambridge, 2025), Ning Leng shows how Chinese officials systematically treat formally private firms as political instruments, extracting services that advance careers and maintain social control—often at the expense of business interests, economic efficiency and sustainable development. Ning Leng is an Assistant Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University.Interviewer Peter

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66:15

Gregory T. Chin and Kevin P. Gallagher, "China and...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/02/02

China and the Global Economic Order (Cambridge University Press, 2026) examines China's evolving relations with the Bretton Woods institutions (BWIs), specifically the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group from the 1980s through 2025. Using a combination of new qualitative findings and quantitative datasets, the authors observe that China has taken an evolving approach to the BWIs in order to achieve its multiple agendas, acting largely as a 'rule-taker' during its first two decades

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57:43

Stevan Harrell, "An Ecological History of Modern...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/02/01

Is environmental degradation an inevitable result of economic development? Can ecosystems be restored once government officials and the public are committed to doing so? These questions are at the heart of Stevan Harrell's An Ecological History of Modern China (University of Washington Press, 2023), a comprehensive account of China's transformation since the founding of the People's Republic from the perspective not of the economy but of the biophysical world. Examples throughout illustrate how

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42:35

Gaoheng Zhang, "Italian Dumplings and Chinese Pizzas:...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/01/31

Italian Dumplings and Chinese Pizzas: Transcultural Food Mobilities (Fordham UP, 2025) by Dr. Gaoheng Zhang designs a novel analytical framework to approach transcultural food mobilities, a culinary phenomenon that has been with us for decades as a result of colonialism and globalization.Why is it surprising for some of us to read the pairing of “Chinese” with “pizzas” and “Italian” with “dumplings,” such as proposed in the book’s title? After all, in some regions of the two countries, Italians eat

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55:27

Jenny Banh, "Fantasies of Hong Kong Disneyland:...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/01/25

Fantasies of Hong Kong Disneyland: Attempted Indigenizations of Space, Labor, and Consumption (Rutgers UP, 2025) examines the attempt to transplant Disney's "happiest place on Earth" ethos to Hong Kong—with unhappy results. Focusing on the attempted localization and indigenization of this idea in a globalized transnational park, the book delves into the three-way dynamics of an American culture-corporation's intentions, China's government investment, and Hong Kong. The triple actors introduce an

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33:01

Cross-Border Intimacies: Affect and Emotions in...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/01/23

Transnational marriage migration is among the many features of cross-border mobility that characterise the globalised world. This is also the case in the Taiwan Strait, where the complicated political situation between Taiwan and the Chinese mainland adds a unique dimension to the phenomenon. In this episode, we talk to Dr. Lara Momesso, whose new book Cross-Border Intimacies: Affect and Emotions in Marriage Migration Between China and Taiwan (Manchester, 2025) builds on fifteen years of research

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79:15

Di Wu et. al, eds., "China As Context: Anthropology,...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/01/16

A provocative collaborative project, China as Context challenges the marginalization of Chinese-grounded ideas in academia, arguing that neglecting China distorts our understanding of global complexities. Through diverse ethnographic perspectives, this volume repositions China, urging a holistic, post-global approach to the social sciences amid shifting global dynamics.Decades-old calls to recognise China’s significance for anthropological theory and the social sciences are more urgent than ever

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69:14

Alvin K. Wong, "Unruly Comparison: Queerness, Hong...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/01/13

How do we compare across languages, media, and histories, all without flattening differences? And what might Hong Kong teach us about doing comparison differently?Alvin K. Wong examines these and other questions in Unruly Comparison: Queerness, Hong Kong, and the Sinophone (Duke UP, 2025), a wide-ranging and thought-provoking study of queerness in Hong Kong. Bringing together Sinophone literature, independent and commercial cinema, documentary films, and visual art, the book asks how Hong Kong’s

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34:14

Dylan Loh, "China's Rising Foreign Ministry:...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/01/07

How has China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs transformed itself into one of the most assertive diplomatic actors on the global stage? What explains the rise of “wolf warrior” practices, and how should we interpret Beijing’s evolving diplomatic identity?In this episode, Duncan McCargo speaks with Dylan Loh, an Associate Professor in the Public Policy and Global Affairs programme at Nanyang Technological University (Dr. Dylan M.H. Loh - Associate Professor | International Relations Scholar | Chinese

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74:58

Thomas J. Mazanec, "Poet-Monks: The Invention of...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/01/05

Poet-Monks focuses on the literary and religious practices of Buddhist poet-monks in Tang-dynasty China to propose an alternative historical arc of medieval Chinese poetry. Combining large-scale quantitative analysis with close readings of important literary texts, Thomas J. Mazanec describes how Buddhist poet-monks, who first appeared in the latter half of Tang-dynasty China, asserted a bold new vision of poetry that proclaimed the union of classical verse with Buddhist practices of repetition,

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89:30

Shuchen Xiang, "Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/01/04

A provocative defense of a forgotten Chinese approach to identity and difference. Historically, the Western encounter with difference has been catastrophic: the extermination and displacement of aboriginal populations, the transatlantic slave trade, and colonialism. China, however, took a different historical path. In Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea (Princeton UP, 2023), Shuchen Xiang argues that the Chinese cultural tradition was, from its formative beginnings and

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37:29

Kerry Brown, "The Great Reversal: Britain, China and...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/01/01

In the sixteenth century, Queen Elizabeth I tried to send several letters to her Chinese counterpart, the Wan Li Emperor. The letters tried to ask the Ming emperor to conduct trade relations with faraway England; none of the expeditions carrying the letters ever arrived.It’s an inauspicious beginning to the four centuries of foreign relations between China and what eventually became Britain, covered by Kerry Brown in his latest book The Great Reversal: Britain, China and the 400-Year Contest for

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73:58

Thomas David DuBois, "China in Seven Banquets: A...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2025/12/28

In this episode of New Books Network, Laura Goldberg speaks with Thomas David DuBois, Professor at Beijing Normal University, about his book China in Seven Banquets, which traces Chinese history through seven extraordinary meals.Gastronomy and dining rituals offer a revealing historical framework: they make visible social order, ethical values, and political power, expressed through ingredients, preparation, display, and etiquette. DuBois shares stories of early ritual feasts shaped by Confucian

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78:40

Suvi Rautio, "The Invention of Tradition in China:...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2025/12/25

Today, anthropologist Professor Anru Lee is joining NBN as a guest host to interview me, Suvi Rautio, on my new book, The Invention of Tradition in China: Story of a Village and a Nation Remade published by Palgrave in 2024. In China, heritage projects are sprouting across the countryside carrying the promise of Xi Jinping’s “Chinese dream” as a call for the great revival and rejuvenation of the nation. Suvi’s book unravels the workings behind these promises through the story of remaking Meili, a

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42:49

Weila Gong, "Implementing a Low-Carbon Future:...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2025/12/24

This episode explores what China’s subnational climate experiments tell us about the possibilities and limits of climate leadership in an era of intensified geopolitics. We discuss how China’s domestic governance dynamics matter for international climate cooperation and competition, especially as Chinese actors become central in the global low-carbon transition. Thus, we turn our attention away from headline-grabbing climate summits and national pledges to examine the less visible, but often

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47:22

Joseph Torigian, "The Party’s Interests Come First:...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2025/12/18

Xi Zhongxun’s career spanned the entirety of China’s modern history. Born just two years after the 1911revolution that overthrew the Qing Dynasty, Xi was an early member of the Chinese Communist Party, tookpart in the Second World War, became an early leader of the PRC, was purged, survived the CulturalRevolution, was rehabilitated, and helped jumpstart China’s opening up as a leader in GuangdongProvince.He also happened to be the father of Xi Jinping, China’s current president. Joseph Torigian

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62:56

Yan-ho Lai, "Legal Resistance Under Authoritarianism:...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2025/12/16

Today I spoke with Senior Fellow at the Centre for Asian Law, University of Georgetown, Dr Yan-ho Lai (Eric) about his book, Legal Resistance under Authoritarianism: The Struggle for the Rule of Law in Hong Kong (Amsterdam UP, 2025). We spoke about the complexities of authoritarian consolidation by Beijing in the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong, and the role that lawyers have played in defending the rule of law. Uniquely positioned as both a Hong Konger and also an academic now outside

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1,035 results

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