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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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00:31:12

India, China, and Climate Change Governance:...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/10/02

Can we expect leadership and responsibility from the Asian Global South in climate change governance? India, China, and Climate Change Governance: Leadership and Responsibility in the Asian Global South(Routledge, 2026)isa new book published by Routledge, edited by scholars from Singapore, Estonia, and Poland, explores this intriguing question by examining not only the domestic challenges Asian countries face in exercising leadership and assuming responsibility, but also the international

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00:42:05

Transient Becoming: Self-Improvement and Capitalist...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/09/30

How do individuals seek to become better persons in contemporary China? How do they navigate the complex demands of personal growth given the fragmentation of China’s moral landscape?Gil Hizi’s careful ethnography on “soft skills” workshops in China examines the pursuit and enactment of virtue, termed “capitalist virtuousness,” through the expanding genre of self-improvement.Transient Becoming: Self-Improvement and Capitalist Virtuousness in Contemporary China (NUS Press, 2026)reveals how these

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00:32:01

Wave Makers and the Rise of #MeToo in Taiwan: Media,...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/09/25

When the Taiwanese political drama Wave Makers appeared in April 2023, few anticipated its impact beyond the screen. Within weeks, survivors in politics, the media, academia and the arts began sharing experiences of sexual harassment and assault, giving momentum to Taiwan’s long-delayed #MeToo movement.XinLing Li’s new book, Wave Makers and the Rise of #MeToo in Taiwan: Media, Empathy, and Digital Testimony(Anthem Press, 2026), asks how a fictional series became a cultural catalyst. Li argues

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01:09:14

Playing with Plays: Drama and Early Modern Chinese...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/09/25

How was drama experienced in early modern China? It was not tied to a single medium such as the page or the stage, but operated in a media ecology—an environment in which it integrated other arts and media while being refashioned in a variety of arts and media.Playing with Plays: Drama and Early Modern Chinese Media Ecologies (Brill, 2025)explores a wide range of cultural experimentation, collectively termed “playing with plays:” the theatricality embedded in commentary, the poetic and visual

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00:57:08

Xiaofei Tian, "Writing Empire and Self: Poetic and...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/09/19

China’s early medieval period, from the fifth through the early seventh century, from the Northern and Southern Dynasties through the unified Sui, was a time of political fragmentation, military strife, and ethnic conflict. It also witnessed brilliant artistic creations as well as a full flowering of court culture, with poetry at its heart. How did poetry come to be regarded as the most potent form of cultural capital, a privileged literary genre, and a foundational skill for members of the elite

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50:12

Ming-sho Ho, "Be Water: Collective Improvisation in...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/09/13

During the eventful summer of 2019 in Hong Kong, the Be Water Revolution formed to resist the proposed extradition of fugitives to mainland China’s courts. With its name derived from martial arts master Bruce Lee’s adage “formless and shapeless like water,” the incident turned out to be the city’s largest episode of contentious politics and was unique for using impromptu communication among participants and the absence of central leadership.InBe Water: Collective Improvisation in Hong Kong's

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41:46

Emeka Umejei, "China in African Media: Between...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/09/12

At its core, China in African Media: Between Influence Operations and Decolonization (Bloomsbury, 2026) is a book about power, journalism, geopolitical influence, and knowledge production in China–Africa relations. It examines how the People’s Republic of China has moved beyond simply establishing Chinese media organizations such as Xinhua and CGTN in Africa toward a much more dispersed system of engagement. Conceptualizing these engagements collectively as a multimodal or mixed-media ecology of

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62:01

Gavin Healy, "A Guide to Mao’s China: Showing the...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/09/11

A Guide to Mao’s China: Showing the Nation to Foreign Guests(Cornell UP, 2026) byGavin Healyexplores how tourism was reshaped during the Mao era. It follows the transformation of once-private travel agencies after 1949, the efforts of China's state tourism bureaucracy to reconcile welcoming foreign visitors with earning foreign currency, and the ways tourism workers reimagined service occupations such as tour guiding and waiting tables in the context of socialist ideology. By drawing on government

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34:28

Emily Matson, "China’s Date Debate: How Manchurian...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/09/06

China’s Date Debate: How Manchurian Scholars Rewrote World War II(UMichigan Press, 2026) by Dr. Emily Matson is an in-depth investigation of the Chinese Communist Party’s remapping of China’s World War II timeline from eight years (1937–1945) to fourteen years (1931–1945). Instead of the previously accepted starting date of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on July 7, 1937, the Chinese Communist Party defined the war’s starting date as the Mukden Incident on September 18, 1931, which triggered the

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32:20

Whistling Arrows and Heavenly Horses: The Han-Xiongnu...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/09/02

John Ross speaks with Scott Forbes Crawford about his bookThe Han-Xiongnu War, 133 BC–89 AD(Pen & Sword Military, 2024)For more than two centuries, Han China fought a bitter struggle against the Xiongnu, a powerful confederation of horse-riding nomads from the Asian steppe. This was far more than a border war. It helped shape the future of China, transformed Central Asia, and opened the routes that would become known as the Silk Road.In writing this history, Scott followed the example of China’s

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59:46

Nancy Yunhwa Rao, "Inside Chinese Theater: Community...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/08/31

The first large number of Chinese immigrants began arriving in the United States in the 1840s, and Chinese opera troupes were not far behind. InInside Chinese Theater: Community and Artistry in Nineteenth Century California and Beyond(U Illinois Press, 2025), Nancy Yunhwa Rao writes the story of the flourishing and resiliency of Chinese opera in America. Chinese opera troupes brought with them an important cultural reminder of China that helped immigrants to build community and maintain connections

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31:42

Corrado Neri, "Taiwanese Horror Cinema in the 21st...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/08/30

Taiwanese cinema is internationally celebrated for the auteurs of the Taiwan New Cinema. Yet over the past fifteen years, ghosts, demons, curses and haunted screens have become increasingly prominent, turning horror from a marginal genre into an important strand of Taiwan’s popular cinema. Professor Corrado Neri’s new book, Taiwanese Horror Cinema in the 21st Century: Spectral Narratives and Screen Culture(Anthem Press, 2026), explores this transformation. Neri argues that Taiwanese horror

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45:25

Catherine S. Chan, "Savage: The Making of Modern Dogs...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/08/29

Savage: The Making of Modern Dogs in British Hong Kong (Cornell University Press, 2026) explores the dark side of colonial modernity through canine eyes, showing the many ways that dogs involuntarily contributed to the modernization of twentieth-century Hong Kong. Dr. Catherine S. Chan follows the piecemeal transplantation of British animal humanitarianism as pedigree dogs accompanied hardening class differences, dogmeat became a contested racial issue, and dogs were roped into the long list

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15:32

China Office of Finnish Industries

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/08/27

Why have Finland’s biggest multinationals teamed up to create a globally unique analysis hub just to decode the future of China? Meet the analysts who are nurturing the next generation of Finnish expertise to bridge the gap between Nordic business and Chinese policy.In this episode, Julie Yu-Wen Chen at the University of Helsinki talks to Kevin Broady, Marleena Makkonen and Anton Karppanen, three analysts from theChina Office of Finnish Industriesto understand their mission. The China Office of

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46:18

Yuri Pines, "China's Aristocratic Age: Politics and...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/08/27

The Springs-and-Autumns period is a strange period in Chinese history. Coming after the decline of the Zhou, and before the famous Warring States Period, this period of Chinese history features a large number of small states with no powerful hegemon, no strong sense of the mandate of heaven, rules of chivalry that wouldn’t seem out of place in medieval Europe, and roles passed down through lineage–and not awarded on the basis of merit. Historian Yuri Pines calls this period China’s "aristocratic

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70:00

Chenchen Zhang, "Easting the West: Theorizing the...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/08/25

With commentary on the emergence of a ‘multipolar’ world, of transatlantic rifts and the rise of ‘middle powers’ ubiquitous, tales of the decline of something called ‘the West’ seem to be everywhere. Yet the meanings the idea of ‘the West’ acquires in spaces beyond it tell us at least as much about the state of the world as portents of its demise. Based on a combination of cultural analysis of historical writings and—most strikingly—deep immersion in often very spicy Chinese social media

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39:48

Edward Goldring, "Purges: How Dictators Fight to...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/08/24

Purges: How Dictators Fight to Survive (Cornell University Press, 2026) by Dr. Edward Goldring delves into one of the key tactics that autocrats deploy to maintain power: the removal of individuals from within the regime. From Kim Jong Un's execution of his uncle to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's removal of over a hundred Turkish generals, purges bear significant consequences for the survival and endurance of autocrats. Yet much remains unknown about why dictators use purges and whether they

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31:48

Old Lhasa: A Biography of a Sacred City

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/08/23

Michael Aldrich joins John Ross to discussOld Lhasa: A Biography, his richly detailed portrait of Tibet’s historic capital. It’s the third book in his trilogy on Asian cultural centers. He wrote the first two, on Beijing and Ulaanbaatar, while living in those cities, where he worked as a lawyer. There was no opportunity for this with Lhasa, so he had to rely on multiple trips (from his home in Taiwan) and an incredible amount of reading and research. Rather than writing a conventional history,

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64:48

Mark Leonard, "Surviving Chaos: Geopolitics When the...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/08/22

"Expansive visions. Universal institutions. Ideas of progress. Itwas on the back of these that the West surged ahead and built a global order. I was born into that world. But my children have entered a world of Un-order." We live in an explosive world. Trump is blowing up political order. Xi Jinping is scrambling the economy. And Putin is redrawing the map of Europe. At a time when every crisis bleeds into the next — from pandemics and wars to climate shocks and AI revolutions — the old

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50:26

China Comes to Town: Chinese Investment and Local...

New Books in Chinese Studies ·

2026/08/21

Chinese investment in the United States has become an increasingly contentious issue that is much more complicated than headlines suggest. In this episode, we reflect on recent debates in Michigan’s democratic primary and use it as a jumping-off point to examine more than 25 years of Chinese investment in the US and subnational relationships with Chinese business. We’re joined by Emily Conrad, whose research examines Chinese manufacturing investment in the US. We discuss where investment is

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