Spent six months with 5 friends reading and discussing China. The goal was to understand what China is and what it wants. In my modern history read I got the impression that China was unique civilizational operating system very different from the western one. This deep dive solidified this impression but also gave me additional ones. The key one being that make contemporary China even more unique that it is the combination of ancient Chinese values (order, duty, family, the collective, foreigners are barbarians or at the very least strange strangers, and of course, the mandate of heaven) together with communism (the party is the vanguard of state and the people). This combination makes its ideology and self image very specific, strong, and, probably, unlikely to change.
Books read:
- Deng Xiaoping, Vogel
- Un-restricted Warfare, Qiao, Wang
- On China, Kissinger
- Age of Ambition, Osnos
- Country Driving, Hessler
- Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics, Huang
- The Governance of China, Xi
- How Asia Works, Studwell
- In the Dragon’s Shadow, Strangio
Planning a part 2 at some point, working list:
- Rival Partners: How Taiwanese Entrepreneurs and Guangdong Officials Forged the China Development Model, Jiehmin Wu
- The Making of an Economic Superpower: Unlocking China's Secret of Rapid Industrialization, Yi Wen.
- China's Economy, Kroeber
- Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future, Wang
- House of Huawei: The Secret History of China's Most Powerful Company, Eva Dou
- Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company
- The Party's Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping
- China's Economy, @arkroeber
- The Third Revolution, Economy
- United States and China, Fairbank
- China choice, White
- The Sand Pebbles, McKenna
- Maoism, Lovell
- The Economic History of China: From Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century, Glahn
- New Literary History of Modern China, David Der-Wei Wang
- Born Red: A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution, Yuan
- The Cambridge History of China book series
- Mao’s invisible hand, Heilmann
- Interesting Times: China, America, and the Shifting Balance of Prestige, Freeman
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