100 Books Like The New China Playbook

I love this book because of the compelling answer it gives to one of the most fundamental questions: why are some nations rich and others poor? The answer is that it depends on the political and economic institutions in place, with wealth accruing to nations with “inclusive institutions.” Put simply, nations with intellectual and economic freedom are richer.

Why does freedom matter? Because freedom opens the stage to Schumpeter’s creative destruction! The authors prove this, remarkably, through examples from around the globe, and they even use examples thousands of years apart in history. This is a must read to understand the way in which creative destruction drives prosperity both today and historically.

Yergin is a master at weaving together geopolitics, economics, science and technology, policy, and culture to teach us about the critical role energy plays in defining the world around us. He is one of the few experts who puts energy at the center of his work, and he uses his understanding of history to inform his interpretation of the present.

Among other things, this book reveals the role global climate change plays in geopolitics today and will play in the future, and it reveals fascinating insights into the emerging Cold War between China and America. The nations with the most innovative technology in the energy sector are poised to remain dominant world powers in the future.

I love this book, first published in 1942, because it coins the now famous term “Creative Destruction”–the constant innovation in the economy’s means of production that drives capitalism’s prosperity.

In the process the book gives us an alternative to the too-often-deployed Keynesian policy of deficit spending. And, still, provocatively Schumpeter explains how socialism may undermine capitalism in the long run if we are not careful.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is the hot topic in the news today, but seldom do we see pundits try to explain it by drawing parallels to other communications or technological revolutions. Wheeler focuses, amongst others, on two paradigm-shifting revolutions: the invention of movable type (printing press) in the 1400s and the invention of the telegraph in the 1800s.

These two technologies upended the world and provided the foundation for massive changes brought forth by other events, including globalization, the Renaissance, scientific revolutions, and more. Wheeler does a great job of revealing the impact of these revolutions on all levels of society and provides a template for how to better understand the technological revolutions we are in the midst of today.

As a writer who works under China’s censorship, Mo Yan spins literary gold in his novel Frog by blending high farce with social commentary. Narrator Tadpole’s aunt Gugu, a feisty woman with extraordinary gifts, evolves from a legendary midwife to a demonic one-child policy enforcer, then becomes an incorrigible go-between for surrogate and intentional parents. Readers see how China and rural Gaomi townships have changed, almost beyond description, from Maoist times to the current hyper-capitalistic phase. Much of the story is funny, brutal, yet firmly grounded, as people endure, and many perish during a half-century of social and political turmoil.

Mei Fong has spent years documenting and traveling across China to meet the people who live with the consequences of the draconian one-child policy. I was riveted by this slim but expansive book, its searing clarity, deep compassion, and unflinching interrogation only avail to an outsider unhampered by the censorship in China. Mei Fong explores in depth how the one-child policy has changed every facet of social life from cradle to grave: courtship, marriage, women’s work, only children, adoption/baby trafficking, surrogate, IVF, aging, retirement, hospice/death, and much more. Weaving in with the author’s own quest to become a mother, Mei Fong weighs the cost of parenthood and asks the hard question: Why do we have children?

China's gargantuan size has haunted its efforts to become a modern nation. Anthropologist Greenhalgh argues that in the late 1970s, Chinese rocket scientists, influenced by doomsday policymakers in the West, convinced the Chinese government to impose a one-child family planning program. The draconian enforcement of the one-child policy subjected millions of women to intimate corporeal surveillance that resulted in uncounted numbers of forced abortions, hidden births, and suffering for the masses. By 2016, when the two children policy was instituted, family planning contributed to an unbalanced gender ratio, delayed marriages, and a possibly irreversible population decline. Social engineering is a modus operandi of the Chinese state, and ironically, its most famous strategy threatens the nation's sustainability as a world industrial power.

This book ripped my heart to pieces and somehow put it back together better than it was before. It profoundly changed my outlook on motherhood and freedom and showed me how those two things are intimately connected.

This true story of one woman, her husband, and their unthinkable life in China is riveting, chilling, hopeful, and tender. I cried, and then I cried some more. Copies of this book can be difficult to find; I’m so glad I found one. 

This novelized biography of a poet some consider China’s greatest pleases me over and over again. Rendering Li Po (sometimes Li Bai) as a libertine living on a barge, drinking too much and partaking with gusto in the pleasures of the flesh at the red-candle district near which he moors, really helps bring alive the great man’s life and work. There’s also a bit about his relationship with Du Fu, more of a straight arrow. Those two, along with Wang Wei really offer a picture of the Daoist life I so adore and the feeling of watching the world spin out of control in war but also the peace and solitude of a mountain retreat.

Many analysts have noted a more aggressive or assertive international posture by China in recent years, sometimes termed “Wolf Warrior Diplomacy” after a Chinese action movie from 2017 where a Chinese former special forces soldier defeats an American adversary. This book explains the origins and evolution of China’s diplomatic corp and how it has always been run on military lines, including having a twinning arrangement for diplomats where they are required to report on their partner if they become “ideologically impure.” Martin explains the reasons for China’s more assertive foreign policy in recent years, including through the weaponisation of trade and tourism and in one case the beating up of Taiwanese diplomats.