New Books in Chinese Studies

On the podcast today I am joined by Gareth Breen, Assistant Professor in anthropology at University of Sussex. Gareth is joining me to talk about his new book, Sublime Sociality: An (Auto)Ethnographic Theory of Chinese Christianity, out now with LSE Press.
Sublime Sociality follows the deeply influential, nameless religious movement formed by a transnational Sino-Taiwanese community of followers of Witness Li. The movement is now considered one of the first indigenous Chinese Christian groups of the twentieth century and the only one to become a global phenomenon in the twenty-first.
In this book, anthropologist Gareth Breen asks: what is ‘Chinese’ about ‘Chinese Christianity’? He locates its distinctiveness in followers’ pursuit of what they call ‘organic oneness’, which Breen describes as a form of ‘sublime sociality’ that combines spontaneous social interaction with countervailing tendencies towards conformity and routine. By examining how unity is sustained through the everyday rhythms of church life—from meetings and daily prayer to communal meals and social groups—Breen offers a compelling portrait and penetrating analysis of Chinese Christianity, while bringing a new perspective to the anthropology of religion.
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Contrasts classical Greek ontology ("the science of being in itself") with Confucian "zoetology" ("the art of living"). In Living Chinese Philosophy: Zoetology As First Philosophy (SUNY Press, 2025), Roger T. Ames uses comparative cultural hermeneutics as a method for contrasting classical Greek ontology ("the science of being in itself") with classical Chinese "zoetology" ("the art of living"), which is made explicit in the Yijingor Book of Changes. Parmenides, Plato, and Aristotle give us a substance ontology grounded in "being qua being" or "being per se" (to on he on) that guarantees a permanent and unchanging subject as the substratum for the human experience. This substratum or essence includes its purpose for being (telos) and defines the "what-it-means-to-be-a-thing-of-this-kind" (eidos) of any particular thing, thus setting a closed, exclusive boundary and the strict identity necessary for a particular thing to be "this" and not "that." In the Book of Changes, we find a vocabulary that makes explicit cosmological assumptions that are a stark alternative to this substance ontology. It also provides the interpretive context for the canonical texts by locating them within a holistic, organic, and ecological worldview. To provide a meaningful contrast with this fundamental assumption of on or "being," we might borrow the Greek notion of zoe or "life" and create the neologism "zoe-tology" as "the art of living" (shengshenglun). This cosmology begins from "living" (sheng) itself as the motive force behind change and gives us a world of boundless "becomings": not "things" that are but "events" that are happening, a contrast between an ontological conception of human "beings" and a process conception of what the author calls human "becomings." The Host's reading notes: "Being qua being" modality of dealing with change and no-change prioritizes no-change, mistakes stability as eternity, confuses order with hierarchy; zoetological paradigm of change and no-change encourages complexity-enhancing modes of how change happen, nurtures difference-enriching modalities of encounter, decodes stability as adaptability, and considers order as emergent, evolving patterns of co-living and becoming-with. If you are interested in continuing the conversation with Prof. Ames, please contact the host (xzu@usc.edu) for Prof. Ames's email address.

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The podcast covers the book Satirical Tibet: The Politics of Humor in Contemporary Amdo (U Washington Press, 2025), which is about satirical speech traditons from Amdo region of Tibet and the role of zurza in Tibetan cultural production and modernity. Tune in to find out more about satire, languages, cultures of what's funny and why.

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The Bund's grand facades and the leafy streets of the former French Concession are usually read as monuments to Western enterprise in China. But those buildings were raised by Chinese labor, and the concessions that defined old Shanghai could not have run without the Chinese who served, traded, and lived inside them. In Shanghai: The Story of China's Most Dynamic City (Yale University Press: 2026), Michael Dillon sets out to tell the city's story from the Chinese side.
Michael's new book follows the city from a small fishing town on the Huangpu River, a tributary of the Yangtze, through the Opium War and the treaty ports, the foreign concessions, the Japanese occupation, and the Communist takeover, to its place today as the most representative city of China's forward-looking, economy-driven modernization. Drawing on Chinese-language sources, Michael argues that Shanghai's history has been told for too long through Western eyes.
Michael joins the show today to talk about Shanghai's long rivalry with Beijing, the 1927 Shanghai Massacre, the Cultural Revolution, and Deng Xiaoping's later admission that leaving Shanghai out of the first special economic zones was a mistake.
Michael Dillon is professor of history and an affiliate of King’s College London’s Lau China Institute. An expert on modern Chinese history, politics, and society, he is the author of numerous books, including We Need to Talk About Xi, a history of modern China, and biographies of Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping.
You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Shanghai. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.
Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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Making Sense of China's Economy (Routledge, 2023) untangles China’s complex economic structure, evolving issues and curious contradictions, and explains some key features of this most puzzling of global economic powerhouses. This book reveals how factors such as demographics, the initial stage of development in 1978, the transition away from full state ownership and central planning, the dual urban-rural society, and a decentralised governance structure have combined to shape the economy, its development and its reforms. It shows how the pragmatic and adaptive nature of China’s policymaking upends familiar perspectives and hinders simple cross-country comparisons. The book also explores crucial topics including the property market, debt accumulation and environmental challenges. In this book, Tao Wang innovatively weaves the multiple strands of China’s economy into a holistic and organic tapestry that gives us unique insights from both a Chinese and an international perspective. This book is critical reading for business leaders, investors, policymakers, students, and anyone else hoping to understand China’s economy and its future evolution and impact, written by a specialist who has studied the country from both inside and out.
Tao Wang is senior advisor at UBS Investment Bank in Hong Kong, and until recently was chief China economist at the firm.
Michael Leger is Policy Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford.
Lucas Tse is Examination Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.

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