New Books in Chinese Studies

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 thought and of vast imperial banquets with hundreds of dishes – diving into fermented meat sauces, courtly excess, and the arrival of new foods via the Silk Road. Conversation also turns to the modern period, considering the globalization of Chinese cuisine and the circulation of foreign foods within China. A feast from film – in the opening sequence of cult classic Eat, Drink, Man, Woman – is explored, as is the potential of food security impacting China’s culinary future. In addition, DuBois shares how he recreated dozens of traditional recipes using modern kitchen techniques – all of which he includes in the book for the intrepid home cook. Thoughtful and engaging, the discussion invites listeners to see meals not simply as nourishment, but as moments where culture, power, and history come together. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

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 Dong ethnic minority village nestled along the margins of China, into a “Traditional Village” heritage site. In a past riven by deep political and societal disruptions, Meili becomes a medium for contesting, mediating and continuously inventing representations of tradition that aligns with the Chinese Communist Party’s mission towards continuity and stability. The outcome is an original depiction of the compromises that shape heritage-making in a rural ethnic corner of China. Filled with rich, fine-grained narrative and analysis, Suvi Rautio offers a unique lens to complicate the narrative of how heritage projects function by demonstrating the politics involved in inventing tradition and its far-reaching consequences in contemporary China today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

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 decisive, actors shaping China’s low-carbon transition. Implementing a Low-Carbon Future: Climate Leadership in Chinese Cities (Oxford University Press, 2025), a new book by Weila Gong, opens the black box of subnational climate governance in China and asks: who actually makes low-carbon policy work on the ground? Our guest, Weila Gong, is a visiting scholar at UC Davis’s Center for Environmental Policy and Behavior and a nonresident scholar at UC San Diego’s 21st Century China Center. She has held fellowships at Georgetown, Harvard, and UC Berkeley School of Law, and brings more than a decade of experience studying the politics and policies of low-carbon energy transitions in China. Her work is timely. Despite being the world’s largest carbon emitter, China has pledged to peak carbon emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, commitments that place it at the center of global climate cooperation and competition. We’re recording this episode in November 2025 as COP30 unfolds in Brazil, and at a moment when China is stepping into a more assertive role as a climate-technology power. Chinese officials and firms increasingly frame the country’s dominance in renewables, electric vehicles, and clean-energy supply chains as central to the global transition. Yet, as Gong’s book shows, climate leadership is not only forged through clean technologies or in international negotiating rooms and national policy announcements. It is also built, often unevenly, across hundreds of cities and counties within China. At the heart of this variation, Gong identifies a pivotal group of actors: mid-level local bureaucrats. These officials function as “bridge leaders,” translating national directives into locally workable policies, mediating between political leadership changes, and sustaining experimentation over time. In doing so, they challenge top-down views of China’s climate governance and reveal how bottom-up dynamics shape both domestic outcomes and China’s role as a global climate leader. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

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 has written an extensive biography of Xi Zhongxun, titled The Party's Interests Come First:The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping (Stanford UP, 2025). And he joins us today to talkthrough Xi’s long and very eventful life. Joseph is Associate Professor at the School of International Service at American University and a ResearchFellow at the Hoover History Lab at Stanford University. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including itsreview of The Party’s Interests Come First. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He canbe found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

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 Hong Kong, Dr Lai's work draws on some 77 qualitative interviews up to the period when the National Security Law was introduced in 2020. By documenting a unique transitional period in Hong Kong, this book serves as an important counterpoint to the dominant sovereign narrative and gives voice to many who are otherwise unrepresented. However, the learnings are inherently transferable in terms of bringing understanding of the role that lawyers play in defending the rule of law in situations of encroaching authoritarianism.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies