New Books in Chinese Studies

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 fora, Chenchen Zhang’s new book Easting the West: Theorizing the Postliberal Conjuncture from China (Oxford
University Press, 2026) theorises the shifting significations ascribed
to ‘the West’ in China since the late-imperial collision with European
empires. Whether imagined as a source of modernity, a colonial
exploiter, geopolitical rival or—most recently—a civilisation sunk into
decadence and decay, ‘the West’—Zhang shows—is a foil for China-based
worldviews which, whatever their anticolonial or anti-Western
sentiments, are also entangled with Eurocentric hierarchies of race,
nation and gender whose patriarchal and civilisational histories are
rooted at least partly that very same ‘West’.
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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 achieve their intended effects.

Drawing
on an original global dataset on civilian and military elite purges in
dictatorships in addition to case studies spanning North and South Korea
as well as Turkey, Dr. Goldring examines the logic behind purges and
their consequences. He shows that dictators purge to consolidate power,
punish disloyalty, and scapegoat elites to alleviate popular threats.
But even as purges help dictators consolidate power early in their
tenure, purges actually weaken
their position when they have been in power for a long time, prompting
pushback. In the face of an increasing global shift toward authoritarian
norms, Purges offers critical insight into how autocrats maintain—and sometimes lose—power.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 
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Michael Aldrich joins John Ross to discuss Old 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, Aldrich set out to present Lhasa as a living character – a city whose temples, alleyways, legends and surviving traditions can still tell their own stories.

Books mentioned

M.A. Aldrich

The Search for a Vanishing Beijing: A Guide to China’s Capital Through the Ages (Hong Kong University Press, 2006)

Ulaanbaatar beyond Water and Grass: A Guide to the Capital of Mongolia (Hong Kong University Press, 2018)

Old Lhasa: A Biography Originally published by Camphor Press in January 2023 and subsequently reissued in 2025 by Speaking Tiger Books with a new epilogue based on Aldrich’s 2024 return to Tibet.

The episode touches on the amazing story of Ekai Kawaguchi (河口慧海 1866–1945), a Japanese Buddhist monk who spent time in Lhasa in the early 1900s. He is the subject of Scott Berry’s A Stranger in Tibet.

The Books on Asia Podcast is co-produced with Plum Rain Press.

Podcast host Amy Chavez is author of The Widow, the Priest, and the Octopus Hunter: Discovering a Lost Way of Life on a Secluded Japanese Island. and Amy's Guide to Best Behavior in Japan.

The Books on Asia website posts book reviews, podcast episodes and episode Show Notes. Subscribe to the BOA podcast from your favorite podcast service. Subscribe to the Books on Asia newsletter to receive news of the latest new book releases, reviews and podcast episodes.
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"Expansive visions. Universal institutions. Ideas of progress. It
was 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 rules
of global order are collapsing. Mark Leonard reveals how geopolitics is
being rewritten in an age of "Un-Order," where no one agrees on the
rules, and even the concept of order itself is up for debate. Drawing on
years of conversations with leaders and thinkers from Beijing to
Washington, Leonard argues that we are witnessing a new divide in
international politics between the grand "architects" who try to build a
stable global system and the nimble "artisans" who adapt, improvise,
and survive amidst disruption. China, he shows, has embraced the
"artisan's" mindset while Europe and the West cling to the fading
certainties of the "architects". Part analysis, part manifesto, ⁠Surviving Chaos: Geopolitics When the Rules Fail⁠ (Polity Press, 2026) offers
a bold new framework for understanding power in the twenty-first
century — and a call for leaders to stop defending yesterday's world and
start learning how to thrive in tomorrow's.

Mark Leonard is co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, the first pan-European think–tank.

Lucas Tse is Examination Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.
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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 concentrated and how local governments interact with investments, with attitudes ranging from facilitation to passivity to obstruction. We also discuss how Chinese companies navigate the present environment and varied contexts across the US. As federal scrutiny has intensified and states have introduced new restrictions on foreign land ownership and investment, Chinese firms face mounting political and regulatory headwinds. Yet, investments have not disappeared, and companies are adapting, raising questions about how geopolitics is reshaping investment, manufacturing and subnational policies and politics in the US.

Sign up for Emily’s Substack

Emily’s book The Faithless?: The Untold Story of the Electoral College

Analysis of State Attitudes towards Chinese investments over time from Conrad’s research here

Other resources from the episode:

Rhodium Group’s China cross-border monitor

YouTube podcast with Abdul al-Sayed that mentions some about China: here

Wall Street Journal article about the State Armor organization: here

NPR podcast with one of the best overviews on Gotion:here

More on Gotion:

‘No CCP in USA!’: Inside a Michigan town's unhinged war over a Chinese battery plant

A Chinese battery company bet on a small Michigan town for its U.S. expansion

Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate primary debate audio used in this episode

Tweet on the CCP by Sen. Elissa Slotkin

Financial Times article, China’s assault on Europe’s car market has barely begun

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