Chinese History Book Recommendations

[compson]

I'm starting up a reading unit on Chinese history. I have no particular time period in mind - just want to read whatever's best in English. I do have a few broader themes about which I'm curious:

• Why did post-Han China eventually reconsolidate (politically, economically, culturally), while the post-Roman world did not?
• Why did the Great Divergence occur vis-a-vis China?
• How stable is CCP rule?

Here's my starting list (thanks mainly to Tanner Greer):

• China: A History - Keay
• Medieval Chinese Warfare - Graff
• The Economic History of China - von Glahn
• Imperial China, 900 - 1800 - Mote
• The Search for Modern China - Spence

[Хahar 🤔]

Well, there are several books on your list that I would have recommended, so that's a good start. Imperial China in particular is an engrossing read. Another book that I quite liked, although it's somewhat different than the ones on your list, is The Deng Xiaoping Era: An Inquiry into the Fate of Chinese Socialism by Maurice Meisner. It's a look from a Marxist perspective at the economic reforms of the 1980s, which I found interesting because it attempts to address that period of time on its own terms.

[Benjamin Frank]

God's Chinese Son and The Opium War Through Chinese Eyes are both interesting.

[Cassius]

A few recommendations:

China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know by Arthur R. Kroeber (published in 2016 so a little dated but nonetheless a useful introduction to the Chinese economy. The guy’s also a partner at Gavekal who produce a lot of good info about the Chinese economy, albeit most of it paywalled).
Out of China by Robert Bickers: An overview of relations between China and the West in the 19th and 20th centuries, although a little light on intra-Chinese stuff.
Mao: The Man Who Made China by Philip ShortAn excellent English language biography of Mao Zedong, written by an author taking a detached view with no axe to grind (which, imo, is how biographies should be done).
China and the World: A collaborative academic work that I recently finished reading on Chinese foreign policy, with a heavy slant towards the modern era. A little repetitive in places as each chapter is written by a different author and they inevitably tread across the same ground on occasion, but nonetheless insightful and informative.

I would avoid Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang, which received excellent reviews from mainstream papers and is usually findable in any decent bookshop, principally because it’s best to view it as a polemical piece rather than a detached biography in the vein of the work by Short mentioned above, although if you keep that in mind it might be worth a try for a highly negative appraisal of Mao (although those aren’t exactly difficult to find).

[Beet]

For ancient history, The History of Imperial China, the six-volume series edited by Timothy Brook, is excellent. The Keay book was massively disappointing, IMO.

For modern history, you can't go wrong with In Search of Modern China by Jonathan Spence.

I have yet to find any solid history on the 21st century, most likely as anything covering the last twenty years falls more under "current events". But it is still disappointing as there are about half-a-dozen biographies of Putin covering his rise yet seemingly no biographies Xi Jinping.

[Cassius]

For ancient history, The History of Imperial China, the six-volume series edited by Timothy Brook, is excellent. The Keay book was massively disappointing, IMO.

For modern history, you can't go wrong with In Search of Modern China by Jonathan Spence.

I have yet to find any solid history on the 21st century, most likely as anything covering the last twenty years falls more under "current events". But it is still disappointing as there are about half-a-dozen biographies of Putin covering his rise yet seemingly no biographies Xi Jinping.

CEO - China: The Rise of Xi Jinping by Kerry Brown was a good introduction to Xi, although it was written in 2016 so it's now pretty dated. Additionally, I haven't read it (but plan to), a new biography of him came out this year by a guy called Alfred Chan which has had some reasonable reviews, so that might be what you're looking for.

[Pericles]

Mao: The Man Who Made China by Philip ShortAn excellent English language biography of Mao Zedong, written by an author taking a detached view with no axe to grind (which, imo, is how biographies should be done).

Is this generally agreed as the best biography of Mao? As you said, I want it to try and accurately understand history, rather than trying to fit everything into the author's own agenda.

[Cassius]

Mao: The Man Who Made China by Philip ShortAn excellent English language biography of Mao Zedong, written by an author taking a detached view with no axe to grind (which, imo, is how biographies should be done).

Is this generally agreed as the best biography of Mao? As you said, I want it to try and accurately understand history, rather than trying to fit everything into the author's own agenda.

I don’t know about generally agreed, but it is a very thorough and even handed treatment (Short has also produced similar works on Pol Pot, Mitterrand and Putin if you’re interested), as well as being exceptionally readable. It’s a bit dated (1999), so there may well be more up to date things out there. Here’s a more recent review below:

https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/161