The world’s newest superpower is a vast and complex country with myriad stories to tell. We have gathered some of the most compelling of those stories here for you, offering insights into the history, culture, environment, and politics of China.
Understanding Modern China
Everything about China today is sui generis. The dizzying journey from global backwater in the 1980s to explosive economic growth in the 1990s and early 2000s left the world struggling to catch up with the changes. The reign of Xi Jinping has seen China’s military might and domestic paranoia grow.
In the last few years attitudes toward China in the West have hardened. Democratic leaders increasingly see Xi’s model as a threat to the international rules-based order. Thinking about how this strategic competition has come about, and how it may evolve in future, has never been more important.
China in Fiction
China is a broad canvas for creative writing, and our novels and short stories make full use of that space to intrigue, excite, and shock you.
From literary fiction examining themes of truth, isolation, and modernity, to supernatural tales of fox spirits and the ghosts of Hong Kong, we pride ourselves in publishing bold, pathbreaking works that defy easy classification.
The Borderlands
Beginning in the Qing dynasty the borders of China expanded far beyond the Han heartland of Chinese-speaking peoples. Today the People’s Republic of China includes vast territories in the west and the north which are home to Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongols, and dozens of other ethnic groups.
These borderlands, acquired largely by conquest, exist in a state of perpetual tension with the imperial center in Beijing. The languages, religious practices, and cultural autonomy of China’s minority peoples are under threat, and Beijing’s unprecedented security apparatus weighs heaviest on these same marginalised peoples.
China and Japan
China and Japan have an extensive history of contact and conflict spanning two millennia. Chinese innovation has been hugely influential in Japan’s development, contributing to religion, art, architecture, food, and literature, including the writing system.
The brutal Japanese invasion of China from 1931 to 1945 is the defining event of modern Sino–Japanese relations, and the two countries’ postwar history has remained colored by that occupation. Today China and Japan are the two major powers in the region, and the interaction between the two countries will have significant impacts well beyond their borders.
