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Comment by cdiamand | Hacker News Reader

Can anyone recommend a good book on China, or modern geopolitics?

I read The Tiananmen Papers circa 2003. It's dry but it's primary material, allowing you to make your own judgments about how Chinese politics works. I think it's served me well, and I don't think I've missed out on any insights offered by packaged, scholarly narratives. Precisely because it was primary material it's aged well, even with the huge changes in Chinese society and government since then.

OTOH, I had studied International Politics in undergraduate, and took several classes on SE Asian history and politics. And I also had done some semi-professional research regarding exports controls on supercomputing technology--a big issue back when Linux Beowulf clusters were hot. So I had some background knowledge going in.

Still, there's much to be said for primary material. I know there's some debate about the selection of what went into The Tiananmen Papers, but doing a deep dive on a narrow issue is more useful to understanding the broader society than you'd think, even if the material selection is skewed. For similar reasons, I feel like I learned a tremendous amount about Chilean political history and culture, more than all other sources combined (except perhaps contemporary Chilean newsprint) reading "Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile". There are fundamental truths about a culture that are revealed by the fine details of how historical events unfold, independent of the larger context (i.e. Allende's soft socialist revolution, or brutally paranoid Chinese state repression).

The Hundred Year Marathon is probably the best of the bunch. https://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Year-Marathon-Strategy-Replac...

Richard McGregor's work on the CCP is also very good and worth reading.

Orville Schell's Wealth And Power is also quite good for politics/history.

The China Dream: Great Power Thinking and Strategic Posture in the Post-American Era

https://www.amazon.com/China-Dream-Thinking-Strategic-Post-A...

On China by Henry Kissinger:

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/on-china_henry-kissinger/26645...

Destined for War - Graham Allison:

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/destined-for-war_graham-alliso...

Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World:

https://www.amazon.com/Lee-Kuan-Yew-Insights-international/d...

See China with your own eyes!

I also recommend traveling to China. I found this to be very eye opening, and to be honest, despite all of our great problems it made me so thankful to live in a free country.

The book I'd recommend most would be Age of Ambition for an understanding of China from the inside. How China Escaped the Poverty Trap has a lot of good bits on what the tin says but also how bureaucratic promotion and governance within China works.

For geopolitics I thought Asia's Reckoning: China, Japan, and the Fate of U.S. Power in the Pacific Century, * Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power, and The Rise of Eurasia* both had some value but I didn't find them as enlightening as the previous two.

EDIT: Oh, and China Airborne had some great insight into where China's technological abilities are as good as anything in the world and where it still has catching up to do. Or at least the state of play as of 2012.

Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World

From the point of view of the former Singaporean leader whose governance has inspired China in the first place (3rd world to first in a few decades), and who is fairly objective being a mixture of eastern and western cultures.

On China, by Kissinger. Slightly outdated but still contextualizes china w/i its history.

Li Kai Fu - AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

https://www.amazon.com/AI-Superpowers-China-Silicon-Valley/d...

Despite unclear connection from the title, it's actually a good contextual background on industry in general.

Martin Jacques's TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imhUmLtlZpw

Everything Under the Heavens

The China Mirage

How Asia Works

Not trolling, just read 1984 or animal farm. It’s just the same story

Thanks, I've read those and they're great, but I'm looking for something that's less of an analogy. Something that puts China in the context of modern geopolitics. Preferably helping me understand their development in the last century.

For pure Geopolitics - Peter Zeihan has been more right than the made for tv muppet boy Ian Bremmer.

Peter Zeihan is good. Geopolitical Futures is good but they have some duds in their prediction but good deeper level analysis. Stratfor has kind of become shallow but still good.

edit: On YouTube Caspian Report is probably a better production about Geopolitics.

In that case I'd recommend

The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower [0] by Hudson Institute's China expert.

and

Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America [1]

These are rather hawkish but unfortunately also nailing the truth.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20696000-the-hundred-yea...

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/855077.Unrestricted_Warf...

Any emergent superpower will want to replace the existing one. China hawks seem to rule Washington but Chinas prosperity has been beneficial for the rest of the world by decreasing the costs of electronics and manufactured goods. It goes without question though that the largest and most populous countries on earth will rapidly grow (barring geopolitical events that completely break the system) and eventually attain the status of coequal powers, if they manage to not start more wars.

FWIW, the book seems misnamed: hundred years is hardly a marathon from the Chinese perspective. Maybe not quite a sprint, but a medium distance hike. Their historical perspective encompasses millennia.

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