Showing titles in Asia

China's foreign policy initiatives, even the vaunted "Belt and Road", will be shaped and redefined as they confront the ground realities of local and regional politics outside China. In China's Western Horizon, Daniel S. Markey, a scholar of international relations and former member of the US State Department's policy planning staff, previews how China's efforts are likely to play out across the swath of Eurasia that includes South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. Drawing from extensive interviews and historical research, Markey describes how perceptions of China vary.

In India Positive, best-selling author and columnist Chetan Bhagat brings together essays that work as a manifesto for change. Examining a gamut of subjects—from education to employment, from GST to infrastructure, from corruption to casteism—Bhagat reflects on what we can do right in order to move forward and become a truly modern, progressive country. He expresses in this book his belief that, if we want to see reform, we—as citizens—need to be the solution. If our country is to shine, Bhagat says, we need to stand up and be 'India Positive Citizens'.

Gefährlicher Drache statt gemütlicher Panda: Mit welchen Strategien China die Welt erobert. Chinas Aufstieg zur Weltmacht ist unaufhaltsam. Lange erwartete man, dass sich das Land mit zunehmendem Wohlstand demokratisieren würde. Doch das Gegenteil ist der Fall. Die Kommunistische Partei Chinas will sich mit allen Mitteln an der Macht halten. Dafür werden Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft im eigenen Land auf Linie gebracht und ein weitreichendes Programm wurde entwickelt, mit dem China die westlichen Demokratien unterwandert und eine neue Weltordnung etablieren will.

This global history as the Chinese would write it gives brilliant and unconventional insights for understanding China's role in the world, especially the drive to "Make China Great Again." In this colorful, informative story filled with fascinating characters, epic battles, influential thinkers, and decisive moments, we come to understand how the Chinese view their own history and how its narrative is distinctly different from that of Western civilization.

How did China transform itself from basket case to world leadership in two generations? The short answer: They hired geniuses to run their government (talent at the top); they used data to create policies (data in the middle); and they gave the last word on all appointments and legislation to 3,000 representatives (democracy at the bottom).

The coal-mining town of Fushun in China’s Northeast is home to a monstrous open pit. First excavated in the early twentieth century, this pit grew like a widening maw over the ensuing decades, as various Chinese and Japanese states endeavored to unearth Fushun’s purportedly “inexhaustible” carbon resources. Today, the depleted mine that remains is a wondrous and terrifying monument to fantasies of a fossil-fueled future and the technologies mobilized in attempts to turn those developmentalist dreams into reality.

Five billion people, two-thirds of the world's mega-cities, one-third of the global economy, two-thirds of global economic growth, 30 of the Fortune 100, six of the 10 largest banks, eight of the 10 largest armies, five nuclear powers, massive technological innovation, the newest crop of top-ranked universities. Asia is also the world's most ethnically, linguistically and culturally diverse region of the planet, eluding any remotely meaningful generalisation beyond the geographic label itself. Even for Asians, Asia is dizzying to navigate.

On the eve of International Women's Day in 2015, the Chinese government arrested five feminist activists and jailed them for 37 days. The Feminist Five became a global cause célèbre, with Hillary Clinton speaking out on their behalf and activists inundating social media with #FreetheFive messages. But the Five are only symbols of a much larger feminist movement of civil rights lawyers, labor activists, performance artists, and online warriors prompting an unprecedented awakening among China's educated, urban women.

The signs are everywhere. China unilaterally claims the entire South China Sea as sovereign territory, then builds artificial islands to bolster its claim. It suddenly activates an air defense identification zone over the East China Sea, and threatens to down any aircraft that does not report its position. It builds roads into Indian territory, then redraws the maps to show that it is actually Chinese territory. The People's Republic under President Xi Jinping is quickly becoming The Bully of Asia.

Shinzo Abe entered politics burdened by high expectations: that he would change Japan. In 2007, seemingly overwhelmed, he resigned after only a year as prime minister. Yet, following five years of reinvention, he masterfully regained the premiership in 2012, and now dominates Japanese democracy as no leader has done before. Abe has inspired fierce loyalty among his followers, cowing Japan's left with his ambitious economic program and support for the security and armed forces.

As the second-largest economy, China is now extending its influence across the globe. Joanna Chiu has spent a decade tracking China’s propulsive rise, from the complicity of democratic nations, to a new colonialism coming from its multibillion-dollar “New Silk Road” initiative, to its growing sway on foreign countries and multilateral institutions.

Born in China’s northwestern province, Sayragul Sauytbay trained as a doctor before being appointed a senior civil servant. But her life was upended when the Chinese authorities incarcerated her. Her crime? Being Kazakh, one of China’s ethnic minorities. The northwestern province borders the largest number of foreign nations and is the point in China that is the closest to Europe. In recent years, it has become home to more than 1,200 penal camps - modern-day gulags that are estimated to house three million members of the Kazakh and Uyghur minorities.

Munoz provides new insight into Benazir Bhutto’s unprecedented rise and an unflinching, minute-by-minute narrative of the assassination itself. With impeccable research, Munoz also situates Bhutto in the decades-long history of U.S.-Pakistan relations and the emergence of global terrorism, pinpointing her death as the moment when those relations changed forever. The result is a gripping narrative of Pakistan’s turbulent political realities and the death of its leading politician.

For a brief moment on December 27, 2007, life came to a standstill in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto, the country's former prime minister and the first woman ever to lead a Muslim country, had been assassinated at a political rally just outside Islamabad. Back in Karachi--Bhutto's birthplace and Pakistan's other great metropolis--Rafia Zakaria's family was suffering through a crisis of its own: her uncle Sohail, the man who had brought shame upon the family, was near death.

Far from the glittering cities of Beijing and Shaghai, China's borderlands are populated by around one hundred million people who are not Han Chinese. For many of these restive minorities, the old Chinese adage "the mountains are high and the Emperor far away", meaning Beijing's grip on power is tenuous and its influence unwelcome, continues to resonate.

Declan Walsh is one of the New York Times's most distinguished international correspondents. His electrifying portrait of Pakistan over a tumultuous decade captures the sweep of this strange, wondrous, and benighted country through the dramatic lives of nine fascinating individuals. On assignment as the country careened between crises, Walsh traveled from the raucous port of Karachi to the salons of Lahore, and from Baluchistan to the mountains of Waziristan. He met a diverse cast of extraordinary Pakistanis....

As any traveller knows, the best and most honest conversations take place during car rides. So when journalist Frank Langfitt wanted to learn more about the real China, he started driving a cab - and discovered a country amid seismic political and economic change. The Chinese economic boom, with its impact on the environment, global trade and the tech industry, has been one of the most important stories of the 21st century.

The United States' approach to China since the Communist regime in Beijing that began the period of reform and opening in the 1980s was based on a promise that trade and engagement with China would result in a peaceful, democratic state. Forty years later, the hope of producing a benign People's Republic of China utterly failed. The Communist Party of China deceived the West into believing that its system and the Party-ruled People's Liberation Army were peaceful and posed no threat.

For many years after its reform and opening in 1978, China maintained an attitude of false modesty about its ambitions. That role, reports Howard French, has been set aside. China has asserted its place among the global heavyweights, revealing its plans for pan-Asian dominance by building its navy, increasing territorial claims to areas like the South China Sea, and diplomatically bullying smaller players.

From kung-fu to tofu, tea to trade routes, sages to silk, China has influenced cuisine, commerce, military strategy, aesthetics, and philosophy across the world for thousands of years. Chinese history is nothing if not messy. Heroes are also villains; prosperity mingles with violence; cultural vibrancy coexists with censorship and repression. Modern China is seen variously as an economic powerhouse, an icon of urbanization, a propaganda state, and an aggressive superpower seeking world domination.