Best historical china biographies according to redditors

I wrote a 30 page paper on John Rabe and other foreigners involved in the organization of the Nanking Safety Zone for my undergraduate history thesis a few years ago :D

It's worth nothing that Iris Chang's depiction in The Rape of Nanking has been criticized by historians for being overly sensationalized - not so much in the sense that her overall depiction is incorrect, but more that her conclusions are not fully supported by what evidence she has and she overreaches in her analysis of the motivations and psychology of the Japanese.

If anyone is interested in further secondary (and primary) sources on the material I can dig up my bibliography. For example the wartime diary of Minnie Vautrin (an American missionary who worked with Rabe in organizing and running the Safety Zone) is fascinating, especially considering that she commited suicide after returning the US in 1940. The entire diary is available online (along with an unbelievable wealth of other primary sources, letters and so forth) as part of Yale's Nanking Massacre Project. John Rabe also kept a diary but it's not available online afaik.

edit: I wrote a really detailed comment on John Rabe and some of the other foreigners in Nanking during the invasion a year or two ago in a similar thread but Reddit's search is too crappy for me to find it again to link to :(

Little known fact: because Mao had fallen out with the Soviets by the time of his death, the Chinese could not get the embalming know-how from the USSR. Instead, the Chinese tried to get the knowledge secondhand from the Vietnamese.

Basically, nobody knew what the fuck they were doing, and the hours and days immediately following Mao's death were a clusterfuck for all involved. The ordeal is detailed in the opening chapter of The Private Life of Chairman Mao.

I saw Mao's (alleged) corpse in person in 2008. It's either a poorly embalmed corpse, or a poorly done wax sculpture. Either way, it looks like shit.

I read the doctor's book, The Private Life of Chairman Mao. Highly recommended.

"Tiger and flies anti corruption campaign" that purged those standing in the way of power consolidation. Nabbing a few influential generals (some killed themselves) was probably the most important as controlling the military directly allows for making coups next to impossible.

Xi was originally put into power as a compromise between factions (they thought he was going to be a status quo leader) because one side wanted someone that was brought up in the Communist Youth League , and the other faction thought it was unwise to have 2 leaders in a row with this type of pedigree.

This is a very simple explanation as I don't feel like typing the book it would take to explain everything in minute detail, but at least it will give you something to start your search off.



https://www.nixonfoundation.org/2018/07/synopsis-rise-xi-jinping-china-global-power/


This book is an ok read on this:


https://www.amazon.ca/CEO-China-Rise-Xi-Jinping/dp/178453322X

you obviously haven't read this Winnie the Pooh book

Amazon has it.

> Those stories will probably never be recorded, since "Why not tell the world something good about China?" is the rule of the day. So I just wanted to share this one.



Thanks for sharing this heartbreaking story. Some others have been shared. If you’re interested then I’d suggest the following book by Chinese author Xinran. She ran the first radio station phone in show in China for women.


https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1451610890/ref=cm_cr_arp_mb_bdcrb_top?ie=UTF8

Do you have sources that don't have clear conflicts of interest in propagandizing deaths in Mao's China to fit imperialist narratives?

I'm assuming you mean books by bourgeois historians and academics:

Here's the main book that counters many bourgeois narratives to Mao

Here is a collection of 3 books on the Cultural Revolution

Here's another

By the way the Monthy Review article I linked actually does have sources, its not baseless ramblings (like Holocaust denial is)

And I'm not even saying you have to be a supporter of Mao or Maoism, you have every right to be critical of it or not support it, but regurgitating the same bourgeois ideas spread through Cold War propaganda helps nobody but the ruling class

As someone who has spent extensive time in Tibet, I can tell you that this is a very complicated matter stemming back a very long time. For centuries China and Tibet were on relatively good terms. The shit hit the fan with Mao's cultural revolution which sought to eradicate religion (among other things). Tibet being rather fond of its Buddhist traditions didn't care much for the new edict. And Mao took aim at Tibet. China claims that Tibet has always been a part of China and Tibet claims that it has always maintained its autonomy. But what is truly relevant is the destruction that China brought to Tibet in the 50's and 60's and in some degrees ever since in order to establish its dominance and to move the industrial revolution west. Tibetan people who are overwhelmingly Buddhist didn't put up much of a fight as they had no real organized military and were pretty easily destroyed by the Chinese army. For an account of these atrocities I suggest reading In Exile from The Land of Snow. Actually, I don't have time to write everything down here so maybe Ill pick up later.

China's trade used to flow through it? Sounds like markets. Have you ever read Architect of Prosperity?. Or read any of Milton Friedman's works about the rise of HK?

I've got Architect of Prosperity on my nightstand at the moment, it's a biography of a British civil servant who was involved in most of Hong Kong's post-war reconstruction and development up through the early 1970s.

I've pretty much just started it so I can't really recommend it yet, but it seems interesting.

Its from the memoirs of his personal physician, Mao had very poor personal hygiene and the doctor had to regularly treat him for venereal diseases spread by sleeping with multiple partners

http://www.amazon.com/The-Private-Life-Chairman-Mao/dp/0679764437

Have been looking for this book by him in libraries. I've read a few pages in a bookstore and kind of came to a similar conclusion that he seems to be a pretty good/reasonable leader. I don't care enough to actually buy the book but I'm interested enough to look if I can find it somewhere lol.

These accounts are often bundled into collections surrounding Empress Cixi. They're often not long enough to actually make an entire book in themselves. And the translation to english would be very nonsensical to modern readers without a lot of interpretation and linguistic analysis.

http://www.amazon.com/Empress-Dowager-Cixi-Concubine-Launched/dp/0307456706/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422292465&sr=8-1&keywords=Empress+Cixi

That is one that is a good source I believe.

Toasties: Dowager Empress Cixi How did no one ever tell me that this too witches woman existed?! After her husband, the Emperor, died, she and his Empress staged a coup that put them in charge as her son's regent. They ruled together (and mothered the young Emperor together) until Empress Ci'an passed away. And when her adopted son wasn't ruling the way she wanted, she had him put under her guardianship- allowing her to rule by proxy again. She was a BAMF.

https://www.amazon.com/Xi-Jinping-Governance-English-Language/dp/1602204098

>(someone pls recommend me some good books)

https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Enlightenment-Central-Conquest-Tamerlane/dp/0691165858/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0/144-0242630-4897537?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1refRID=KKYE6CNQEBQAGXX727XD

Comparing Genghis Khan, Timur and Nader Shah is pretty fun.

https://books.google.com/books?id=nFx3OlrBMpQC&printsec=frontcover&hl=de#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://www.fusosha.co.jp/Books/detail/9784594074760

https://www.amazon.com/Rulers-Guide-Greatest-Emperor-Timeless/dp/1501138774/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=VXGE1BG6WGDA6CJ8K9T2

https://www.amazon.com/Shi-Min-Founding-theTang-Dynasty/dp/0875869785/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=VXGE1BG6WGDA6CJ8K9T2

https://www.amazon.com/Poetics-Sovereignty-Harvard-Yenching-Institute-Monograph/dp/0674056086

https://books.google.com/books?id=VW2HJL689wgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=baburnama&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNjrCE_b_TAhXIOBQKHaDyCCEQ6AEIJTAA#v=onepage&q=baburnama&f=false

https://www.amazon.com/Xi-Jinping-Governance-English-Language/dp/160220408X

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Guerrilla-Warfare-Mao-Tse-Tung/dp/956310014X

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhou_Enlai:_The_Last_Perfect_Revolutionary

https://www.amazon.com/Ho-Chi-Minh-William-Duiker-ebook/dp/B0095V89ZI

https://www.amazon.com/Admiral-Togo-Nelson-Jonathan-Clements/dp/1906598622

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotations_from_Chairman_Mao_Tse-tung

http://www.npc.gov.cn/englishnpc/Constitution/node_2825.htm

https://www.amazon.com/Keiretsu-Inside-Hidden-Japanese-Conglomerates/dp/007042859X

The history of Austronesian Madagascar is interesting.

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I'd also recommend Aleksandr Dugin's books and "The Intelligent Investor" by B. Graham.

The Red Book is pure propaganda and just a collection of his sayings. Not really worth reading.

I'd recommend this biography as it goes into detail about how Mao's study of Western (and particularly German) political philosophy led him to despise Confucianism and traditional Chinese culture and how he thought it had held China back. It was a view held in common by many intellectuals at the time, and was one of the key themes of the May the 4th student movement in 1919.

Yeah I'm actually reading this right now. The invasion of Nanking occurred towards the end of 1937.

Yeah his doctor's book The Private Life of Chairman Mao is really explicit about this.

I read this and it was awesome. Seen through the eyes of 3 generations of women.

http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Swans-Three-Daughters-China/dp/0385425473

>Mikulski and the rest of the Senate may be surprised to learn that they were repeating 60-year-old justifications of Chinese medicine put forward by Chairman Mao. Unlike Mikulski, however, Mao was under no illusion that Chinese medicine—a key component of naturopathic education—actually worked. In The Private Life of Chairman Mao, Li Zhisui, one of Mao’s personal physicians, recounts a conversation they had on the subject. Trained as an M.D. in Western medicine, Li admitted to being baffled by ancient Chinese medical books, especially their theories relating to the five elements. It turns out his employer also found them implausible. 

>”Even though I believe we should promote Chinese medicine,” Mao told him, “I personally do not believe in it. I don’t take Chinese medicine

Https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/traditional-chinese-medicine-origins-mao-invented-it-but-didnt-believe-in-it.html

Wild Swans- it's a biography of three generations of women in 20th century China, and the way that the roles of women- from concubine to Communist- have changed in that time.

Personally, I think leftists are far too harsh on the PRC, but that does not mean they are above criticism. I can't speak for Lao or Vietnam, but personally, I would not be comfortable classifying the PRC as 100% capitalist. In the PRC, the Party rules the country, versus capital. Does capital have power in China? Absolutely, but it is nowhere near the level that capital has in the west. However, do they have a complete command economy? No, but there are some indications that Xi may be taking the country towards that direction.

I think this is a good place to start if you are interested in learning more about China and how their economy and the party operates:
https://medium.com/@wolf.aldrich/three-questions-about-china-and-the-communist-party-of-china-7056e40b40f3

As well as:
https://www.amazon.com/Xi-Jinping-Governance-English-Language/dp/1602204098
and:
https://www.learningfromchina.net/blog/chinas-socialist-economic-reform-and-opening-up-improved-the-lives-of-a-vastly-greater-proportion-of-humanity-than-any-other-country-in-human-history

Interesting Article on Vietnam:
https://thediplomat.com/2018/02/is-vietnam-going-the-way-of-china/

I know historians get upset when inaccua books are lauded by journalists/politicians/the public. 'Mao: The Unknown Story' by Chang/Halliday caused quite a stir. It was a best seller and was praised by a lot of people. A collection of essays was gathered together which looked critically at the methodology used and conclusions drawn in 'Mao'.

A lot of the sources cited in 'Mao' couldn't be checked, the seemed to ignore all evidence that didn't fit their thesis, and overall the book shouldn't have been represented as a serious historical work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao:_The_Unknown_Story

http://www.amazon.com/Was-Mao-Really-Monster-Hallidays/dp/0415493307/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345751652&sr=8-1&keywords=was+mao+really+a+monster

http://www.amazon.com/Xi-Jinping-Governance-English-Language/dp/1602204098/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1453368098&sr=8-1

"I've also bought copies of this book for my colleagues. I want them to understand socialism with Chinese characteristics."

—Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO, Facebook

http://www.amazon.ca/Was-Mao-Really-Monster-Hallidays/dp/0415493307

Would probably read this one first to get some general background. It’s a lighter read: https://www.amazon.com/China-21st-Century-Everyone-Needs/dp/0199974969

Perhaps the most authoritative reading on Deng specifically: https://www.amazon.com/Deng-Xiaoping-Transformation-China-Vogel/dp/0674725867

Another good one (more about international relations): https://www.amazon.com/China-Henry-Kissinger/dp/0143121316

This is a good one if you want to learn about the economic reforms under Deng: https://www.amazon.com/Markets-over-Mao-Private-Business/dp/0881326933

Does Xi's book cover economics in any detail? It's on my reading list, but the list is long and I'm not great at reading...

I have heard good things about Mao: The Unknown Story

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1602204098/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_9MzDDb3EYCY4B

Anyone read this? Any lessons for Pakistan?

The diary entries of John Rabe (Schindler of the East) might be of interest to you. Here's an excerpt:

"We are sorry to trouble you again but the sufferings and needs of the 200 000 civilians for whom we are trying to care make it urgent that we try to secure action from your military authorities to stop the present disorder among Japanese soldiers wandering through the Safety Zone... The second man in our Housing Commission had to see two women in his family at 23 Hankow Road raped last night at supper time by Japanese soldiers. Our associate food commissioner, Mr. Sone, has to convey trucks with rice and leave 2,500 people in families at his Nanking Theological Seminary to look after themselves. Yesterday, in broad daylight, several women at the Seminary were raped right in the middle of a large room filled with men, women, and children! We 22 Occidentals cannot feed 200,000 Chinese civilians and protect them night and day. That is the duty of the Japanese authorities ..."

THE GOOD MAN OF NANKING: The Diaries of John Rabe

To get anywhere with anything Chinese, you have to read the Analects. Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont's translation is, in my opinion, the best. The intro is an amazing analysis of the text, its key concepts, and how crucial understanding the way Chinese language works is in order to understand Ancient Chinese thought.

Here is Ames discussing his life's work: the idea of "Confucian Role Ethics". Really cool stuff, and the intro is done by Hal Roth, who does some amazing work on Zhuangzi, and early Daoist contemplative practices.

This by Michael Puett looks at Zhuangzi in relation to Confucius, and is a bit easier to grasp than Ames' talk.

If you have audible, Grant Hardy's Great minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition is a killer series of concise, informative lectures about Chinese, Indian, and Japanese philosophies. I highly recommend it because he goes through each culture chronologically, so you get to see the changes in Chinese and Japanese religions/philosophies before and after the introduction of Buddhism. If you don't have audible, you can get this one pretty cheap with the free trial.

Hope this helps, and I'll add more as they occur to me.

The private life of chairman Mao.

The long comeback:

So I've looked into Jung Changs "Mao: The Unknown Story," and its a hit-piece. Much of it has not or can not be verified by anyone besides Jung Chang since most of the book is based on interviews with Chinese people... who were hostile to Mao from the beginning. Much of it has been contradicted the Soviet's records, and has been discredited by Sinologists generally. A much better biography is Mao: The Unknow Story. From what I read Pantsov's biography is neither a hit piece nor apologetics and it uses a ton of Russian/USSR archival information that is still restricted to the general public. I'm going to start reading that.

It really is hard to write a book on Xi Jinping's leadership because it really is so so recent, and with a state like China where almost every act of governance is entirely opaque real time analysis is hard.

That being said I've heard good things about CEO, China: The Rise of Xi Jinping although I haven't personally read it Kerry Brown knows what he's talking about.

Thanks! The Amazon review points me towards this other biography - do you know anything about it?

To start, I would check out The Dragon in the Land of Snows by Tsering Shakya. He is one of the most prominent Tibetan historians in the West. It is a history of modern tibet since 1947.

Other notable books to start include The Tibetans by Matthew Kapstein and History as Propaganda: Tibetan Exiles versus the People's Republic of China by John Powers.

A history of Tibet is complicated. But there is a lot of misinformation out there, shaped by Orientalism, and reinforced by an apologetic look at Mao's destructive policies and rule. Tibet was never a shangi-la, only uninformed westerners thought that it was. But China's rule in Tibet has been incredibly repressive, devastating, and near genocidal.

If you get through those books, here are some more suggestions for some in depth understanding:

• The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk by Venerable Palden Gyatso
  
• Buddha's Warriors: The Story of the CIA-Backed Tibetan Freedom Fighters, the Chinese Communist Invasion, and the Ultimate Fall of Tibet by Mikel Dunham
  
• Arrested Histories: Tibet, the CIA, and Memories of a Forgotten War by Carole McGranahan
  
• Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West by Donald Lopez
  
• The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama by Thomas Laird
  
• In Exile from the Land of Snows: The Definitive Account of the Dalai Lama and Tibet Since the Chinese Conquest by John Avedon
  
  I'll also mention these two by Melvyn Goldstein, with the preface that he is academically rigorous, but widely thought of in Tibetan communities as an apologist and biased towards China.
  
  
• A History of Modern Tibet, 1913-1951: The Demise of the Lamaist State, and
  
• The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama
  
  One final note is that Tibetans do not want a return to the past, they want freedom. They want freedom of religion, freedom to practice their culture, freedom from military occupation, and a return of the Dalai Lama. Check out Phayul for current news from Tibetan exile communities.
  
  Happy reading

This: http://www.amazon.com/Recollections-My-Life-Woman-Years/dp/0140231587

Also this: http://www.amazon.com/China-Me-Emily-Hahn-ebook/dp/B00J90C48S/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411098382&sr=1-5

Both wonderfully immersive into a different era, by brilliant and eclectic writers.

This: http://www.amazon.com/Hurry-Get-Home-Unconventional-Adventures/dp/158005045X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411098474&sr=1-2

is actually Hahn's memoir, but China To Me will always be my favorite of her books.

Never ever underestimate the reach and insidiousness of Russian intelligence. To me the apex of this was the sheer number of generals of the Kuomintang that the Russians had in their pockets and which helped flip China communist. See Mao: The Unknown Story.

I highly recommend you give Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang a chance. Wild Swans is an interesting look into 20th century China seen through the lenses of the author's family. If you are curious, you can see a bit of the book on Amazon.

because post communist russia is complete shit. many chinese people like mao because, dispite some mistakes, they see him as a savior that took china out of a period of extreme corruption. also, a good book about post-mao china that i recommend is this one:

https://www.amazon.ca/Deng-Xiaoping-Transformation-China-Vogel/dp/0674725867

https://www.amazon.com/Deng-Xiaoping-Transformation-China-Vogel/dp/0674725867

You're telling me you can't even google?

Kindle Edition of Gao Zhisheng's book: Unwavering Convictions: Gao Zhisheng’s Ten-Year Torture and Faith in China’s Future

I don't know that much about Mao. Pick up a biography of Deng Xiaoping if you want to know politics after Mao.

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

amazon.in

amazon.com.mx

amazon.de

amazon.it

amazon.es

amazon.com.br

amazon.nl

amazon.co.jp

amazon.fr

Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, amazon.co.jp, amazon.fr, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Private-Life-Chairman-Mao/dp/0679764437

This is a good source to brush up with.

There's probably a few ways you could go about expanding your knowledge base. The two that seem most fruitful are

1. Reading for a deeper understanding of the topics that you're already familiar with.
   
   
2. Ranging more broadly into other areas that may interest you.
   
   If (1), then I'd probably suggest one of two courses. Either, (a) read the stuff that influenced the existential thinkers that you've listed, or (b) read some literature dealing with issues related to the thinkers you've listed.
   
   For (a) I'd suggest the following:
   
   

• Anything by Kant
  
• (In the case of Kierkegaard) Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit or his Aesthetics
  
• (For Nietzsche) Emerson's essays, Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation, or Spinoza's Ethics
  
• Maybe some Freud for the later thinkers? Civilization and its Discontents is really good.
  
  For (b) it's really a mixed bag. I'd suggest going through the SEP articles on the thinkers you've listed and looking into some good secondary literature on them. If you're super interested in Nietzsche, I'd definitely suggest reading Leiter's Nietzsche on Morality. I really couldn't tell you more unless you told me something more specific about your interests.
  
  If (2), then I suppose I'd suggest one of the following:
  
  
• Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy for a good, broad introduction to Chinese Thought
  
• The Analects of Confucius. This translation is excellent
  
• A Short History of Chinese Philosophy
  
• Heidegger's Being and Time
  
• Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception
  
• Some of Rilke's work
  
• Unamuno's Tragic Sense of Life
  
  Again, it's hard to give you better directions without more information on what you're actually interested in. I've just thrown a bunch of stuff at you, and you couldn't possibly be expected to read, say, Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation over break and be expected to really understand it.

Is this it?

On Chinese politics: «Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China» by Ezra Vogel

https://www.amazon.com/Deng-Xiaoping-Transformation-China-Vogel/dp/0674725867

u/20190227:

你工作太难以挽回面子！

>你 外国人 当然 不懂。因为 台湾人=台湾 本省人（闽南裔 客家裔）

我明白了。 我一直都知道来自湖南的人。 为什么你说这些人是丑人？ 长沙是毛泽东的所在地。

我知道大陆人。

我一直都知道郑成功。 这是我读过的最喜欢的书。 [你知道他的母亲是日本人吗？](https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%94%B0%E5%B7%9D%E6%B0%8F_(%E9%84%AD%E6%88%90%E5%8A%9F%E6%AF%8D) 你知道他的母亲为李自成而战并为之死吗？

>呵呵，洗地力力不错啊，不管怎么洗，白人杀光了印第安人是无法改变的事实。

你的证明在哪里？

>美国强大是因为杀光了印第安人，以极低的成本获得了土地，粮食，矿产，水产，木材等所有资源。

我一直告诉你这是一个多层次的问题。你不知道《北美印第安战争》吗？ 你听说过《Fort Mims Massacare》吗？

没有选择。 如果他们不移动美国原住民，美国就无法生存。 美国原住民中有英国和法国渗透者收回美国。了解1812年战争。

>朱熹的《朱子语类》卷第一百三十八云：“闽浙声音尤不正”。

你的证明在哪里？

如果你不能用几句话说出你想要的东西，那么你就不相信了。

EDIT: Thirty-seven replies and counting from just one user. I thought the great people of China have a talent for "cutting corners." Guess I was wrong....

EDIT: u/20190227

你工作太难以挽回面子！

Forty replies and still counting...

EDIT: u/20190227

>我们 不想 看 你们 美国人 和 中共，表演。。。如果 你们 让 美国 和 中共，同流合污，杀 中国人民。。。就 解散 联合国

为什么？ 那么人们看不到中共在新疆做什么了？ 您不能将新疆再教育营与美国原住民进行比较。

45 replies and counting STILL!

EDIT: u/20190227

46 replies now. I officially have a stalker....