While this guide is aimed specifically at our incoming students, it is also useful for prospective students and those who are generally interested in China.
We don’t require any of our first-year students to have done specific reading before joining the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies in September.
This guide has been compiled to direct you to what we think are some of the most useful and thought-provoking books and websites on things Chinese that will, we hope, help to remind you why you chose your course in the first place and to prepare you to engage with all aspects of this fascinating country once you begin your formal studies.
One good habit which you can acquire now is following the news from China, easier than ever with the world’s media at your fingertips and still mostly free to access online. Of the British broadsheets, you will find some of the best China coverage, not only of economic and business issues, in the Financial Times (www.ft.com/world/asiapacific/china). The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/china) is also good, with selected articles now available in Chinese, if you already know Mandarin.
Web recommendations:
For finding sites and publications on just about any China topic that interests you, the indispensable guide is the China WWW Virtual Library, at http://sun.sino.uni-heidelberg.de/igcs/index.html#toc.
Perhaps you’ve already discovered http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/cpi? Nottingham’s own China Policy Institute offers several years’ worth of discussion and policy papers on topics such as China’s response to the global financial crisis, the autonomy of the media, higher education, and political participation. These short articles introduce current, cutting-edge research findings to a general audience in an accessible way, so are ideal introductions to topics.
On environmental issues, try the bilingual China Dialogue site http://www.chinadialogue.net/static/about, for articles on NGOs, global warming’s effects in China, the water crisis, endangered species, and China’s experimental eco-cities. Also recommended in this area is the China Environment Forum, at http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=topics.home&topic_id=1421.
The China Development Brief site is no longer active, but past reports were still up at http://www.chinadevelopmentbrief.com/ as of June 2011 and remain worth reading, with excellent archive items on China’s GONGOs (government-owned NGOs), eco-tourism, corporate social responsibility, ethnic minorities, health issues and the one-child policy.
The Congressional-Executive Commission on China (http://www.cecc.gov/) is a very useful resource. CECC organizes hearings and roundtable discussions where experts (academics, activists, practitioners, anyone with insight into the topic) offer their take on current Chinese issues. They are great places for catching up with the latest debate on e.g. gender equality, religious freedom, or human trafficking. CECC’s Issue Papers have also recently covered reform of the household registration system (which historically prevented rural-to-urban migration in China), and the problems faced by defence lawyers in the Chinese legal system.
The China Leadership Monitor http://www.hoover.org/publications/clm publishes analyses of current issues in China’s foreign and domestic policies by leading specialists in the field, aimed at “the American foreign policy community” and accessible to a general audience. Recent papers have covered China-Taiwan relations, China’s economic stimulus package, and the effects of falling economic growth on social stability.
The Chinese government’s own take on issues is also an essential part of your understanding of the country. One site worth book-marking for a daily browse is China.org (http://www.china.org.cn/english/index.htm), which features articles from across the Chinese media. The main national newspaper, the People’s Daily (http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/) is online in English. Seeing what they report and how, including their foreign news coverage, is interesting, and don’t be too cynical about their Chinese news – there is a reluctance to report too much on problems that don’t yet seem to have solutions, but it’s not all Mao-era bumper harvests and singing workers.
The People’s Daily also has an English-language tabloid offshoot, the Global Times (http://www.globaltimes.cn). Sometimes its editorials protest too much, but you’ll find stories from China’s regions here that other English-language outlets don’t cover.
The Chinese government also publishes White Papers on various topics. For the official line on everything from Tibet to the space programme, go to http://www.china.org.cn/e-white/index.htm.
If you have access to satellite/cable TV, you can also check out the English-language channel CCTV 9. If you’ve spent much time in the more affordable Chinese hotels sans CNN or BBC World, this will be an old acquaintance! As with the print media, don’t dismiss the actual news coverage out of hand, but it’s mainly of interest for its cultural and historical documentaries, and for finding out what the news agenda and presentation is like in China.
Finally, Radio Free Asia’s remit (http://www/rfa.org) is to cover the stories China’s own media can’t or won’t. This can make it a grim read at times, but it is excellent on e.g. censorship in the PRC, and its Cantonese-, Tibetan-, Mongolian-, and Uyghur-speaking journalists can get the interviews that no-one else reporting in English can.
Book recommendations
Although we recommend these, we don’t ask you to buy them – academic books are often ludicrously expensive. But your local library can order them, or check online (Amazon, abebooks.co.uk) for used copies.
Timothy Cheek (2006), Living with Reform: China since 1989 (London and New York: Zed Books). A great place to start on China under reform, and only 172 pages long. More people should write short books.
Robert E Gamer (ed.) (2008), Understanding Contemporary China. Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner. This is a good general resource and background reading on the political, economic, environmental, social and cultural issues of China.
Lowell Dittmer and Guoli Liu (2006), China’s Deep Reform: Domestic Politics in Transition. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. With 18 chapters on a wide range of contemporary issues by leading scholars, this is so useful that I have two copies, one of which is almost permanently out on loan to students.
Barry Naughton (2007), The Chinese Economy: transitions and growth. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Tony Saich (2004), Governance and Politics of China. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Norman Stockman (2000), Understanding Chinese Society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Similar to Garner, but with an emphasis on continuities between traditional and contemporary China, and particularly good on the Chinese family, the rural-urban divide, social inequality.
John Wong and Wang Gungwu (eds.) (2007), Interpreting China’s Development. Singapore: World Scientific. This contains dozens of very brief and up-to-date introductory essays on major Chinese issues.
Don’t read:
Jung Chang and Jon Halliday (2005), Mao: The Unknown Story (London: Jonathan Cape). Actually, this story is not so much unknown as it is made-up. It’s a very problematic book, so if you must read it, read some of the expert reviews first, in Gregor Benton and Lin Chun (eds.) (2009), Was Mao Really a Monster? (London: Routledge). This includes the original 2006 reviews by David Goodman (“Mao and The Da Vinci Code: conspiracy, narrative and history”, Pacific Review 19 (3): 361-381), and Geremie Barme (“I’m So Ronree”, China Journal 55 (January 2006), 128-139).
Happy browsing!