KERRY BROWN | 14 July 2010One thing that the Communist Party (CCP) doesn't welcome, unlike most modern successful political organisations, is the light of scrutiny and public interest. One thing that FT journalist THE PARTY makes clear in his new study of how the CCP currently operates and what makes it tick, is how brilliant it has been at concealing its... [ more ]
The Snakehead by Patrick Radden Keefe
KERRY BROWN | 31 May 2010In 1993, two policemen patrolling the coast of the US facing the Atlantic near New York were stunned to see a wrecked boat disgorge dozens of Asian-looking men and women, some in a state of starvation, desperately swimming towards the shore. PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE's THE SNAKEHEAD traces the traumatic story of the passengers on this ship back to their origins, months earlier in Fujian, South East China, and uses their fate as a way to have a long,... [ more ]
Vietnam: Rising Dragon by Bill Hayton
KERRY BROWN | 19 May 2010Vietnam is one of the world's most populous countries, one of the final few where a communist party maintains a monopoly on power, and occupies a key strategic area. It is surprising it gets less coverage than it does. But journalist BILL HAYTON has written a lively account of where the country now stands, based partly on his period spent in Hanoi as the BBC correspondent there. As it transpires in this book, his stay was... [ more ]
Underground Front: The Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong by Christine Loh
KERRY BROWN | 11 April 2010CHRISTINE LOH, a distinguished former legislator and supporter of civil society groups, admits early on in this history of the Communist Party in Hong Kong the that the issue is sensitive, so sensitive in fact that to this day, highly ironically, the Party and its membership, beyond their formal office for the Special Administrative Region, remain covert. It is deeply ironic that while the Communist Party in Beijing has regained... [ more ]
Shanghai, China's Gateway to Modernity by Marie-Claire Bergere
KERRY BROWN | 16 February 2010MARIE-CLAIRE BERGERE knows Shanghai well. She mentions a visit in 1957, in which she first encountered the city which is the subject of her narrative history,SHANGHAI, CHINA'S GATEWAY TO MODERNITY. Even to have been allowed a visit to China in the 1950s, when the country was slowly closing off to the rest of the world, was a privilege accorded only to a chosen few. But as she records later, at the same time as she was gazing intrigued from her sparsely populated hotel... [ more ]
Dominion From Sea to Sea: Pacific Ascendancy and American Power by Bruce Cummings
KERRY BROWN | 04 February 2010BRUCE CUMMINGS has written extensively about Asia, and in particular North East Asia. So this 500-page study of the US might appear to mark a change of direction. However, as Professor Cummings says in his introduction, the United States has two vast ocean-facing boundaries, one to the Atlantic and one to the Pacific, and for much of its history, it would be better characterised as a power looking west, to Asia, not east, back... [ more ]
Breaking Through by Li Lanqing
KERRY BROWN | 08 December 2009Believe it or not, Chinese politicians are becoming more and more like their western counterparts in at least one respect: writing lengthy memoirs once they have left office. Former Premier Zhao Ziyang's recorded recollections of his time in office were published to great fanfare earlier in 2009. But their news value was because of the promise contained in them that they might reveal something more about the chaotic and... [ more ]
Nazarbayez and the Making of Kazakhstan by Jonathan Aitken
KERRY BROWN | 13 October 2009JONATHAN AITKEN, former British Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister, was to enjoy a spectacular end to his political career in the late 1990s when he was convicted, and imprisoned, for perjury. He was to serve a few months in prison. Since his release, he has been busy writing a number of works, some of them based on his time in jail, and some of them to his various other interests. His biography of the President of Kazakhstan,... [ more ]
