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CHINA'S RISING MILITARY POWER: SAMPLING OF RELEVANT NON-FICTION

It's impossible to understand the potentialities and implications of China's increasingly muscular sea power without first understanding China herself.

Books about China tend to fall into one of several sub-genres. These include: a) poignant and revealing memoirs by Chinese expatriates who lived through various troubling times, b) socio-political commentaries/travelogues by Western journalists who spent part of their careers working in China, and c) serious/academic histories and monographs on China's continuing growth as an authoritarian socialist state on the economic-technological, foreign policy, Communist Party ideology, and military fronts.

I've read and strongly recommend the books listed below. Rather than comment further myself, you can look at the Amazon listings to see the publisher's own summary and the set of reader reviews and star ratings.

Memoirs by Chinese expatriates:

WILD SWANS: THREE DAUGHTERS OF CHINA
by Jung Chang, trade paperback, 524 pages. 1991, Touchstone, NY.

CHINA'S SON: GROWING UP IN THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION
by Da Chen, hardcover, 213 pages. 2001, Delacorte Press, NY.

Commentaries by Western journalists:

CHINA: ALIVE IN THE BITTER SEA
by Fox Butterfield, trade paperback, 468 pages. 1982, Bantam, NY.

ORACLE BONES: A JOURNEY BETWEEN CHINA'S PAST AND PRESENT
Peter Hessler, hardcover, 491 pages. 2006, HarperCollins, NY.

Histories and monographs:

MAO: THE UNKNOWN STORY
by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, hardcover, 813 pages. 2005, Jonathan Cape Random House, London.

THE GREAT WALL AT SEA: CHINA'S NAVY ENTERS THE 21ST CENTURY
by Bernard D. Cole, hardcover, 288 pages. 2001, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD.

CHINESE NATIONALISM IN THE GLOBAL ERA
by Christopher R. Hughes, trade paperback, 184 pages. 2006, Routledge, NY.

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