Part One
* My China Library UPDATE of 2025 brings a cross-section of new books to the reader's attention, including two astonishing corporate histories, first of Apple Computer and its capture by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and second the telecoms giant Huawei, a company that echoes the culture of the CCP in almost every respect.
* Other reviews address books on subjects such as espionage, social conditions, and China's threat to America. Their authors range from CCP defenders to unapologetic American hawks.
* Here's an extract from the Introduction:
* "At the very least this current volume will give you the flavor of My China Library, with the added interest of books hot-from-the-press.
* "As regards the immediate future: there is little doubt that China is currently experiencing severe financial problems that no amount of false accounting can conceal. The political repercussions will be equally serious, resulting in major changes within the CCP.
* "In the absence of democratic controls, the Party can stabilize only by internal forces testing their strength against each other until the weaker group backs down.
* "The key struggle is over who controls the military, because ultimately, as Mao noted, 'political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.'
* "Whatever happens in the future, we all need to understand China more fully."
Part Two
* In Part Two, the author offers a selection of reviews and commentaries from My China Library on works that were published from the 1950s onwards. Freda Utley's The China Story (1951) which correctly identified the CCP as hard-left Marxists rather than agrarian reformers; and Frank Dikötter's classic The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962-1976 (2016).
* They include Freda Utley's The China Story (1951) which correctly identified the CCP as hard-left Marxists rather than agrarian reformers; and Frank Dikötter's classic The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962-1976 (2016).
* Books such as A Treatise on Efficacy: Between Western and Chinese Thinking (2004), by François Jullien, take us deep into understanding some important aspects of Chinese thought; while Paul Midler's What's Wrong with China? (2018) examines the prevailing business culture and deconstructs some of the myths that are commonly circulated about China.
* My China Library Update 2025, is the first of what is expected to become a series of updates, made every 2-3 years.
* Each will contain a different selection of essays from the original work - which covered 150+ books written by authors with 1,000+ years' collective experience of living and working in China - together with reviews of books published in the intervening period.
* At 172 pages the first My China Library UPDATE is relatively short in comparison to the other volumes. It is a low cost entry-point to the full work.
In these three volumes of in-depth reviews and commentary, John Lewell, author of Modern Japanese Novelists (Kodansha, New York & Tokyo, 1993), takes the reader on a journey of exploration, concentrating on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but with some dives into China's distant and not-so-distant past. You can read the essays in any order, but it's a good idea to start with Volume One. It contains the author's Introduction to the series, while Volume Three has the complete series Bibliography.
Unashamedly a book-lover with a preference for printed works, the author has included a bonus for readers of the paperback and hardback versions: several added pages of key quotes from each essay, grouped together in the Appendices.
In Volume One
*
The Two Coronavirus Scandals, the uncanny similarities in how both SARS (2003) and Covid (2019 onwards) were handled by the Chinese government.
*
The Party, Xi Jinping, and the Modern Era.
*
China Gets Rich, from the first hints of policy change in the early 1980s to the embrace of rampant capitalism in later years.
*
China's Police State, with its incredible arsenal of surveillance tools and Artificial Intelligence.
*
China's Critics. Are they right? And why do Western politicians consistently fail to develop an effective China policy?
*
China's Periphery, including Hong Kong, Taiwan, the South China Sea, Southeast Asia, and beyond.
*
Mao Zedong and Marshal Zhu De, their remarkable life-stories.
*
The Long March, with vivid first-hand accounts of some who took part.
*
Closing the Missions, how China severed the connection with Western religion and morality.
In Volume Two
* First-hand accounts from
Shanghai before the "Liberation".
* 10 books by or about the
China Hands - leading journalists and diplomats based in China between the two world wars. Did they cause us to "lose China"? You decide!
* A brief but engrossing dive into China's
Distant and Not-So-Distant Past, leading up to the Taiping Uprising of the mid-19th century - which portended the fall of the Qing Dynasty.
* A selection of
Overviews about China and its people.
* The
Criminal World and its roots in secret societies.
*
Chinese Spies at home and overseas, including the extensive influence operations now being conducted.
*
Fleeing and Staying, the stories of those who fled Red China, and those who chose to stay.
*
Miscellaneous Memoirs, autobiographies by both Chinese and foreigners, including the incredible tale of Sidney Rittenberg who played cards with Mao, promoted the Cultural Revolution, served two sentences in jail, yet somehow lived to tell his story to an accomplished biographer.
In Volume Three
Volume Three takes us to a new level of understanding with chapters on:
*
The Cultural Revolution.
*
Dissidents, including two works by cosmologist Fang Lizhi.
* The inside story of
Tiananmen 1989 with books by participants and observers.
* A chapter on
Intellectuals, including studies of two books by philosopher-sinologist François Jullien.
*
Novels and Stories, critical essays on 10 books of literature, including works by Lu Xun, Ding Ling, Shen Congwen, Wang Zengqi and Yu Hua.
* In the chapter on
Visitors, we get the reaction to China by foreigners like Ernest Hemingway, Arthur Miller and Bertrand Russell.
* Two final chapters examine the relationship between
America and China, and - as a add-on, there's a deeper exploration of certain events in the 20th century in
W.H. Donald and the Sian Incident, during which Donald was a key player during some of the great turning-points of world history.
"Although some people in the West are beginning to understand China, no one can do it without reading books, especially books by authors who've had first-hand experience of living for long periods on China's mainland. But who today, apart from scholars and specialists, can spare the time to read so extensively?
"I've spent three years putting together My China Library and I'd now like to share my discoveries with people who don't wish to read 150+ books. Yes, My China Library itself is quite a "big read," but it's a whole lot shorter than the physical library on which it is based. Maybe my selection wouldn't have been yours, but among the works I've chosen are many that provide essential insights into how China has become what it is today: "the world's factory," with a multitude of environmental, political, and social problems - and unusual ways of dealing with them.
"Many of the books reviewed are either banned or hard to obtain in China - and some are out of print and expensive to buy in the West. I think it's fair to say that a person reading the three volumes of My China Library will be able to reach a more accurate impression of events over the past century than is held by most Chinese citizens themselves."
"Your American medicine heals the body but it poisons the heart!" - Captain Fu, in Bird of Sorrow, by John Romaniello.
"Trying was not enough. You had to succeed...."
- Woman Wang, quoted by Sun Shuyun, in The Long March.
"...there are no trivial matters in diplomacy..."
- Zhou Enlai, quoted by Peter Martin in China's Civilian Army.
"I graduated from the University of Outlaws."
- Mao Zedong, quoted by Li Zhisui, in The Private Life of Chairman Mao.
"I wanted them [the Communists] to win."
- John S. Service, in The China Hands' Legacy, ed. Paul Gordon Lauren.
"Even my secret-police minder felt sorry for me."
- Chinese poet and author Liao Yiwu, in Bullets and Opium.
"The considered response of a sensitive and independent-minded reader to his encounter with virtually a hundred years of literary tradition." - Professor Thomas Rimer, University of Pittsburgh.
"Loaded with original insights. Readers will be provoked, challenged, and forced to rethink their earlier readings. Recommeded equally to the newcomer and to seasoned scholars in search of fresh stimulus." - Makoto Ueda, Stanford University.
"Lewell provides just the right balance between biographical information and enlightening interpretations of the major works of modern Japanese fiction."
- Van C. Gessel, Brigham Young University.
"...excellent reference material for those who need to know more about Japanese writers and their literary groupings. What's great about this collection of mini-essays/bios is that it gives one a foundation to start with when reading contemporary Japanese literature." - Tosh Berman, publisher, on Goodreads.