and China “In this highly entertaining but deeply disturbing book, Erich Schwartzel demonstrates the extent of our cultural thrall to China. His depiction of the craven characters, American and Chinese, who have enabled this situation represents a significant feat of investigative journalism. His narrative is about not merely the movie business, but the new world order.” —Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree and The Noonday DemonFrom trade to technology to military might, competition between the United States and China dominates the foreign policy landscape. But this battle for global influence is also playing out in a strange and unexpected arena: the movies. The film industry, Wall Street Journal reporter Erich Schwartzel explains, is the latest battleground in the tense and complex rivalry between these two world powers. In recent decades, as China has grown into a giant of the international economy, it has become a crucial source of revenue for the American film industry. Hollywood studios are now bending over backward to make movies that will appeal to China’s citizens—and gain approval from severe Communist Party censors. At the same time, and with America’s unwitting help, China has built its own film industry into an essential arm of its plan to export its national agenda to the rest of the world. The competition between these two movie businesses is a Cold War for this century, a clash that determines whether democratic or authoritarian values will be broadcast most powerfully around the world. Red Carpet is packed with memorable characters who have—knowingly or otherwise—played key roles in this tangled industry web: not only A-list stars like Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, and Richard Gere but also eccentric Chinese billionaires, zany expatriate filmmakers, and starlets who disappear from public life without explanation or trace. Schwartzel combines original reporting, political history, and show-biz intrigue in an exhilarating tour of global entertainment, from propaganda film sets in Beijing to the boardrooms of Hollywood studios to the living rooms in Kenya where families decide whether to watch an American or Chinese movie. Alarming, occasionally absurd, and wildly entertaining, Red Carpet will not only alter the way we watch movies but also offer essential new perspective on the power struggle of this century.

    In preparation for handing the territory over to China in 1997, Deng Xiaoping promised that it would remain highly autonomous for fifty years. An international treaty established a Special Administrative Region (SAR) with a far freer political system than that of Communist China—one with its own currency and government administration, a common-law legal system, and freedoms of press, speech, and religion.But as the halfway mark of the SAR’s lifespan approaches in 2022, it is clear that China has not kept its word. Universal suffrage and free elections have not been instituted, harassment and brutality have become normalized, and activists are being jailed en masse. To make matters worse, a national security law that further crimps Hong Kong’s freedoms has recently been decreed in Beijing. This tragic backslide has dire worldwide implications—as China continues to expand its global influence, Hong Kong serves as a chilling preview of how dissenters could be treated in regions that fall under the emerging superpower’s control.Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World tells the complete story of how a city once famed for protests so peaceful that toddlers joined grandparents in millions-strong rallies became a place where police have fired more than 10,000 rounds of tear gas, rubber bullets and even live ammunition at their neighbors, while pro-government hooligans attack demonstrators in the streets. A Hong Kong resident from 1992 to 2021, author Mark L. Clifford has witnessed this transformation firsthand. As a celebrated publisher and journalist, he has unrivaled access to the full range of the city’s society, from student protestors and political prisoners to aristocrats and senior government officials. A powerful and dramatic mix of history and on-the-ground reporting, this book is the definitive account of one of the most important geopolitical standoffs of our time.

    Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China's most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology.Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who adapted the Chinese language to a world designed for the Roman alphabet and requiring standardization, from an exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language to the imprisoned computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup. Without their advances, China might never have become the dominating force we know today.With larger-than-life characters and an unexpected perspective on the major events of China's tumultuous twentieth century, Tsu reveals how language is both a technology to be perfected and a subtle, yet potent, power to be exercised and expanded.

    Lawrence, Jr. founded Overlook Investments in Hong Kong in 1991. Since inception, Overlook has grown at 14.3% per year for three decades—a remarkable record of growth that is testament to a consistent ability to find and invest in Asia’s best companies.This raises two important questions: How did Overlook achieve its success; and how can Overlook best ensure future success?Now, in a level of detail never before disclosed, Richard and the Overlook executive team turn the lens inward to analyse The Overlook Model. They describe the philosophies, practices and people that drive Overlook’s outperformance. Welcome to The Model .The Model is composed primarily of stories—of the people, companies, executives and events that have punctuated three decades at Overlook. There are stories of success, but also stories of problems and failure. This is how Overlook learned and grew. The two principal stories are a pulsating case study of the voracious 1997/98 Asian Crisis; and an extended review of TSMC, Asia’s finest public company.A sharp focus is also placed on the constituent elements of The Overlook Model: Overlook’s Investment Philosophy and Business Practices, which add up to Overlook’s Margin of Safety. This analysis of investment theory–how an investment management company should be run–illustrates how Overlook is able to say with confidence that it can nearly guarantee delivery of outperformance to its investors.And where would Overlook be without China? Overlook’s experiences in Asia reflect the ways that Overlook’s methods of investing have succeeded while Asia grew and matured over the past three decades. For this reason, The Model contains a series of chapters charting Overlook’s path in China.Finally, the Overlook executives provide a series of delightful chapters including The Art of Selling; an interview with Jeffrey Lu Minfang; a panel discussion on Overlook’s home city of Hong Kong; and thoughts on ESG.The Model is a celebration of three decades of success in investing in Asia. It gives Richard Lawrence, along with James Squire, Leonie Foong and William Leung, the opportunity to answer: Just how did Overlook do it; and can Overlook keep doing it in the future?All proceeds from the sale of the book will go to support Proyecto Mirador, a non-profit that builds fuel-efficient cookstoves in rural communities across Central America.

    He shows that the mass detention of over one million Uyghurs in “reeducation camps” is part of processes of resource extraction in Uyghur lands that have led to what he calls terror capitalism—a configuration of ethnoracialization, surveillance, and mass detention that in this case promotes settler colonialism. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the regional capital Ürümchi, Byler shows how media infrastructures, the state’s enforcement of “Chinese” cultural values, and the influx of Han Chinese settlers contribute to Uyghur dispossession and their expulsion from the city. He particularly attends to the experiences of young Uyghur men—who are the primary target of state violence—and how they develop masculinities and homosocial friendships to protect themselves against gendered, ethnoracial, and economic violence. By tracing the political and economic stakes of Uyghur colonization, Byler demonstrates that state-directed capitalist dispossession is coconstructed with a colonial relation of domination.

    Chinese online fiction is now the largest publishing platform in the world.Fueled by her passionate engagement with the arts and ideas of China's people, Megan Walsh, a brilliant young critic, shows us why it's important to finally pay attention to Chinese fiction--an exuberant drama that illustrates the complex relationship between art and politics, one that is increasingly shaping the West as well. Turns out, writers write neither what their government nor foreign readers want or expect, as they work on a different wavelength to keep alive ideas and events that are censored by the propaganda machine. The Subplot vividly captures the way in which literature offers an alternative--perhaps truer--way to understanding the contradictions that make up China itself.

    interests. The past few years have seen relations between China and the United States shift, from enthusiastic economic partners, to wary frenemies, to open rivals. Americans have been slow to wake up to the challenges posed by the Chinese Communist Party. Why did this happen? And what can we do about it?In America Second, Isaac Stone Fish traces the evolution of the Party's influence in America. He shows how America's leaders initially welcomed China's entry into the U.S. economy, believing that trade and engagement would lead to a more democratic China. And he explains how--although this belief has proved misguided--many of our businesspeople and politicians have become too dependent on China to challenge it.America Second exposes a deep network of Beijing's influence in America, built quietly over the years through prominent figures like former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright, Disney chairman Bob Iger, and members of the Bush family. And it shows how to fight that influence-without being paranoid, xenophobic, or racist. This is an authoritative and important story of corruption and good intentions gone wrong, with serious implications not only for the future of the United States, but for the world at large.