100 Best China Books of All Time

Richard BransonToday is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)

Vishakha DesaiTo me Wild Swans is one of those iconic books for understanding the generations of Chinese women. She is from this amazing intellectual family and it’s about what happens to them. The book just has this tremendous power. It’s an amazing journey. It’s about what women do to survive and also how they suffer. (Source)

Harry WuWild Swans is talking about people who are living at the highest level of society but they are still suffering persecution and live in fear. And the peasants in the village became slaves, they became nothing. So what the book does brilliantly is give a real insight into what life was like for ordinary people against the backdrop of the ever-changing China. (Source)

Reid HoffmanReid read Carl von Clausewitz and Sun Tzu as a boy, which informed his strategic thinking. (Source)

Neil deGrasse TysonWhich books should be read by every single intelligent person on planet? [...] The Art of War (Sun Tsu) [to learn that the act of killing fellow humans can be raised to an art]. If you read all of the above works you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world. (Source)

Evan SpiegelAfter meeting Mark Zuckerberg, [Evan Spiegel] immediately bought every [Snapchat] employee a copy of 'The Art Of War'. (Source)

Oprah WinfreyReading Pearl Buck's writing feels like reading poetry to me. I just love the quiet rhythm of the words. They evoke the simple beauty of the characters and the harsh mystery of China's ancient culture. (Source)

Amy ChuaI read this book when I was about nine years old. It just made such an impact on me. O-Lan, the mother in this book, toils silently and stoically all her life to provide for her family. (Source)

Abid ZaidiDay 4 : #30Days of posting cover of books I love (1 book a day for 30 days). No expectations, no reviews, just the covers. Inspired by @rekha_bhardwaj #MyFavouriteBooks https://t.co/Z1RZbzh9vZ (Source)

Barack ObamaAs a devoted reader, the president has been linked to a lengthy list of novels and poetry collections over the years — he admits he enjoys a thriller. (Source)

Mark ZuckerbergIt's a Chinese science fiction book that has gotten so popular there's now a Hollywood movie being made based on it. This will also be a fun break from all the economics and social science books I've read recently. (Source)

Adam SavageI felt like I was getting a Chinese version of Chinese culture. And that frame felt unique. (Source)

Armistead MaupinThe novel is structured around the four corners of the mahjong table. The device makes clear the distance between the old world of China and the new world that these women inhabit in San Francisco. The novel focuses on the memories and secrets that these women carry about their mothers and their daughters. It shows modern Chinese-Americans dealing with cultural differences across generations.... (Source)

Tim O'ReillyThe Way of Life According to Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching), translated by Witter Bynner. My personal religious philosophy, stressing the rightness of what is, if only we can accept it. Most people who know me have heard me quote from this book. "Seeing as how nothing is outside the vast, wide-meshed net of heaven, who is there to say just how it is cast?" (Source)

Naval RavikantIn the philosophy side, I’ve been rereading the Tao Te Ching. (Source)

Jack DorseyQ: What are the books that had a major influence on you? Or simply the ones you like the most. : Tao te Ching, score takes care of itself, between the world and me, the four agreements, the old man and the sea...I love reading! (Source)

Jennifer SteilLet’s start with River Town by Peter Hessler. River Town is his memoir of two years teaching for the Peace Corps at a teacher training college in China in a very remote city – a small city of 200,000 people or so, very few of whom had ever met foreigners. So Hessler really was in a very isolated, alien place. I love this book for many reasons. Firstly because he’s a beautiful writer and he gives... (Source)

Richard BransonToday is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)

Harry WuTo this day we don’t really know much about Mao’s personal history. The Communist Party portrays him as the Great Leader. His smiling image is everywhere. Even the political system still follows his model. So what Chang did was delve deeper to discover who is the real Mao? You hear from people like his private doctor talking about his personal history (Source)

Greg Norman[Greg Norman said this is one of his most-recommended books.] (Source)

Gunhee ParkI can’t narrow down one favorite book, but there are a few that have had a strong impact on me over the past few years. Life and Death in Shanghai and Man’s Search for Meaning are great non-business books that have helped me gain a deeper perspective on life. Both books also helps you gain a stronger appreciation of the times we live in today. (Source)

Rana MitterI think it’s right that Graham Peck was disappointed by the Cultural Revolution. This, of course, was essentially a revolt by Mao against his own party. Mao on one level fears that he is being sidelined by his own party, and on another level feels that the revolution had lost steam 17 years in. A new generation had been born that didn’t remember the struggles of [1949] and it was time to... (Source)

Jeffrey WasserstromI love the way it’s written, and the way that Chang blends her own life story in with it. She pairs the story of her family’s migration out of China to the United States, where she grew up, to the movement of young women from rural China to urban China today. And she sets up a parallel between the way that American cities were transformed by overseas immigrants who fuelled the American industrial... (Source)

Barack ObamaPresident Obama is spending his Hawaiian vacation playing golf, getting together with high school friends and reading a handful of dark novels set in foreign lands, according to a book list released by the White House Wednesday. The presidential reading list includes [...] two works of non-fiction for the trip: "Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China," by Evan Osnos... (Source)

Dr. Sue Desmond-HellmannA standout for me this year was Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, by Evan Osnos. Osnos spent eight years in China as a foreign correspondent, and his book helped me gain insight into today's China through stories of people, some well-known and others ordinary. (Source)

Bill GatesIf you’re going to read one book about modern China in the period after Mao, then this is the book you should read. (Source)

Gideon RachmanThis is the best and most comprehensive book I know, certainly in English, on the Deng Xiaoping era. Deng’s importance will only grow with the passage of time. I think he will emerge as a truly historic figure – less dramatic than Mao, but with more lasting impact if China remains on this course. There was a need for a really serious and readable study of him, and this is a big door-stopping book... (Source)

Ellah AllfreyThis is my bestseller! Amy Tan unleashed this western obsession, or interest in, Chinese women’s writing and it’s not the best book in the world, but it’s a classic story of not understanding your parents until it’s nearly too late. There is this woman married to a white American man and she has always thought her parents never loved her. She finds out that in Chinese culture you must never tell... (Source)

Aimée Lyn InhcBest book I’ve ever read. https://t.co/pc68Yvw7U8 (Source)

Edward NortonThe definitive book about modern Chinese history. (Source)

Adam SavageI felt like I was getting a Chinese version of Chinese culture. And that frame felt unique. (Source)

Ben Brode@noahmp @devonzuegel I thought book 2 and of the series that starts with “the three body problem” fulfilled this condition and was awesome (Source)

The Centre for the Study of Existential RiskIt makes the point that humanity is fairly weak, and that if we’re ever faced by a really big threat, we most likely won’t survive it. (Source)

XinranYes. I normally only read non-fiction books but, as you can see, this novel is exceptional like A Good Earth by Pearl S Buck. It is all about family life in a Chinese village before and after the 1949 revolution. These are ordinary people and the book looks at how they survive this very difficult period in Chinese history. This was the time of endless political war between 1940s to 1980s. (Source)

Chris KutarnaIt’s a story of the personal experience of the chaos of revolutionary political and economic change in China. (Source)

Michael PuettHe believed one of our dangers is that we fall into ruts that are defined by the world around us. (Source)

Daniel A. BellIt’s not written by Confucius himself. It is more a collection of anecdotes of how he engaged his students. (Source)

Andrew HuiThis edition is really good at showing both the constructed-ness of the original Analects and the vast exegetical machine that has driven the Chinese philosophical tradition through the centuries. (Source)

Marianne Bastid-BruguièreIt’s a bit like the first one: the writer Liao Yiwu is not much appreciated by the present government – he was put in jail in 1989 because he’d written a poem called ‘The Massacre’, about the 4 June incident in Peking. He spent ten years in jail, where he was put with the ordinary criminals, so he mixed with all kinds of people and interviewed them and recorded their life stories, and it’s an... (Source)

Norbert Mao@rkabushenga @cobbo3 @AgaSekalala @dfkm1970 @Kalinaki @TioKauma A fascinating book. Next you should read this one by Michael Pillsbury. Reminds me of the race between the hare and the tortoise! One is faster but distracted while the other is slow but steady. https://t.co/231fMeO0TP (Source)

Tracy Chou@nelson @CrazyRichMovie yay i’m so glad you got to enjoy it!! lots of singaporeans do speak hokkien and eleanor does in the movie, i can’t remember if she does in the book (Source)

Cat Williams-TreloarA couple of years after moving to Singapore I read Kevin Kwan's first book "Crazy Rich Asians". I've never laughed so much in my life and have been an advocate of the entire series. To this day, whenever someone has a copy in hand at the airport or in our regular store, I tell them how amazing the books area. Kevin is a genius, and his books are full of beautiful cultural insights from across the... (Source)

Joshua M. BrownIt’s book 3 on my summer reading list and the revelations are eye-popping. Dikotter was among the first to gain access to formerly hidden government reports from the era. https://t.co/XdQtenV7vl https://t.co/zZ45fUeSiO (Source)

Ben HorowitzUnexpectedly the most interesting book on the topic of how you think about inclusion. (Source)

Daymond John[Daymond John said this is one of his most-recommended books.] (Source)

Lisa LingGenghis Khan was a great democratizer. His Mongol Empire conquered more territory in 25 years than the Romans did in 200. (Source)

Richard BaumThis is another book along the lines of Will the Boat Sink the Water? Its author, the Washington Post investigative reporter Philip Pan, presents moving portraits of several victims of China’s corruption-tainted economic growth. Pan also draws attention to the few brave souls – mostly journalists and lawyers – who at great personal risk to their careers, and occasionally to their lives, dared to... (Source)

XinranThis book is believed by many to be the greatest Chinese novel ever written. (Source)

Chris LivaccariLike Lu Xun for the modern literary tradition, if you ask scholars – or most people in China – for the greatest novel in the classical tradition, there are generally four novels of the Ming and Qing that are venerated. This is the most recent. It’s a very long and complex novel, and hard to summarise. For me, in the literary tradition of the whole world, this book along with two others – The Tale... (Source)

Yuval Noah HarariA superb and very timely survey of the impact of AI on the geopolitical system, the job market and human society. (Source)

Arianna HuffingtonKai-Fu Lee's experience as an AI pioneer, top investor, and cancer survivor has led to this brilliant book about global technology. AI Superpowers gives us a guide to a future that celebrates all the benefits that AI will bring, while cultivating what is unique about our humanity. It’s one of those books you read and think, ‘Why are people reading any other book right now when this is so clearly... (Source)

Satya NadellaKai-Fu Lee's smart analysis on human-AI coexistence is clear-eyed and a must-read. We must look deep within ourselves for the values and wisdom to guide AI's development. (Source)

Simon SinekThis is another book that trains us to keep an open mind. It offers a theory of how the Chinese discovered America 70 years before Columbus. The practice of being open to new ways of seeing things makes a leader open to the ideas of others — an essential characteristic of great leadership. (Source)

Barack ObamaWhen asked what books he recommended to his 18-year-old daughter Malia, Obama gave the Times a list that included The Naked and the Dead and One Hundred Years of Solitude. “I think some of them were sort of the usual suspects […] I think she hadn’t read yet. Then there were some books that are not on everybody’s reading list these days, but I remembered as being interesting.” Here’s what he... (Source)

Eva HoffmanThis is a very interesting memoir by a woman, Maxine Hong Kingston, who was born in America but of a Chinese immigrant family, so it is an immigrant memoir. It recounts her childhood and youth in a desperately poor family, originally from rural China, who are uneducated and think of Americans as “ghosts” – the literal Chinese name for the natives. Her father has a contemptuous attitude to women,... (Source)

Adam SavageI felt like I was getting a Chinese version of Chinese culture. And that frame felt unique. (Source)

Ash "Ivivvi" FurrowI’m finally reading Death’s End, the conclusion of The Three Body Problem trilogy. It’s amazing! But I’m only 1/3 through the book and all hope for humanity already seems lost? This happened much later in the first two books 🤔 (Source)

Mark KrikorianThere was an interesting book a few years back describing how Chinese society, and not just the govt, has made a conscious effort to erase memory of the Tiananmen protests & massacre. https://t.co/sjfSnrD1wJ https://t.co/7VFiYj0FEh (Source)

Jeffrey WasserstromYes, and a great book. It’s the most important book to deal with 1989 in a long time: to my mind at least in the past decade. It’s powerful in the way it revisits the events of 1989 through profiles of participants. For example, we hear from a soldier who was involved in the crackdown and has rethought his role in events since then. The book also has a new investigation of a massacre that took... (Source)

Fareed ZakariaA very smart and important book. (Source)

Kin KariisaIt was such a memorable and humbling moment meeting Prof. Allison Graham, professor of government at Harvard, on the sidelines of Jeju Forum for Peace and Prosperity here in Jeju Island, South Korea. His book Destined for War is a fascinating read. https://t.co/ZB3HhBHgLY (Source)

Will MacAskillThe last 70 years are a fairly unusual state. We don’t really know why they’ve been so unusually peaceful. This could all change in the 21st century. (Source)

Dambisa MoyoThis is why I think Richard’s book is particularly interesting. It’s a sneak peak into the way the Communist Party works. Clearly the Chinese government has succeeded in providing a policy environment that incentivises people to do things – to work hard, to make money – without it necessarily being democratic. Like it or not, they have a rule of law, they have some transparency – certainly enough... (Source)

Maya Zlatanova[One of the books that had the biggest impact on Maya.] (Source)

Alan PierceThis novel is the second book in a great saga detailing the intense competition between two shipping magnates and their battle over the gateway to China: the very lucrative island of Hong Kong. Set in the tumultuous period during which the British had seized Hong Kong before it was known as England’s crown jewel, it is an exciting and fun ride detailing Hong Kong as a melting pot of political... (Source)

James PalmerIt positions the Mongols as this kind of in-touch-with-nature, fierce, warrior people, like wolves, and the Han as these settled ‘sheeple.’ (Source)

Isabel HiltonWolf Totem contains certain things that have universal romantic appeal: wolves, tribesmen, and so on. But the message that central Chinese policies have been catastrophic for the people who were China’s neighbours – and who are now incorporated into China – very much needed to be said. And it was a way of criticising the party without it being about Han China. But it spoke for a lot of what had... (Source)

Elizabeth Perryin some ways it seems the most dated of the books I’ve chosen, because it presents a totally rosy portrait of the Communist revolution. But I think for understanding modern China it’s extremely important. And that’s because it does, in rather sympathetic but comprehensive detail, point out both the importance of the land revolution, and the nationalistic revolution, as key elements in Mao... (Source)

John M HamiltonThis arguably is the most important book by an American foreign correspondent in the 20th century. At the time it was written in the mid-1930s nobody knew who the communists were. Many thought they were mere bandits. Snow went to the north-west of China to find them. When his book came out the whole equation changed; thereafter communism was understood to be a viable political movement. (Source)

Ma JianIt’s a very thick book. My first impression of Tombstone was that it really surprised me, in a good way. We all know that in the sixties, during the Mao era, there was a terrifying period of the Great Famine. That was a secret for a long time, which no-one revealed. But with this book, we can now read extensive evidence of it. Of course, Yang Jisheng isn’t a literary writer, he’s a historian. He... (Source)

Richard McGregorI found this book really unputdownable. We’ve all read lots of books about the reforms under Deng Xiaoping since 1979. Pomfret takes it straight down to street level, almost, with the story of five people that he knew, former classmates he had met at university as a foreign student in Nanjing in 1981. He was able to trace their lives intimately from when he left them. The book really has this... (Source)

Marianne Bastid-BruguièreI’ve always been interested in Chinese attitudes towards life: towards what happens, the misfortunes of life, and how they handle life in their society. And I think that, although you get a lot of hard facts through the historical record, of course, in order to get the mood and to understand deeper you need to look into literature. The first novel I really like is The Water Margin. It’s one of... (Source)