China's Backstory

Taiwan. Hong Kong. Xinjiang. China’s economy. Hardly a week passes before another major news story on China breaks in the media. But these stories only scratch the surface of what is really happening. How did Taiwan become an island that China was willing to go to war over? Why did Beijing execute a hard takeover of Hong Kong in 2020? Why does China own Xinjiang, when the majority of the population speaks Turkic, not Chinese? Is the Chinese economy special or does it work like any other economy?

Answering these questions requires more than looking at China from the outside. Lee Moore examines today’s hot-button issues through the lens of China’s own history and literature, taking readers on a deep dive into how the Chinese themselves have written and thought about these topics.