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"Modified Bodies, Material Selves: Beauty Ideals in Post-Reform Shanghai" by Julie E. Starr is an ethnographic study that compares the beauty ideals and self-perceptions of young, middle-class Chinese women in Shanghai with those of Western expat women. The Chinese women were found to be less concerned with beauty and related issues such as race and gender, instead linking concepts of body and beauty with nationalism. The book explores various explanations for the differences between the two groups, including individualism, traditional Chinese medicine, Western beauty ideals, and capitalism. However, the book has been criticized for lacking in-depth cultural context and for not providing a thorough analysis of the social structures underlying the women's lives. [Extracted from the article]

Smith skilfully demonstrates that understanding the Chinese political and intellectual contexts within which different conceptions of Asianism were articulated is key to grasping why so many Chinese participated in Asianist discourse, often "in dialogue with Japanese Asianism" (p. 16). $55.00; £44.95; €49.50 ISBN 978-0-6742-6024-5 For a long time, scholarly interest in Asianism (also known as Pan-Asianism) focused on Japan and its role in justifying Japan's empire in East and South-East Asia. I Chinese Asianism i is highly recommended to everyone interested in Chinese intellectual and political history, China-Japan and China-Asia relations. [Extracted from the article]

Weiner asserts that the Amdo rebellion of 1958, which was only suppressed though the mobilization of state violence, reveals the extent to which the Party failed to convince Amdo Tibetans of their membership in a wider Chinese political community. ISBN 9781501749391 Benno Weiner's I The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier i is a detailed and powerful account of how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) attempted to incorporate Tibetans living in Amdo into the newly created Chinese socialist nation-state in the 1950s. Weiner readily acknowledges the dearth of Tibetan voices in these archives that were not at some level sanctioned by the Chinese party-state. [Extracted from the article]

The recent two-decade-long march of "global China" – manifested as outward flows of investment, loans, infrastructure, migrants, media, cultural programmes and international and civil society engagement – has left sweeping but variegated footprints in many parts of the world. From "going out," officially announced in the year 2000, to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Made in China 2025, and from the developing world to advanced industrialized democracies, state-endorsed campaigns are but tips of a much more momentous iceberg. Numerous Chinese citizens and private corporations have also participated in a global search for employment, business, investment and educational and emigration opportunities. International reactions to the increasingly ubiquitous presence of China and the Chinese people in almost every corner of the world have evolved from a mixture of anxiety and hope to a more explicitly critical backlash. Terms such as "sharp power," "debt-trap diplomacy" and the "new Cold War" bespeak the West's dominant perception today of China as a threat to be contained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ISBN 9780197573303 As China has risen to global economic power status, analysts have sought to calculate Beijing's foreign policy priorities and changing behavioural patterns - hoping to identify general priorities and eternal principles that would allow the forecasting of Beijing's future voting behaviour and positioning. Moreover, there is no mention of the language in which the interviews in China (Beijing) were conducted. [Extracted from the article]

One of the historical silences that China remembers - but does not openly remind Russia of - concerns the 1900 massacre of Chinese residents in Blagoveshchensk that led to 5,000 deaths (p. 198). Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine with mounting economic sanctions and international isolation of Russia, China has continued to express its muted support for Russia's actions. The clearest sign of the superficiality of China-Russia friendship has been the absence of bridges across the rivers marking the border. [Extracted from the article]

Museums established at local level, in the I qiaoxiang i (the sending lands of Overseas Chinese), where diasporic museums were first established, used "heritagisation" and diasporic resources and sentiments "for the purpose of city branding and urban upgrading" (p. 57). Symbolic museums present "an authoritative representation of Chinese diasporas as a unified and China-oriented entity that has acted as a unique bridge between China and the world." It is the latter sort that this deeply original, clearly written and richly researched interdisciplinary study describes and analyses, with China's officially sponsored and funded "Overseas Chinese museums" and its locally based bottom-up museums as its focus. [Extracted from the article]