Jonathan Mirsky

Tsering Woeser meeting the Dalai Lama over the Internet during a video conversation organized by her husband, the Chinese writer Wang Lixiong, and the Chinese human rights lawyers Teng Biao and Jiang Tianyong, Beijing, January 2011

How Tibet Is Being Crushed—While the Dalai Lama Survives

Tibet on Fire: Self-Immolations Against Chinese Rule

by Tsering Woeser, translated from the French by Kevin Carrico

China and Tibet: The Perils of Insecurity

by Tsering Topgyal

December 22, 2016 issue

Zhang Xiaogang: Bloodline—Big Family No. 3, 1995; from the book Zhang Xiaogang: Disquieting Memories, by Jonathan Fineberg and Gary G. Xu, published by Phaidon

China’s Missing Children: An Exchange

June 9, 2016 issue

Chinese middle school graduates (zhiqing), 15 million of whom were ‘sent down to the countryside and up to the mountains’ to ‘learn from the peasants’ during the Cultural Revolution, aboard a Red Guard ship that was about to sail from Guangzhou to Hainan Island

China: The Benefits of Persecution?

Mao’s Lost Children: Stories of the Rusticated Youth of China’s Cultural Revolution

edited by Ou Nianzhong and Liang Yongkang, and translated from the Chinese by Laura Maynard

March 10, 2016 issue

Deng Xiaoping at a military parade, September 1981

The Bloodthirsty Deng We Didn’t Know

Deng Xiaoping: A Revolutionary Life

by Alexander V. Pantsov with Steven I. Levine

October 22, 2015 issue

Letter

Jamyang Norbu

Deng: Even More Brutal

November 19, 2015 issue

Sin-Lin’s mother, Lin Na, when she was the deputy director and Communist Party secretary of a new steel foundry, Fulardi, China, May 1953

Fighting False Words and Worlds

Shattered Families, Broken Dreams: Little-Known Episodes from the History of the Persecution of Chinese Revolutionaries in Stalin’s Gulag

by Sin-Lin, translated from the Russian by Steven I. Levine

June 4, 2015 issue

The Pope’s China Problem

The Dalai Lama has a long history of meeting with the head of the Catholic Church. Why has Pope Francis snubbed him?

December 15, 2014

A Japanese naval lieutenant surrounded by American soldiers in Okinawa, July 14, 1945

Okinawa: A New View

Would the Japanese have surrendered without Hiroshima? For decades the question has lingered, as historians have challenged one of the most important American rationales for dropping the bomb.

October 23, 2014

Tear gas canisters raining on thousands of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, September 28, 2014

Taking Aim at Hong Kong

As in the nights leading up to the killings in Tiananmen Square in 1989, we are watching heavily armed police in Hong Kong trying to disperse peaceful democracy protesters.

September 29, 2014

The Dalai Lama and Lobsang Sangay, prime minister of Tibet’s government in exile, Dharamsala, India, June 2012

Tibet Resists

Voices from Tibet: Selected Essays and Reportage

by Tsering Woeser and Wang Lixiong, edited and translated from the Chinese by Violet S. Law, and with an introduction by Robert Barnett

Tibet: An Unfinished Story

by Lezlee Brown Halper and Stefan Halper

A History of Modern Tibet, Volume 3: The Storm Clouds Descend, 1955–1957

by Melvyn C. Goldstein

July 10, 2014 issue

Pro-democracy student protesters sit face to face with policemen outside the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, April 22, 1989

Wrong About Tiananmen

I may have been inadvertently right in May 1989 when I said China would “never be the same again” after the Tiananmen protests.

May 20, 2014

The Truth About Tiananmen

March 6, 2014 issue

What’s New About the Empress?

February 6, 2014 issue

China: Five Pounds of Facts

In China, Endymion Wilkinson informs us in his unparalleled collection of Chinese facts and analysis, 90 million people have the surname Wang.

December 10, 2013

The Dowager Empress Cixi with four eunuchs and Der Ling, a lady-in-waiting, circa 1903–1905

The Surprising Empress

Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

by Jung Chang

December 5, 2013 issue

Letter

Mark C. Elliott

What’s New About the Empress?

February 6, 2014 issue

Our Hacking Government

November 21, 2013 issue

Who’s Afraid of Chinese Money?

Western governments used to go to great lengths to say they were standing up for human rights in China. Now, trade ties with Beijing are so lucrative that Western leaders no longer need to lie: China is what it is.

October 19, 2013

Burma: Despots and Laughter

It’s hard to get a handle on Burma. In Golden Parasol, her memoir of Burma during the years in which the country went from a British colony to a military dictatorship, Wendy Law-Yone suggests why the country’s ruling class may be so difficult to understand.

July 24, 2013

South Vietnamese villagers being evacuated by US forces in an attempt to clear the area of Vietcong during Operation Cedar Falls, 1967

An American Century in Asia

Arc of Empire: America’s Wars in Asia from the Philippines to Vietnam

by Michael H. Hunt and Steven I. Levine

June 20, 2013 issue

Margaret Thatcher with, from left to right, Chinese President Li Xiannian, British Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wu Xueqian, Beijing, December 1984

One Hour & Four Minutes with Mrs. Thatcher

May 23, 2013 issue

Margaret Thatcher with, from left to right, Chinese President Li Xiannian, British Foreign Minister Geoffrey Howe, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wu Xueqian, Beijing, December 19, 1984

Lady Thatcher and Me

Why was I invited to Margaret Thatcher’s funeral? I had never been a parliamentary journalist. But I did have a little history with Mrs. Thatcher, including four personal encounters. Here’s how they happened.

April 17, 2013