China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn (HC, 1994, $3)
Written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Beijing correspondents of the NY Times, this book contains not only their reports on the country and it's people, but also how they found the stories to report. "Attracted by China's potential for greatness and repelled by its propensity for cruelty, [they] struggle to reconcile" the two.
Beijing Jeep: The Short, Unhappy Romance of American Business in China, by Jim Mann (HC,1989,$3)
China opens it's doors to the West in the late 1970's. and businesses salivate at the thought of selling to all those people! Then Tiananmen Square happens, and businesses start to leave. Specifically, this is the story of how American Motors starts to build Jeeps in China. All does not go well. So here we are 22 years later asking the same questions. How can Western businesses not go to China? What about home grown Chinese capitalists? A lot of people much smarter than me are pondering this.
From the point of view of Chinese missionaries of 1915-
The Jubilee Story of the China Inland Mission, by Marshall Broomhall (HC, 1933, $1.50)
A Great Wall: Six Presidents and China: An Investigative History, by Patrick Tyler (SC, 2000, $2.50)
Tyler talks to U.S. Presidents and Secretaries of State, he talks to Chinese leaders, and he reads 15,000 pages of newly declassified documents. This award winning book illuminates "a relationship usually shrouded in secrecy, miscommunication, rivalry, fascination and fear. "
The Tiananmen Papers: The Chinese Leadership's Decision to Use Force Against Their Own People- in Their Own Words, compiled by Zhang Liang (HC, 2001, 513 pages, $3 )
These are the internal government and Communist Party documents which show how and who made the decisions to fire the pro-reform Party secretary, to declare martial law, and finally to send in troops to clear the Square. Not all of the Chinese government officials wanted to order in the army. Some wanted to continue to talk with the students. The final decisions, though, were made by the eight "Elders", who had no "official" government power.
