What is the Communist Party of China? How can its true nature and use of power be grasped? For insight, look to the English 17th-century philosopher, Thomas Hobbes.
China's official mindset towards its troubled, majority-Muslim region is flawed. Many outside views are simplistic. A new book makes the case for a deeper understanding to help avert disaster.
The work of an erudite Chinese writer of the 20th century, Qian Zhongshu, is an antidote to the idea of absolute "difference" between cultural worlds.
The jailing of a veteran journalist for leaking a party document is an instructive moment for those studying the mind of authority in China.
China's restless intellectual energy carries an echo of Austria-Hungary in the pre-1914 years.
The collected statements of China's president reveal a grand ambition for the country. Why then is his party's attitude to freedom so small?
What determines political survival among China's party elite? Where are the traps that ensnare men like Zhou Yongkang and Ling Jihua? The ambiguities of loyalty are a useful way to bring these questions into focus.
A memoir of the cultural revolution both reveals the human cost of that era in China and helps explain the curious strategy of its current leadership.
A visit to the party organisation at the centre of China's anti-corruption drive is a lesson in the concealments of power.
There is a public realm, and it nurtures a society of free citizens. The painful, complex evolution of this idea in the People's Republic of China is one of the great struggles of the modern world.
A Shanghai worker imprisoned following the Tiananmen events remains haunted by her experience, finds Kerry Brown.
