The Asian Arguments Quarterly Email

Posted: September 3rd, 2011 | No Comments »

As you may know I am the series editor for a new set of short books about contemporary issues in Asia published by Zed. The first was published earlier this year, the next is imminent and more have been commissioned and are forthcoming. Not quite history but China-related so China Rhymers may find the quarterly email interesting all the same. To sign up for the regular emails direct just send your email and a short note to Julian Hosie at Zed Books.

Dear all,

In April we launched the first book in the new Zed Asian Arguments series – Kerry Brown’s Ballot Box China: Grassroots Democracy in the Final Major One-Party State. The launch was a great success with over 200 people packing into the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House to hear the well known journalist and China analyst Jonathan Fenby introduce Kerry, his book and our series. But, as everyone involved couldn’t be in London that week I thought an email round up of what’s happening with Asian Arguments might be useful.

Kerry’s book is now available and garnering favourable reviews. He’s been speaking everywhere from the Bath Festival’s Who Rules the World? debate, the legendary Arthur Probsthain’s bookshop to the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club and taking part in a Bookshop Barney at Foyles. We couldn’t have hoped for a better book on a hotter topic to kick the series of with.

Next up, in September, we’ve got Michael Barr’s Who’s Afraid of China? That book’s about to go to the printers and I can tell you it’s a very readable account of Beijing’s soft power efforts everywhere from the growing number of Confucius Institutes to China’s own version of CNN and from the reinterpreting of the Zheng He Treasure ships story to Chinese soft lending in Africa. I’m sure Michael (who’s based at Newcastle University) is going to become someone the media, trying to figure out China’s soft power strategy will call upon regularly! He’s organizing several speaking and launch events in north east England, the first in Newcastle on September 19th (for more information see here) and we?ll also have a launch in London, again at the RIIA, on September 22^nd (for more information on the latter event email contact@chathamhouse.org)

Just in case you’re worried the Asian Arguments series sounds too China heavy, in 2012 we’ll be publishing Ruth Pearson and Kyoko Kusakabe’s book Thailand’s Hidden Workforce: Burmese Women Factory Workers. This is the incredibly little known story of the 2 million Burmese women migrant workers that prop up Thailand’s manufacturing economy. The authors have spent a lot of time interviewing these women and an early draft indicates that we’re all about to find out a lot more about their lives and working conditions than previously. We hope the book attracts a lot of attention.

Back to China for a couple of other forthcoming books. Former South China Morning Post journalist and now managing editor of the China Economic Quarterly in Beijing, Tom Miller is currently writing a book ? China’s Urban Billion – for the series on China’s frenetic urbanisation process. So much has been written about migration to cities like Beijing and Shanghai, but Tom is getting out and examining the urbanising effects on China’s lesser-known hinterland cities and the creation of completely new multi-million person ”instant cities”.

And finally a slightly different sort of book is coming from the folk at ChinaDialogue, the best-regarded bilingual website and resource dealing with China’s environment. This book is looking at grass roots environmental activism across China from crusading lawyers to angry middle class protestors and is provisionally titled China’s Grassroots Green Defenders. The book is slightly different to others in the Asian Arguments series as it features a range of case studies written by journalists and activists including Sam Geall of Chinadialogue, Jonathan Ansfield of Newsweek and the New York Times as well as several notable academics and grassroots campaigners. The case studies will be bookended with a foreword by Chinadialogue?s editor and well known journalist and broadcaster Isabel Hilton and an afterword from Liu Jianqiang, one of China’s most prominent investigative reporters.

There are a lot of other ideas bubbling around that will hopefully turn into concrete titles for the series at some point – North Korean human rights, Mongolia and the resources curse, the inside story of the Uzbek cotton industry? If you know of any good subjects that should be part of the series and, more importantly, anyone who should be writing them then please do let me know.

Paul French

Series Editor, Zed Asian Arguments

Shanghai

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