The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics

by Mae M. Ngai

Between 1848 and 1899, more gold was removed from the earth than had been mined in the 3,000 preceding years, bringing untold wealth to individuals and nations. But friction between Chinese and white settlers on the goldfields of California, Australia, and South Africa catalyzed a global battle over "the Chinese Question": Would the United States and the British Empire outlaw Chinese immigration?

This history of the Chinese diaspora and global capitalism chronicles how a feverish alchemy of race and money brought Chinese people to the West and reshaped the 19th-century world. Prize-winning historian Mae Ngai narrates the story of the thousands of Chinese who left their homeland in pursuit of gold, and how they formed communities and organizations to help navigate their perilous new world. Out of their encounters with whites, and the emigrants' assertion of autonomy and humanity, arose the pernicious western myth of the "coolie" laborer, a racist stereotype used to drive anti-Chinese sentiment.

By the turn of the 20th century, the United States and the British Empire had answered "the Chinese Question" with laws that excluded Chinese people from immigration and citizenship. Ngai explains how this happened and argues that Chinese exclusion was not extraneous to the emergent global economy but an integral part of it.

Genres: History, China, Nonfiction, American History, Politics, South Africa, Australia

Audible Audio

First published August 24, 2021

About the author

Mae Ngai is a professor of Asian American Studies and History at Columbia University.

Reviews

[Peter Tillman]

Interesting WSJ review: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-chin... (Paywalled. As always, I'm happy to email a copy to non-subscribers)
Excerpt:
"Consider a fascinating chapter titled “Talking to White People,” which explores the sometimes intractable complexities posed by the language barrier dividing Chinese immigrants from Anglo employers, merchants and legal officials. In casting light on how Chinese both abroad and at home resisted their persecution, Ms. Ngai reports that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s seminal antislavery novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was published in translation in China in 1901 as “A Black Slave’s Cry to Heaven.” In its review, one Shanghai newspaper asserted that “the book is not really about the sufferings of the black race as it is about all races under the whites.”

[Chris Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Through most of this book, I thought what a great follow-up to Ghosts of Gold Mountain by Gordon Chang, On Gold Mountain by Lisa See, and The Chinese in America by Iris Chang, and it is. But it also provides a close connection to more recent relationships between the Chinese and the West. Ms. Ngai's work is detailed, thorough, and profound. Her research is deep and rigorous, her writing concise and clear, and her worldview adds new dimensions to the subject. The racism, violence, and unfairness perpetrated on Chinese workers in other countries, compounded with exclusionary laws, has many consequences that must be worked out in our current world and interrelationships between rivals and competitors. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in international politics, trade, and relations.

[Aydan]

Biggest flex was reading this book in 3 hours and pissing Yoni off.

[JiaJia Jin · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's easy to conjure up preconceived notions of what the first waves of Chinese immigrants looked like, how they lived, what motivated them -- submissive coolies, forced labor, against will, no agency, passive onlookers. The picture is always too neat to make sense (except in Hollywood fictions). Ngai artfully punctured these one-dimensional, paper-thin stereotypes with a tapestry of carefully researched characters, with their violent protests, scholarly petitions, tireless negotiations, spanning three continents and five decades. A few things specifically stood out to me:

1. Most Chinese laborers were not coolies. Lured by the riches of the gold, they came at will, like most other immigrants at the time. Nonetheless, fabricating the lie that most Chinese laborers were indentured slaves was good for politics, reinforcing the Chinese laborers' foreign-ness, which in turn lent power to the exclusionist policy.

2. The Qing dynasty -- crumbling and incompetent as it was, did put up fight against the abuse its people received abroad. It was fascinating to read the intellectual arguments made by Qing diplomats and bureaucrats: they were no stranger to the principles of western democracy and equality, and used these cannons to deftly expose the hypocrisies in the young republics of America and Australia.

3. The "Chinese Question" is never just about the Chinese immigrants. It's a prism through which the political struggles of white laborers vs. capitalists unfurled, and the republic's identity was formed. This lesson is still more than relevant than ever, as the identity of whiteness in the era of Trump is precisely defined by the exclusion of others.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mae Ngai has done important work putting the California, Australia, and South African gold rushes in a Chinese-Pacific context and a British and American Imperial context. This is not a truly Pacific history, as only slight mention is made of other Asian and Latin American groups involved in this world. That wasnt clear in the description, but takes nothing away from the work. This is about Anglo (American and British) - Chinese relations, on small and grand levels.

That said, this is eye opening for many students of US History and I plan to incorporate portions into my US history survey. I learned so much that I did not already know.

That said, the weakness here is tying the three sections together. The US and Australia works, but could be tighter. I get US and Australia for background of South Africa, but it is left there when there were many more connections to explicitly make. The debate about Chinese as enslaved and its relation to other rhetoric was not as complete as I needed it to be, and would require additional context in order to assign to students. This did make it drag a bit in the middle.

Overall, this is a great addition to scholarship in multiple fields, and if you're interested in any of the topics, you should pick it up.

Thank you to Mae Ngai, W W Norton & Company, and Netgalley for an advanced ecopy in exchange for an honest review.

[Jake Losh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good book and a worthwhile one. It also happens to be very timely, though I suspect it will be a low key evergreen text on the topics of immigration, integration (aka globalization) and assimilation. It is comprehensive (authoritative?) not a primer, so be aware going in that it will have a lot, a lot of details.

Coming from the US, I greatly appreciated the cross-country contrasts and comparisons between the Chinese immigrant / migrant worker experiences in the US and Australia. My read is that this is chiefly a sociological and historical text. The economic theories are mainly Marxist. The macroeconomics discussed are a bit off the mark, but I found most of the microeconomics to be pretty on point.

[Bookworm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Borrowed this book on a whim as I saw it was available at the library. The San Francisco Gold Rush was something I had learned about in school but I was curious to learn more about the same or similar Australia, and South Africa and how that affects immigration with these questions echoing down through the decades (centuries, really) to the work of today.

As the upshot, gold was discovered in parts of the world and the Chinese people were brought over for labor. This leads to greater questions about immigration, labor practices, the segregation and racism, the question of how to integrate these people as many of them will never ever go home again, only to die on foreign soil far away from everything they've ever known.

It was well-researched but extremely dull. There's definitely a lot here that should blow away lots of preconceptions one may have about the role of Chinese people and the Gold Rush (especially if you're in the US like me and therefore probably don't know much, if anything, about similar experiences in Australia in South Africa). But I'm not really sure it works as a cohesive narrative.

Is there something to be said about the treatment of Chinese laborers that's probably universal in some way? Yes. However, I'm not really sure the point really gets through under the mound of research author Ngai has put into this. That is not to say that this is not without value but rather it may be a tough slog for many.

Borrowed from the library and that was best for me.

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Comparing the experience of Chinese migrant laborers in the American West, Australia and South Africa, Ngai demonstrates how the local conditions were shaped by and helped shape global economic relationships. I learned a lot about the Qing dynasty's weak position vis a vis the Western powers, the attempts of Chinese diplomats educated in Western systems to advocate decent, if not really equitable treatment. Exclusion, which I'd thought of primarily in American terms, is clearly better understood in relation to broader patterns. Deeply researched in legal records, correspondence, newspapers. Deserved its Bancroft.

[Wang · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mae M. Ngai can writer another book twenty years on.

[Daniel Farabaugh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book does a nice job of framing three separate events into one context that shows an intricate interrelationship. It also does a very good job of evaluating the differences in the three areas as well.

[Janine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful book using the impact of the gold rushes in America, Australia and South Africa on global racism and international relationships. Focusing on the 50 year period between 1848-1898 when gold was discovered in California and Australia, the author also pivots to
South Africa in the early 1900s when the issue of “labor” required the importation of Chinese “coolies” and resulted in exclusionary laws to segregate the Chinese from “white” society. In all three scenarios, the issue of what to do about these “foreigners” in a “white” society plays a central role in the development of laws, the treatment of the Chinese (who illustrate the role of racist ideas, actions and treatment in all three geographic regions), and the inevitable attitudes of distrust and disdain for differences that plagues our world today. In the case of the Chinese migration to America and Australia, the Chinese did not come as indentured workers as happened in South Africa. The myth of the “coolie” is part of racist ideation that grew as a result of fears of displacement of whites by these “colored” people - not much has changed since. The author presents historical evidence that shows how the perpetuation of the “white privilege” concept of Western European “supremacy”, particularly the British in their colonies (of which America was one) has been detrimental to unity and good will in forging relationships with other countries that are predominantly non-white. The Chinese in America and Australia contributed wealth and industry to both these countries only to suffer discrimination and exclusion due to misconceptions because they were not Christian and had traditions and ways different from those of the “God-fearing” good white people. The Chinese have been the only group to have a specific American law excluding their immigration from 1882 until 1943 when America needed the Chinese as an ally during WWII. This is an important book too for the light it sheds on how little things change in race relations. Highly recommend.

[Dylan Matthews · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bad case of an academic book that was clearly conceived first as a few articles that might be profitably bundled together.

This is most evident in the section on South Africa, which comes maybe three-fifths of the way through the book as a whole, seemingly out of nowhere. It's especially jarring because of how different the regime in South Africa was from the one Ngai describes in California and Victoria. She goes to great, even tedious lengths to demonstrate that gold miners in the US and Australia came freely, not under indenture. But the South African miners were quite literally indentured! While the US and Australian cases went on for decades before exclusion, the story she tells in South Africa is a comparative blip, from 1904 to 1910.

Worse, because the racial and colonial history of South Africa is so complex, she has to spend long swathes of this section getting readers up to speed on the delicate rapprochement taking place between the defeated Boers and the English colonial officials, the distinctions between the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State and the Cape Colony, the push for unification, the Indian population and its rising political influence under Gandhi, etc. before getting into the meat of the miners' stories. I get that global history is the fashion in academic history these days, but the knock on it has always been that it tends to give you stories that may cover many places but covers each of them superficially. Such is the case here, especially in South Africa.

The present-day political context of the book can also get in Ngai's way. There's a funny section on page 45 where she admonishes Westerners who "considered the practices of concubinage and of selling daughters into servitude as 'slavery.'" Then she freely admits that … yeah, many late 19th century Chinese families were selling their daughters into servitude or concubinage, and cites other scholars who've documented as much. There's a certain degree of built-in defensiveness when you're writing a book in the Trump years about immigration and about China in particular, and that's going to lead you to emphasize Western misunderstandings and prejudices. Was this really one of them, though? Or were Qing-era attitudes toward gender and labor in fact pretty bad?

Maybe the worst section is a bizarre focus on one murder case in California, where Ngai combs through testimony in mind-numbing detail … for what? She clearly thinks this tells us something interesting about race relations during the gold rush, but can't quite articulate what.

There are some redeeming features, to be sure. The exploration of Henry George's views on Chinese exclusion is well-done, especially for the cameo of a skeptical John Stuart Mill standing up for the workers. But that's maybe 20 pages out of the book. I read this because I wanted to understand the start of the Western turn against free migration in the late 19th century, and I don't think I got any greater understanding of that, all told.

[Donna Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mae Ngai is an award-winning author and a professor at Columbia University. In her third book, The Chinese Question, she examines the race relations and to some degree, the economic underpinnings of the Chinese diaspora.

My thanks go to NetGalley and W.W. Norton and Company for the review copy. I am disgracefully late, but when I began reading this book I realized that if I were to absorb and retain anything here, I would need to take it in small bites. That said, this is an unusually well researched work, and it’s well worth the time and attention of anyone interested in the topic.

Usually when I see research having to do with Chinese immigration, it is within the context of immigration to the United States, or an examination of the push factors of emigration, examining why Chinese chose to leave their native land and embark upon an expensive, dangerous, and uncertain journey to a place they’d never visited—in most cases—and where they usually did not speak the language. Instead, Ngai examines it as a global diaspora that includes English speaking nations, namely South Africa, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and the United States. In doing so she is able to highlight the similarities of treatment, to put it politely, and also to dismantle some of the stereotypes that have rooted themselves in English speakers’ knowledge of history.

For starters, she wants us to know that Chinese immigrants were not necessarily “coolies” or indentured workers, and they didn’t always face conflicts with Caucasian powerbrokers. But there certainly were a great many blood chilling abuses, sometimes brought about by White fear of the “other,” but oftener from greed and the desire to exploit the Chinese working class and eliminate competition from the businesses of better off Chinese.

This study is adjacent to my own graduate study topic of many years ago, when I examined the “Model Minority,” and the attempt to counter the demands of U.S. Civil Rights activists of the 1950s and 1960s with the suggestion that Black people quietly accept abuse and quietly climb the economic ladder, or not, as Asians of Chinese and Japanese descent had supposedly done. Ngai demonstrates that Chinese immigrants weren’t all that quiet, and they weren’t all that accepting of maltreatment at the hands of employers and local officials. This is interesting material indeed, and I wish I had known these things sooner.

As a general read for a wide audience, this may be a four star book because it is dense and has an academic approach that not all pleasure readers will appreciate; however, for those with a strong interest in the topic, whether for academic research or personal knowledge and growth, it is hands down the best work I’ve seen in decades.

Highly recommended to those passionate about the issue.

[Andrew Rothstein · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was on a video call with a friend living in China. I told her that I was in the middle of this book - showing her the cover. Her first question was, "What does the author say about the current government?"

As I was half way through the book and because the story relates events in the 19th and 20th century, I explained that I did not know what, if anything, the book had to say about the current situation. The main hint I had was that the story of Chinese workers during the gold rush was about exploitation that exposed China's economic and economic weakness. That, in turn, was humiliating to China and informs how much importance the current Chinese government places on being viewed as a world power on a par with the United States.

The final chapter reveals that Ngai sees things that way. But she shows that it is more than that. White racism toward the Chinese and fear of the potential for gaining power and dominance are also still very much in place.

Ngai provides details of the Chinese gold mining experience in the United States, Australia, and South Africa. While there were some differences in what took place in each country, the fundamental patterns were the same. Find cheap labor, abuse the workers, limit their rights, racial animus, and restrain immigration beyond the needs of the mines.

There is also background on the role of gold in international finance, which has changed substantially.

[Casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book, providing a history of the beginnings of Chinese immigration to English speaking counties. The author, American historian Mae Ngai, combines political, economic, and social history to explain both the impetus for mass Chinese immigration and the reactions it caused. Ngai’s central argument is that most Chinese immigrants were free laborers, living and working in a society of choice and free will. She juxtaposes this reality with the assumption of historical contemporaries (and many modern audiences) that the Chinese were all “coolie” unfree laborers. Ngai covers three main periods of Chinese immigration, the gold rushes in California, Australia, and South Africa. The book presents a very human history, with Ngai presenting a long litany of personal stories of Chinese immigrants, across a variety of backgrounds. I especially appreciated Ngai’s description of the lives of these laborers, to include the social clubs which were a focal point of their communities. Ngai studiously traces the political “Chinese question” to the economic pressures of post-boom mining communities and the cultural differences between the Chinese and their fellow immigrants. A great book for understanding actions following a period of immigration. Highly recommended for anyone wanting to better appreciate the interactions of social and economic issues on political themes.

[Matthew Rohn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a phenomenal book for historians and pretty good one for general interest readers (although the intro and conclusion are both great for a lay audience). This book is history of diaspora, labor, and the developing racial ideologies of nineteenth century settler colonialism surrounding Chinese migration to the US\Canada\Australia\South Africa during the gold rushes of this era. It steps between these themes well and manages to cover a surprising geographic and chronological range without ever feeling like it's spreading too thin. I expect that the core audience for this book won't be particularly interested in the monetarist economic history of the importance of the gold supply shock for gold and silver backed currency regimes throughout the world in this era, but it's good work and important to the

For people who are interested in this book would recommend pairing it with Drawing the Global Colour Line by Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, and The Chinese Must Go by Beth Lew-Williams

[books4chess · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Race relations were not always conflictual, but the perception of competition gave rise to a racial politics expressed as the 'Chinese Question'. In the nineteenth century, Americans and Europeans frequently describe a thorny social problem as a 'Question''".

Mae delivered an incredibly well researched history of the Chinese experience in the gold rush. That it took only 10 years to collect, analyse and write such an informative history is a testament to her research skills. She offers insights into a specific period in time, but additionally contributes to discussions relevant today, including whether Chinese people can ever truly 'belong' in the West - a sentiment exacerbated by current affairs and debated for longer than many of us realise.

The book is worth every page and I strongly encourage persistence and reflection on the ideas.

Thank you NetGalley for the Arc in return for an honest review.

[S.K. Pherwani]

a dense and educational book. i came in with only a high school us history-level knowledge of the chinese american experience during the california gold rush, and nothing at all when it comes to the australian and south african equivalents, so every page was a learning experience. for me, the most intellectually interesting thing i got out of the book (out of many!) was the convergence between the racial stereotypes of chinese in california and victoria. the american and british idea of race were quite different and seeing how the two systems converge makes for an interesting read. i was a bit less interested in the south african portion of the book - it's a lot of good info, but it does feel like it's primarily there to give a bridge between the victorian/californian experience of the late 19th century to the end of the century of humiliation. all in all, a worthwhile read. strong recommend to anyone interested in global economic history or asian-american studies.

[Voice_of_Reason · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't write reviews about books I like; I only write them for books I don't much care for or don't finish so perhaps, as others have done for me with their reviews, I can caution folks to seriously consider if they really, really want to read this book.

For openers, I am seriously "invested" in China. I speak and read Chinese and have spent ten years resident in the "three Chinas"; Taiwan/ Hong Kong/ the PRC.

I found the first five chapters, or Part I, an interesting and pleasant read.

As I progressed beyond Chapter 5, however, the book went into way more detail than I was interested in plus the writing descended into a rather dry recitation of facts: the Australians did this then the Chinese did that, but in the Yukon, the Chinese did something else.

Yawn.

Mustn't have been many serious contenders for the Bancroft Prize for this book to win it.

Hope this helps.

[Karen Levi · Rating 3 out of 5]

An extremely thorough account of the plight of Chinese workers during the Gold Rushes in California, Australia, and South Africa. This book would be an excellent resource for a college class. I love history, but the details became overwhelming and boring for me, an interested reader but not a student. I slogged through, and some sections were more compelling than others.
Born and raised in San Francisco, I developed a passion--years ago--for Asian culture, history, art, and the people. I did not know that Chinese laborers were part of the Gold Rush in California. Of course, I was unaware of "Gold Rushes" in other lands. Ms. Ngai presents compelling information about the effects of worldwide Chinese migration, colonization of British territories, and the trajectory of Chinese government over the last 125 years.
I am sorry to give 3 stars which reflects my experience not the quality of the book!

[Read Ng · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was made a present of this book. I let it sit on my bookshelf for far too long. I had recently got around to reading Full of Golf by Blanche Chin Ah Tye that I loved and it inspired me to finish this book.

A deeply researched book centered around the Gold Rush in California, Australia, and then South Africa. It is really about greed and how we can use Geopolitics to obtain our fortune. How to exploit a people in order to turn the greatest profit. After all, the one with the biggest pot of money is the winner and that is justification to use and abuse your fellow human kind (but it helps immensely if you can lump them into "that other subhuman race" since then they don't count).

The global immigration issue (name your favorite country and ethic or religious group) still boils down to "me first" so why don't you go find someplace else to call home. It gives me pause to think of where I really should stand.

Have a GoodReads.

[Ka Ming Wong · Rating 4 out of 5]

Densely researched, the notes and bibliography make up ~40% of the book. I learned a lot about what I thought I already knew well and about things completely new to me, those being a more granular view of Chinese American history in the 19th century, Qing efforts to advocate for its people abroad, and contracted Chinese labor in South African gold mines in the first decade of the 20th c. I feel some type of way when I think about the early diasporic Chinese excellence in Anglophone countries. I can recognize they're my compatriots even though I feel like our experiences are not really related. But this book surfaces and underlines the racialized politics that have always been at play, and makes clear that the disconnect is the product of intentional Anglo-American policy. Even if I and my family don't 'remember' as such and regard ourselves as new, WASP hegemony has no such gap in its memory.

[Derek Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF 21%. This got way too boring way too soon. I might pick it up again because the topic is so meaningful to my own family history, but the author focuses on little minutiae too often and it detracts from the overall picture she is trying to paint.

The main thesis is that Chinese immigrants of the California and Australia Gold Rushes were free and middle class, rather than forced laborers. She sets out to provide definitive evidence to refute the incorrect narrative of “coolie labor,” but in doing so, it doesn’t seem like there’s an anecdote too small or a circumstantial letter too small to exclude.

At the end of the day, perhaps this is just a missive in an academic fight. If so, great, and I thank Dr. Ngai for fighting the good fight as a Chinese American with roots back to Hoiping and the West Coast gold rushes. But if this is meant for a wider audience, this is crying out for a revision to improve the how the narrative flows.

[sarah ❀ · Rating 3 out of 5]

The topic and content of this book was really interesting to me, because although I have heard of the Gold Rush and the Chinese Exclusion Act, I actually never really knew that the two were tied together, or that there were Chinese working during the Gold Rush. From this book, I also learned that there were gold rushes taking place is Australia and South Africa as well, and also the term "coolie"; it's clear that this was a really informative book I learned a lot from which is always what I'm looking for when I read a nonfiction book.

However, I can't give this book any more than 3 stars because I felt there was a lack of structure regarding what topics were addressed, making it feel disorganized and hard to keep up with. Ngai would switch between talking about the gold rushes in America, Australia and South Africa frequently, and the chapter divisions seemed very arbitrary.

[UChicagoLaw]

"At the recent Inauguration of President Alivisatos, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu warned about how great power competition with China could squelch research collaboration and lead to suspicion of ethnic Chinese researchers. He though universities had a duty to proactively address this issue. In this book, Columbia professor Mae Ngai (formerly of the University of Chicago History Department) documents how a series of gold rushes around the world drew Chinese emigrants and generated tension with white settlers. She argues that the exclusion of Chinese labor was at the center of global capitalist expansion in the 19th century."

- Tom Ginsburg, Leo Spitz Professor of International Law, Ludwig and Hilde Wolf Research Scholar, Professor of Political Science

[Jacob S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly insightful, and my response and feelings to the parts that continue to get me to reflect were as natural and honest with myself as I've been in a long time.. with sincerely acknowledged views, boundaries, and histories.

When it comes to identity I have never felt successful at comfortably opening up about how I really see myself. Maybe I overplay the judgment of others, and that's what I've learned since I was young. There are definitely ways to unlearn unhealthy thinking, and that excites me. Some of my first steps are recognizing how little I know. It's been my fault for not communicating and not choosing to reflect how I know I am and what I respect and cherish.

[Katie Parsons · Rating 4 out of 5]

Five stars for academic rigor, originality, deep and far-reaching research, and so convincingly tying together events that unfolded across 4 continents. If you're interested in the way colonialism and imperialism shaped our world, Chinese history, or the gold rush - this book is not to be missed.

Three stars for being fairly disorganized and repetitive, and for creaky writing that made it difficult to get through.

So we're averaging for four. I particularly appreciate the questions this book raises (though not explicitly) about openness and globalism. In the case of Chinese emigrants, they were either exploited by progressive industrialists or excluded by racist protectionists and unions - but also excluded by those outraged by exploitation. Where were the champions for their autonomy and right to participate in the economy? Where are those champions now?

[Ranjit · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those rare books I read both for research and cover to cover. My research is on the US Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and Mae Ngai does a masterful job of putting that act in the context of the gold rushes of the 19th c in the US and in Britain’s “settler colonies” in Australia and South Africa, Chinese emigration, British imperial policies, and the unvarnished racism of the time. She ties it all together well and in a readable, non-jargonny manner.

[Flora · Rating 5 out of 5]

The daily news confirms what I learned reading this book. The author's research reveals parallels in the treatment of Chinese immigrants to three continents: America, Australia and South Africa. I was aware of the injustices inflicted on Chinese in the America but to read of similar activities in Australia and S. Africa increased my understanding of the reasons for the PRC and especially, Xi Jin ping, striving to promote China's comeback to the world stage.
The information is concise and well-written. Read this book if you wish to understand our diplomatic relations with China.

[Ted Nierzwicki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting look at how gold mining intersected with and impacted global relations with China just prior to it's coming of age. Not the easiest of reads as many different names are used from multiple locations as the story is carried anecdotally.