The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers
Richard McGregor
4.00 average rating, · 3.3k ratings
Books About China and Asia
Books on China, East and Southeast Asia, development, history, politics, technology, trade, culture, and shifting global power.
The global future will be shaped in Asia, but many professionals still understand the region through clichés. This Topreads collection brings together 75 books on China, Asia, and the emerging global order for executives, investors, policy makers, historians, and globally curious readers. Its purpose is not to produce another generic popularity chart, but to help readers understand the histories, institutions, economies, and strategic tensions shaping Asia.
Asia cannot be understood only through current headlines or a single national lens. This list combines Chinese history and politics with regional development, Japan, India, Southeast Asia, technology, trade, urbanization, diplomacy, and the experiences of people living through rapid change. Leaders cannot make sound decisions while treating politics, economics, technology, demography, and conflict as separate subjects. These lists are built to improve structural understanding and reduce dependence on short-term commentary.
The reading path is deliberately broad: it combines foundations, practical applications, history, evidence, critical perspectives, and books that expose the trade-offs practitioners often miss. The current ranked selection begins with Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers, and The Search For Modern China. Rankings should be treated as a guided starting point rather than a claim that one book can be objectively best for every reader. Use the filters, book detail pages, and related Topreads lists to build a sequence that matches your current experience and goals.
Ranked 1–24 of 75 — curated order, not the site-wide popularity formula.
Leaders cannot make sound decisions while treating politics, economics, technology, demography, and conflict as separate subjects. These lists are built to improve structural understanding and reduce dependence on short-term commentary. For this particular subject, the central promise is to help readers understand the histories, institutions, economies, and strategic tensions shaping Asia. The page should therefore explain the problem the list solves, not merely present a wall of book cards.
This list was assembled from the Topreads catalogue using topical relevance, rating quality, rating volume, title and author deduplication, genre evidence, author diversity, and editorial usefulness. The ranking deliberately includes competing interpretations, primary histories, institutional analysis, economics, strategy, and critical perspectives. No single ideological school is treated as sufficient. Before publication, an editor must review every membership for topical fit, remove misleading editions or bundles, verify the ordering, and record a real review date. Rankings may change when the catalogue, evidence, or editorial judgment improves.
Topreads should show who curated or reviewed the list, the real last-reviewed date, the catalogue/data basis, and a link to the full ranking methodology. Do not claim subject-matter expert review unless a qualified named reviewer actually completed it.
Richard McGregor
4.00 average rating, · 3.3k ratings
Evan Osnos
4.24 average rating, · 8.9k ratings
Joe Studwell
4.26 average rating, · 5.2k ratings
Amelia Pang
4.35 average rating, · 2.3k ratings
Paul Midler
4.09 average rating, · 2.5k ratings
Graham Allison
4.27 average rating, · 3.5k ratings
Patrick McGee
4.48 average rating, · 9.6k ratings
Kishore Mahbubani
4.07 average rating, · 2.1k ratings
Helen Zia
4.46 average rating, · 5.6k ratings
Orville Schell
4.23 average rating, · 1.1k ratings
Peter Hessler
4.23 average rating, · 7.7k ratings
Rush Doshi
4.03 average rating, · 1.3k ratings
Sebastian Strangio
4.23 average rating, · 588 ratings
Stephen R. Platt
4.33 average rating, · 3.4k ratings
Frank Dikötter
4.07 average rating, · 5.3k ratings
Kai Strittmatter
4.13 average rating, · 3.6k ratings
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