Todd Mundt

Excited to be part of the team with @goldkorn.bsky.social!

Best China Books of 2024 | China Books Review Party luminaries. TV chefs. Poetry. Scandal. Our annual round-up of notable titles on or from China, split across nonfiction and translated literature, nominated by a roster of experts.

Best China Books of 2024: @chinabooksreview.bsky.social offers this collection of fiction and nonfiction books to end the year… and a reminder that the site is a go-to for new and classic writing about China.

The best books I read in 2024 The blog has been on hiatus for a bit due to a press of other responsibilities, but of course I haven’t stopped reading. These were the most memorable books I read this year, listed in the or…

I love checking out other people’s top book lists: here’s Andrew Batson, with his annual list, full of important and interesting books about China’s history… and some Willa Cather, too.

Ian Johnson on China Correspondence, from 1984 to Now | China Books Review The Pulitzer-winning journalist tells the story of his first trip to China in 1984, and how it changed his views on foreign reporting.

I learned a lot from this conversation with Ian Johnson, reflecting on his long career of reporting and writing about China.

Inside a Secret Plan to Bring Uyghurs Trapped in China to the United States On Thanksgiving eve, U.S. diplomats reunited family members who had not seen each other in years because of China’s harsh policies on the ethnic group.

NEW: On Thanksgiving morning, I learned the Biden administration had carried out a secret plan to get 3 Uyghurs trapped in China to the US on a plane with freed American prisoners. Two sons in VA saw their mom for the first time in 20 years. Here's the story: www.nytimes.com/2024/12/02/u...

This is a very good piece indeed by @gideonrachman.bsky.social. “Sobering”
is indeed the word

Building LLMs is probably not going be a brilliant business The Netscapes of AI

Cal Peterson’s interesting essay is worth a read: “LLM makers have only one true supplier: NVIDIA… NVIDIA make the chips that all models are trained on - regardless of cloud vendor. And that gives NVIDIA colossal, near total pricing power.”

Xi Jinping’s instructions on Chinese Marxism quoted below should be read together with Kevin Rudd’s explanation of the Two Integrations 两个结合 in the last chapter of his excellent ‘On Xi Jinping’.

Between 60,000 and 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed in war with Russia – The Economist Ukraine may have lost between 60,000 and 100,000 soldiers killed over nearly three years of Russia’s full-scale invasion, with around 400,000 soldiers likely to have been seriously wounded.

www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/202...

China’s defence minister placed under investigation for corruption US officials say probe is part of wider operation to uncover graft in People’s Liberation Army

Unbelievable that #China's new defense minister, #DongJun, has been placed under investigation for corruption after replacing his still-missing predecessor, #LiShangfu (the third consecutive serving or former defence minister to be investigated for alleged corruption) www.ft.com/content/6414...

Edward Mead Earle and “Makers of Modern Strategy” with Michael Finch Podcast Episode · The Strategy Bridge · 11/24/2024 · 57m

Since I’m wading into Hal Brands’ “New Makers of Modern Strategy” - here’s an interesting interview with Michael Finch, who wrote “Making Makers: The Past, The Present, and the Study of War.” It’s about the first edition of “Makers” and editor Edward Mead Earle.

China’s Hacking Reached Deep Into U.S. Telecoms The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said hackers listened to phone calls and read texts by exploiting aging equipment and seams in the networks that connect systems.

The more details about the Salt Typhoon, the more disturbing it gets: “The hackers were not able to listen to conversations on encrypted applications… Nor could they read encrypted messages… But they could read regular text messages… or listen to phone calls over the ordinary telephone networks…”

The True Aims of China’s Nuclear Buildup Beijing’s growing arsenal is meant to dissolve America’s alliance system in Asia.

In Foreign Affairs, Kyle Balzer and Dan Blumenthal argue: “China has initiated a short-of-war coercion campaign to dissolve the U.S. alliance system in the Pacific, and its increasingly sophisticated nuclear arsenal gives it more leverage to achieve this objective.”

Makers of Modern Strategy with Hal Brands Podcast Episode · ChinaTalk · 11/18/2024 · 1h 9m

Jordan Schneider talks to Hal Brands about “The New Makers of Modern Strategy”

The Dalaï Lama: An Extraordinary Life by Alexander Norman.

First book of 2024 is the Alexander Norman biography of the Dalaï Lama.

Best China Books of 2023 | China Books Review Our round-up of recommended titles (and one anti-recommendation) from the past year, selected by our editors and various guests.

This list of the top books about China for the year from China Books Review is filled with good recommendations across a wide spectrum. I read a lot books about China this year, but only one on this list - which give me a lot more to explore:

My last photo with iPhone 14 Pro Max is this beautiful pesto flatbread at Giulia in Cambridge.

Cocktail at Giulia in Cambridge MA!

I post a lot about China it’s true - but everyone should have a moment to relax!

I wouldn’t be upset to see the end of this cool yet swampy weather

Bostonians would understand this: every Wednesday night at Giulia, I toast myself for having survived the Red Line another week.

After I finished Ian Johnson’s new book « Sparks » I felt compelled to read Yang Jisheng’s book about the Great Famine. I gained a lot from his history of the Cultural Revolution but I’ve felt the weight of this work in a different way - his scholarship of the famine era is unparalleled.

Moving through the tasting menu at Mooncusser Fish House in Boston!

Ian Johnson’s new book about the underground historians who have tried to preserve China’s history is a fantastic read and actually - inspiring.

We aired a good conversation with WSJ’s Lingling Wei on NPR’s Here & Now this week, hearing her reporting on the state of China’s economy and what the CCP is and isn’t doing about it.
www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2...