The book I'd recommend most would be Age of Ambition for an understanding of China from the inside. How China Escaped the Poverty Trap has a lot of good bits o

The book I'd recommend most would be Age of Ambition for an understanding of China from the inside. How China Escaped the Poverty Trap has a lot of good bits on what the tin says but also how bureaucratic promotion and governance within China works. For geopolitics I thought Asia's Reckoning: China, Japan, and the Fate of U.S. Power in the Pacific Century, * Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power, and The Rise of Eurasia* both had some value but I didn't find them as enlightening as the previous two. EDIT: Oh, and China Airborne had some great insight into where China's technological abilities are as good as anything in the world and where it still has catching up to do. Or at least the state of play as of 2012.