If you prefer long-form, researched, and academic, Understanding China by Starr is an excellent book. The author teaches at Yale. It's from 2010, but I don't t

If you prefer long-form, researched, and academic, Understanding China by Starr is an excellent book. The author teaches at Yale. It's from 2010, but I don't think the big picture has changed much. China has big-O, a 5000 year history, and the current government, big-O, one century. Details have changed in the past 15 years, but the big picture is pretty similar. But the edu-tainment here is pretty accurate. I could do a similar hit pieces on China on Taiwan, Honk Kong, Tibet, environmental issues, surveillance,..., and you'd have plenty of reasons to be angry at / hate China. The point is I could also do similar hit pieces on similar issues from many other countries as well (including the US). Individuals too for that matter -- if I could pick out all the worst, most embarrassing things moments of your life, and only presented those, you'd probably look like a pretty horrible person. Positives we can learn from in China include that the government aims for: - meritocracy, actually dating back over a millennium. This contrasts with Western ideals - broad-based input from citizens (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole-process_people's_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole-process_people's_democra...) The reality often differs, but the ideals are sound (much like Western ideals / reality of transparency and representativeness). The Chinese government is also very capable of long-term planning, very much in practice, almost like almost no other government in the world.