China has made great success in improving its foreign relations with other countries in 1998. Jiang Zemin's visit to the United States and Japan clearly showed that China would continually uphold its open-door policy and economic reform. It is significant to most economic analysts that China has still recorded 7.8% economic growth under the Asian financial crisis. China Review 1999, the ninth volume of this series, is an expert survey of China's major sectors of interest, which critically summarizes the development of the previous year in core chapters covering politics, the economy, and social change. This volume has several in-depth presentations on political and social-economic issues, such as the Sino-U.S. relations, Mainland-Taiwan relations, the economic performance of 1998 -- all major concerns to those interested in the development of the People's Republic. Additional studies describe rarely featured areas of Chinese society.

The showing of sophisticated modern weapons during the fiftieth anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party heralded China's emergence as a great power in the arena of politics. At the same time, China was finally admitted to the World Trade Organization after thirteen years' negotiation. With its two-digit GNP annual growth rate, China seemed poised to become the second-largest economy in the world. Many analysts argue that China will play an increasingly important role in the future, whether in politics or economics. China Review 2000 features a review of overall changes in the political, economic, social and business environments during the past twenty years of reform, along with perspectives on major issues confronting the People's Republic in the new millennium.

When China's reformers eased open the communist giant's doors to the world, they found Rupert Murdoch standing outside in his best suit with a bunch of flowers. Used to being courted by those in power, Murdoch made a clumsy suitor. If the billionaire media mogul thought he could swagger into China and add the world's biggest audience to his News Corp empire, he quickly discovered that things worked differently in the Middle Kingdom. The communist leadership kept the 'ultimate capitalist' at arm's length. Nonetheless, amid many blunders and much wasted money, News Corp managed to connect China to the world through the Internet and to transform its staid television service into a popular-entertainment medium. But was Beijing simply using Murdoch to help the country modernise and to rehabilitate its image in the wake of Tiananmen Square? Bruce Dover, Murdoch's man on the ground in China for much of the 1990s, delivers a rollicking insider's account of doing deals at the highest level of business and politics. In this intimate portrait of the impulsive billionaire in his prime, Dover describes fatefully introducing his boss to Wendi Deng, the woman who would become his second wife - News Corp's future has a Chinese face after all.

Indonesians of Chinese descent constitute only two to three per cent of the country s population but dominate the private business sector. Serious acts of violence against this ethnic minority occurred during Indonesia s colonial past, and after a period relatively free of such incidents became increasingly frequent during the final years of Suharto s New Order. In this first book-length study of anti-Chinese hostility during the collapse of Suharto s regime, Jemma Purdey presents a close analysis of the main incidents of violence during the transitional period between 1996 and 1999, and the unprecedented process of national reflection that ensued. The mass violence that accompanied the fall of the regime in May 1998 affected not only ethnic Chinese but also indigenous or pribumi Indonesians. The author places anti-Chinese riots within this broader context, considering causes and agency as well as the way violence has been represented. While ethnicity and prejudice are central to the explanation put forward, she concludes that politics, economics and religion offer additional keys to understanding why such outbreaks occurred.

A thrilling and heartbreaking story of love, family, survival and betrayal - from the prize-winning author of The Year of the Runaways. * A Book of the Year for The Times, Guardian and Daily Telegraph * 'A gorgeous, gripping read' Kamila Shamsie 'A multi-generational masterpiece' Daily Mail Mehar, a young bride in rural Punjab, is trying to discover the identity of her new husband. It is 1929, and she and her sisters-in-law - married to three brothers in a single ceremony - spend their days hard at work on the family farm, sequestered from contact with the men. When Mehar develops a theory as to which of them is hers, a passion is ignited that will put more than one life at risk. Spiralling around Mehar's story is that of a young man who in 1999 flees from England to the deserted sun-scorched farm. Can a summer spent learning of love and of his family's past give him the strength for the journey home? Shortlisted for the 2022 Rathbones Folio Prize Longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize Longlisted for the 2022 Walter Scott Prize 'Amazing storytelling...gripping and very moving' BBC Radio 4, Open Book 'I'm blown away by it' Tessa Hadley 'The stuff of miracles' Bryan Washington 'Moving...fresh and nourishing' The Times