Jasper Becker

Exposes the horrible result of Mao's attempted utopian engineering in China between 1958 and 1962, uncovering a bloody trail of terror, cannibalism, torture, and murder

Mao's Secret Famine

Hungry Ghosts

In The Chinese, Jasper Becker, China's premier western correspondent, strips the country of its myths and captures the Chinese as they really live. For nearly two decades Becker has lived in China, and reported from areas where most visitors do not reach. Here he is at his most candid, reporting from all over the country: from tiny, crowded homes in the swollen cities of the southeast rim to a vast, secret network of thousands of defense bunkers in the northwest. He exposes Chinese society in all of its layers: from remote, illiterate peasants; to the rising classes of businessmen; to local despots; the twenty grades of Party apparatchicks; to the dominant, comparatively small caste of Party leaders who are often ignorant of the people they rule.Becker lets the Chinese speak for themselves, in voices that are rich and moving. He teaches a great deal about the magnitude--and the false face--of China's vaunted economic boom, and further shows the pervasive institutionalized crime that has risen out of economic poverty. In all, Becker reveals a China very different than our long-held assumptions depict. The Chinese is the hidden story of people of the world's largest nation--a nation so poorly understood and so vital to the future.

The Chinese

The great city of Peking, capital of China from the 9th century, was for a millennium one of the most extraordinary places on earth. For the Chinese people it was not only an administrative centre, but the residence of the Emperor - the Son of Heaven, the country's military headquarters, and it was protected by the Ming Great Wall, the single largest fortification ever built by man. The best artisans, scholars, writers and painters came to live and work there. This book tells the history of this great city, and through it provides a highly engaging summary history of China. In the summer of 1997, President Jiang Zemin made a decision to destroy the old city. There was no announcement, no explanation given, nor any attempt made to justify his decision. Expertly moving between historical analysis and reportage, Jasper Becker describes the impact of this systematic destruction, a unique telling of the history of Peking that encapsulates both the grandeur of its creation and the tragedy of its demise.

Beijing in the History of China

City of Heavenly Tranquility

A journalist and longtime China insider offers a portrait of modern China, introducing regions of the country not often seen or discussed by Westerners and capturing the real-life stories of the Chinese people.

A Beijing-based foreign correspondent offers an introspective analysis of modern-day China that encompasses a study of where it stands today, where it is going, and its influence as it evolves into a global economic force, critically assessing its changing economic, diplomatic, political, and military strategies and their global implications. 20,000 first printing.

An Inside Look at China Today

Dragon Rising

The coronavirus pandemic started in Wuhan, home to the leading lab studying the SARS virus and bats. Was that pure coincidence? This book explores what we know, and still don’t know, about the origins of COVID-19, and how it was handled in China. We may never get all the answers, but much is already clear: China’s record as the origin of earlier pandemics, and its struggle to bring contagious diseases under control; its history as both a victim of biological warfare and a developer of deadly bioweapons. When Covid broke out, Wuhan was building science parks to realise Beijing’s ambitions in biotech research. Whoever achieves global leadership of the gene-editing industry stands to harvest great power and wealth. China has already challenged Western technological supremacy with 5G and in other industries. Yet this tiny, invisible virus has cruelly exposed a critical flaw in the Chinese political system: obsessive secrecy. The West wanted to trust the PRC, hoping that, as it prospered, it would become an open society. Made in China reveals how Beijing’s leaders have betrayed that trust.

Wuhan, Covid and the Quest for Biotech Supremacy

Made in China

What happens when a dictator wins absolute power and isolates a nation from the outside world? In a nightmare of political theory stretched to madness and come to life, North Korea's Kim Jong Il made himself into a living god, surrounded by lies and flattery and beyond criticism. As over two million of his subjects starved to death, Kim Jong Il roamed between palaces staffed by beautiful girls and stocked with expensive international delicacies. Outside, the steel mills shut down, the trains stopped running, the power went out, and the hospitals ran out of medicine. When the population threatened to revolt, Kim imposed a reign of terror, deceived the United Nations, and plundered the country's dwindling resources to become a nuclear power. Now this tiny bankrupt nation is using her nuclear capability to blackmail the United States. Veteran correspondent Jasper Becker takes us inside one of the most secretive countries in the world, exposing the internal chaos, blind faith, rampant corruption, and terrifying cruelty of its rulers. Becker details the vain efforts to change North Korea by actors inside and outside the country and the dangers this highly volatile country continues to pose. This unique land, ruled by one family's megalomania and paranoia, seems destined to survive and linger on, a menace to its own people and to the rest of the world. But should the nations of the world allow this regime to survive? That's the question with which this book concludes.

Jasper Becker

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