The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers

The Party

Richard McGregor's The Party has been established as the book on China and its political leadership. It is indispensable to understanding what may soon become the most powerful country on earth, and here is it is newly updated to include material on the once-in-a-decade leadership changes taking place in November 2012. 
 
Newly updated version including analysis of the once-in-a-decade leadership changes taking place in November 2012 
 
China's Communist Party is the largest, most powerful political machine in the world. Here, Richard McGregor delves deeply into its inner sanctum, revealing how this secretive cabal keeps control of every aspect of the country - its military and media, legal system and businesses, even its religious organizations. How has the Party merged Marx, Mao and the market to create a global superpower? And what does this mean for the world? 
 
'Extraordinary', Sunday Times 
 
'Masterful ... entertaining and insightful', Economist 
 
'Superb ... an essential, riveting guide to how the rising power really works', Jonathan Fenby 
 
'If you read only one book about China this year, it should be this one. And if you do not read this book, you probably do not understand China today', Arthur Kroeber, China Economic Quarterly 
 
'A compelling exploration of the world's largest and most successful political machine', New Statesman 
 
'A book that is as informative as it is entertaining ... China has been transformed. The system that takes the credit is brilliantly described by McGregor', Chris Patten, Financial Times 
 
Having joined the Financial Timesin 2000 in Shanghai and being appointed China bureau chief in 2005, Richard McGregor is now Washington Bureau Chief for the FT. McGregor has won numerous awards throughout his nearly two decades of reporting from north Asia, including a 2010 Society of Publishers in Asia Editorial Excellence Award for his coverage on the Xinjiang Riots and 2008 SOPA Awards for Editorial Intelligence. He has spent twenty years in north Asia, starting in Taiwan, and then in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Beijing, where he established offices for The Australian newspaper. He has also contributed articles and reports to the BBC, the International Herald Tribune and the Far Eastern Economic Review.

Masterful ... entertaining and insightful

Superb ... an essential, riveting guide to how the rising power really works

If you read only one book about China this year, it should be this one. And if you do not read this book, you probably do not understand China today

A compelling exploration of the world's largest and most successful political machine

A book that is as informative as it is entertaining ... China has been transformed. The system that takes the credit is brilliantly described by McGregor

McGregor is one of the best foreign journalists who have reported from China. The Party draws on two decades of superb reporting ... A fine contribution for those who want to know about the rising power they will face in the decades ahead

Ezra Vogel, Professor Emeritus, Harvard University

Few outsiders have any realistic sense of the innards, motives, rivalries, and fears of the Chinese Communist leadership. But we all know much more than before, thanks to Richard McGregor's illuminating and richly-textured look at the people in charge of China's political machinery ... invaluable for anyone trying to make sense of China's future plans and choices

James Fallows, National Correspondent for The Atlantic

Fascinating and ambitious ... Richard McGregor lays bare the secretive machinery of the party

McGregor has done the world a service with his fascinating new book

A fascinating read ... in an age when Chinese economic influence is reaching new levels, it is an invaluable exercise in understanding the operation of the most powerful political party in the world

A vivid narrative, sprinkled with humour and insight ... amazing characters ... an engrossing read

Gripping ... McGregor brings to life the characters behind the icons of Chinese power and wealth, the figures that built the Shanghai skyline and rebuilt Beijing for the Olympics.  More importantly, he gives us a feel for the dynamics behind China's rise

A lively and penetrating account of a party that ... has clung to secrecy as an inviolable principle

Eminently readable ... McGregor has done a great service to those who would hope to better understand where China's power lies

An illuminating glimpse behind the red curtain ... McGregor's lucid dissection shows how top-ranked party members - indeed the party itself - sit outside the law

Having joined the Financial Timesin 2000 in Shanghai and being appointed China bureau chief in 2005, Richard McGregor is now Washington Bureau Chief for the FT. McGregor has won numerous awards throughout his nearly two decades of reporting from north Asia, including a 2010 Society of Publishers in Asia Editorial Excellence Award for his coverage on the Xinjiang Riots and 2008 SOPA Awards for Editorial Intelligence. He has spent twenty years in north Asia, starting in Taiwan, and then in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Beijing, where he established offices for The Australian newspaper. He has also contributed articles and reports to the BBC, the International Herald Tribune and the Far Eastern Economic Review.

Newly updated version including analysis of the once-in-a-decade leadership changes taking place in November 2012 
 
China's Communist Party is the largest, most powerful political machine in the world. Here, Richard McGregor delves deeply into its inner sanctum, revealing how this secretive cabal keeps control of every aspect of the country - its military and media, legal system and businesses, even its religious organizations. How has the Party merged Marx, Mao and the market to create a global superpower? And what does this mean for the world?

Richard McGregor is the China bureau chief for the Financial Times. Since 1990, he has spent all but two years in north Asia, starting in Taiwan, and then in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Beijing, where he established offices for The Australian newspaper. He joined the FT in 2000 in Shanghai and was appointed China bureau chief in 2005. He has also contributed articles and reports to the BBC, the International Herald Tribune and the Far Eastern Economic Review.

China's secret rulers are the elephant in the room. They are the largest political organisation in the world. They control every aspect of Chinese life. And no one discusses them. Until now. 
 
Who are they? And how do they operate? Richard McGregor has spent twenty years reporting on this region of the world and he has used all of his experience to uncover the true story of the Chinese Communist Party. This is the most revealing glimpse yet of how this extraordinary organisation works. From business to the army, McGregor tracks down the people who are on the inside, and reveals how they run the world's most populous country. 
 
It is impossible to understand China without really knowing who is in charge. And this book tackles the subject head on. How did China's Communists merge Marx, Mao and the market to create a new superpower? How can they maintain such a grip on power in the face of a changing world. And just how corrupt are they? The Party gives us the untold story of China's rise to power as no other book has.

Richard McGregor

Skillfully crafted and well-argued

An excellent modern history. . . . provides the context needed to make sense of the region's present and future.

[A] wide-ranging study of China's re-emergence as a regional power in Asia after a long hiatus, thwarting the designs of other powers, including the United States and Russia. . . . The U.S. [finds itself] firmly ensnared in the so-called Thucydides trap, 'the principle that it is dangerous to build an empire but even more dangerous to let it go.' So it is, and the current leadership appears to be at a loss about what to do or to formulate other aspects of any coherent policy in and toward Asia. . . . Geopolitics wonks will want to give attention to this urgent but nonsensationalized argument.

The United States, China, and Japan form the power triangle that will shape much of the international politics in the 21st century. Richard McGregor's masterful The Party illuminated one corner of that triangle-China. In this important book he describes how the other two corners have interacted with China since World War II. Lucid, insightful and ominous, as the author describes big trouble ahead

Richard McGregor's new book is essential reading for anyone worried about the most fraught relationship in Asia-between China and Japan. With extensive experience in and knowledge of both China, Japan, and the United States, McGregor is in a unique position to unpack the relationship and sort through the extensive propaganda and myth-making on all sides. A great read!

John Pomfret, author of The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom

McGregor distills years of meetings with high officials in China and Japan to give a vivid nuanced picture of their relations in the 21st century

Ezra Vogel, author of Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

An in-depth depiction of radical changes and challenges in Japan-China relations in the post-war period, thoroughly researched and rich in storytelling. In the course of tumultuous relations with China, Japan has had to trail blaze in the face of the rise of China. Japan's naked exposure to the unfolding Realpolitik with China at its core is for the first time comprehensively reviewed.

Yoichi Funabashi, former Editor-in-Chief, Asahi Shimbun

A must read for anyone who wants to understand our future. Asia's Reckoning provides a detailed picture of the slow military, diplomatic and economic waltz between China, Japan and the United States that determined the shape of the past half-century.

A compelling account of the post-war relationship between China, Japan and America, brings to life one of the world's most complicated love-hate triangles.

McGregor's brilliant book is packed with insights on the complex Sino-Japanese relationship, the gist of that being that past history should be our teacher rather than master. Will a more powerful China learn magnanimity, one wonders.

For journalists taking up new posts in China, the first book I always suggest is Richard McGregor's The Party. I will now add McGregor's new book, Asia's Reckoning, to my list for those headed to the Far East.

In Asia's Reckoning, Richard McGregor provides a cogent and superbly researched guide to the deep forces that undergird China's geopolitical strategy and the attempts of two other great powers in the region, the United States and Japan, to deal with it.

McGregor's fascinating narrative of the three countries' relations over 50 years is filled with fresh anecdotes drawn from interviews and newly released archival documents. McGregor has a sharp eye for personalities and policy factions, as well as a firm grasp of geopolitics.

Richard McGregor has followed up his masterful 2010 book on The Party by focusing on the collisions and the less frequent collusions between the three Pacific powers: China, Japan and the US. Most regional strategic writing is focused on one of the three countries, but McGregor has done immense research in each of them and sets up the story beautifully.

McGregor offers a masterful account of the complex fifty-year dance between China, Japan and the United States.

McGregor has written a magisterial book that combines old-fashioned shoe leather reporting and extensive archival research to hart seven decades of history between the three countries.

The Struggle for Global Dominance

For more than half a century, American power in the Pacific has successfully kept the peace. But it has also cemented the tensions in the toxic rivalry between China and Japan, consumed with endless history wars and entrenched political dynasties. Now, the combination of these forces with Donald Trump's unpredictable impulses and disdain for America's old alliances threatens to upend the region. If the United States helped lay the postwar foundations for modern Asia, Asia's Reckoning will reveal how that structure is now crumbling. With unrivalled access to archives in the US and Asia, as well as many of the major players in all three countries, Richard McGregor has written a tale which blends the tectonic shifts in diplomacy with the domestic political trends and personalities driving them. It is a story not only of an overstretched America, but also of the rise and fall and rise of the great powers of Asia. The confrontational course on which China and Japan have increasingly set themselves is no simple spat between neighbours. And the fallout would be a political and economic tsunami.

Richard McGregor

Praise for Asia's Reckoning

A shrewd and knowing book

A compelling and impressive read

Skillfully crafted and well-argued

A shrewd and knowing book

A compelling and impressive read

Skillfully crafted and well-argued

A shrewd and knowing book

A compelling and impressive read

Skillfully crafted and well-argued

Books by Richard McGregor

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter