Gary Heath (Author of Travels in Taiwan)

Gary is now following Guy de la Rupelle Author of Kayak and Land Journeys in Ainu Mosir: Among th...
Dec 29, 2022 05:33AM · like
Gary rated a book it was amazing The Chief Witness: escape from China’s modern-day concentration camps by Sayragul Sauytbay	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Invaluable first-hand testimony from inside one of China’s fascist concentration camps The Chief Witness was actually written in German by Alexandra Cavelius based on interviews with Sauytbay done in Sweden that was subsequently translated into Englis ...more
Nov 19, 2022 07:11PM · like · see review
Gary is now following Sean R. Roberts Author of The War on the Uyghurs: China's Internal Campai...
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Gary rated a book it was amazing The War on the Uyghurs: China's campaign against Xinjiang's Muslims by Sean R. Roberts (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
One of the great tragedies of our time is the genocide being enacted by the Chinese government in Xinjiang, a.k.a. East Turkistan, against the Uyghur people and other Muslim minorities in the province. Sean Roberts, a regional specialist with a deep ...more
Oct 30, 2022 06:41AM · like · see review
Gary rated a book it was amazing The Final Struggle by Ian Easton	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
China poses an existential threat to the democracies of the world, particularly its hegemonic rival the United States, says Ian Easton: "To put it simply, China's government seeks nothing less than world domination. That is Beijing's supreme strategi ...more
Oct 15, 2022 06:49AM · like · see review
Gary finished reading The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han (History of Imperial China, #1) by Mark Edward Lewis	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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Gary rated a book it was amazing The Passenger by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Decided to get a copy of this book after reading a report about it in the Guardian I think it was — felt sorry that the author had died so young and was curious to check it out. Turns out Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz wrote a cracking novel before his t ...more
Oct 02, 2022 04:51AM · like · see review
Gary rated a book it was amazing Kowloon Tong by Paul Theroux	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Kowloon Tong is a novel, so it's not really necessary to be relevant to an understanding of Hong Kong, but it just so happens that it is. I mean look at what's happened in the last couple of years since the student protests: China comes in and locks ...more
Oct 02, 2022 04:45AM · like · see review

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Guy de la Rupelle

Author of Kayak and Land Journeys in Ainu Mosir: Among th...

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The Chief Witness: escape from China’s modern-day concentration camps
by Sayragul Sauytbay

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Invaluable first-hand testimony from inside one of China’s fascist concentration camps

The Chief Witness was actually written in German by Alexandra Cavelius based on interviews with Sauytbay done in Sweden that was subsequently translated into Englis Invaluable first-hand testimony from inside one of China’s fascist concentration camps

The Chief Witness was actually written in German by Alexandra Cavelius based on interviews with Sauytbay done in Sweden that was subsequently translated into English by Caroline Waight. I think it’s worth mentioning this because a lot go can go wrong in such a process, and indeed Cavelius did have a problem with the first-pick interpreter who turned out to be less than loyal to the project. It is therefore remarkable that the end result is so well done and readable. The first third of the book, an account of a normal and interesting childhood in essence, is quite delightful, but this only multiplies the affect of horror that we feel as the story progresses. I was quite familiar with what is going on in Xinjiang before picking up this title, and have some expert knowledge of the CCP, but even for me it was really horrible to hear an account of how the noose tightened around Sauytbay, her family, and her people. It was in 2017 when the hammer fell and the long-prepared camps went into operation. Despite doing everything required of her and trying to play it safe, it wasn’t long before Sauytbay, along with many thousands of others, ended up in one of these camps. She worked as a teacher there and so had it slightly easier than most, although she also ended up being tortured. It was on a brief release that she made a run for it, crossed over into Kazakhstan where her husband and children had been living, and after many difficulties finally found asylum in Sweden. Needless to say, this book is a gripping read, and absolutely essential rare testimony. A few details were of particular interest to me. Firstly, the camps were run very secretly and in a highly cruel and carefully thought out way. Prisoners were allowed to be aware of torture and torture was routine, but they did not witness death; evidence of death was concealed. It’s impossible to know how many have died in the camps, therefore, but many thousands is likely given the regimen, so in a sense the camps are exactly death camps. Almost no one survives because they are scarred for life on release, if they are released at all. Others, strong and healthy people, are murdered in military hospitals for their body organs; some are taken to be used as forced labour somewhere in Xinjiang or inner China — their files were marked with an X. Sauytbye has done the world a singular service by speaking up and recounting her experience in such detail. Although it is not easy to read parts of this book, everyone should read it to find out what the Chinese Communist Party is really like, and why we should not be cooperating with the government of China at all. For many innocent people in Xinjiang, it is already too late. ...more

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Sean R. Roberts

Author of The War on the Uyghurs: China's Internal Campai...

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The War on the Uyghurs by Sean R. Roberts

The War on the Uyghurs: China's campaign against Xinjiang's Muslims
by Sean R. Roberts (Goodreads Author)

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One of the great tragedies of our time is the genocide being enacted by the Chinese government in Xinjiang, a.k.a. East Turkistan, against the Uyghur people and other Muslim minorities in the province. Sean Roberts, a regional specialist with a deep One of the great tragedies of our time is the genocide being enacted by the Chinese government in Xinjiang, a.k.a. East Turkistan, against the Uyghur people and other Muslim minorities in the province. Sean Roberts, a regional specialist with a deep knowledge of Uyghur culture and history, has written a very well-informed backgrounder that looks at the recent—since 1750—history of the Uyghurs, basically stopping at 1949 and the communist take over of the region. The book then digresses into an examination of Chinese communist rule in Xinjiang which vacillated between accommodative coexistence and assimilationist approaches until the 1990s. From the mid-nineties the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started to adopt a more aggressive assimilationist approach, and the current genocide is the logical and extreme endpoint of this approach. Along the way, the CCP turned the Uyghurs into enemies in a self-fulfilling prophesy. However, the claim that there was a “terrorist” problem in Xinjiang has always been bogus. One of the impressive aspects of The War On The Uyghurs is the close examination of this “terrorist” myth, and the implicit connection between China’s search for a justification for what it was doing and the West’s Global War on Terror that provided the cover required. As part of the discussion, Roberts analyses the history and activities of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), two organisations on the State Department’s list of terror organisations since 2003. The CCP pushed hard to get these two resistance groups branded “terrorist”, even though neither group had any presence in Xinjiang or actually managed to fight there. (Practically all the violence in Xinjiang over many years was isolated and spontaneous incidents of resistance with larger incidents a reaction to overbearing Chinese policing and/or assimilationist policies.) The CCP then used the “terrorist” button as a justification for it’s increasingly insane policies and finally cultural genocide on a large scale. It’s a sorry tale. ...more

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The Final Struggle
by Ian Easton

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China poses an existential threat to the democracies of the world, particularly its hegemonic rival the United States, says Ian Easton: "To put it simply, China's government seeks nothing less than world domination. That is Beijing's supreme strategi China poses an existential threat to the democracies of the world, particularly its hegemonic rival the United States, says Ian Easton: "To put it simply, China's government seeks nothing less than world domination. That is Beijing's supreme strategic objective. It wants to export its system of mass surveillance and thought control globally..." Crucially, China has a strategic plan and is not relying on military strength alone to achieve its goal, but also on control of the Internet, international organizations, and critical supply chains. It seeks to dominate the global narrative, Easton says. The author offers an abundance of evidence of worldwide infiltration by PR China and laments the fact that by trading with China the West has unwittingly helped strengthen its most serious political competitor. China's authoritarian regime has used its much-improved economic situation to indebt other nations effectively buying global influence. Easton does an amazingly good job of joining all these dots and goes to some lengths to explain Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ideology and what the military-civil fusion regime really means when it spouts slogans like "a community of common Destiny for All Mankind", read a world re-ordered in Beijing's image. He convincingly argues that America and Europe are at a disadvantage in the current competition with China: key decision-makers in society have not seen or fully understood the threat. Also, he points out that the leaders of democracies tend to think in the short to medium term, unlike the CCP leadership that thinks decades ahead. A reality check is in order and the West needs to confront China in the same way China is challenging the West; a new Cold War is not just unavoidable but actually preferable to the current debilitating appeasement.

The Final Struggle is a great book in my view, and one of the best places to start to get a handle on China and the CCP today. Of course, the author makes a tough assessment of China and its intentions. But it's all well-researched and a lot of what Easton talks about is plainly visible in the world. Along with other people who know the place, I have been alarmed by China's bullying that has gone global in recent years. Back in the 1990s, I felt shocked at how easily America was duped into agreeing on trade deals with China while ignoring very serious human rights abuses that should have raised red flags. The CCP is now pursuing genocidal policies in Xinjiang and Tibet with complete impunity and the UN recently voted against a discussion on human rights in PR China because many states are beholden to Beijing financially. Meanwhile, Elon Musk suggests Taiwan might become a special administrative region like Hong Kong, something he was almost certainly coached to say by Chinese handlers assigned to watch him. Easton says it's time to see the wood from the trees and understand PR China for what it is: a menacing geopolitical threat greater than the Soviet Union.

This book makes useful digressions into the real world to illustrate general points. It is thorough, clear-headed and moral. I happen to agree with Easton's general thesis. Only on one detail would I raise a question — I'm not sure China fomented civil war in Indonesia (the 1960s). On the contrary, at the time it was the US that encouraged the Indonesian military to overthrow Sukarno and go on a murder spree. And this leads me to the broader possible critique one could make, i.e. that China is doing no less than the US did in the past on its own road to hegemony. But hey, I know whom I'd rather have rule over me, and it's not PR China.

A thumbs up to Camphor Press which did a very good job on the publishing side producing an attractive and easy-to-read book that includes excellent illustrations by Louis Martin-Vezian and Grace Young. ...more

Gary finished reading

The Early Chinese Empires by Mark Edward Lewis

The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han (History of Imperial China, #1)
by Mark Edward Lewis

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The Passenger
by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz

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Decided to get a copy of this book after reading a report about it in the Guardian I think it was — felt sorry that the author had died so young and was curious to check it out. Turns out Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz wrote a cracking novel before his t ...more

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Kowloon Tong
by Paul Theroux

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Kowloon Tong is a novel, so it's not really necessary to be relevant to an understanding of Hong Kong, but it just so happens that it is. I mean look at what's happened in the last couple of years since the student protests: China comes in and locks ...more

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	Travels in Taiwan: Exploring Ilha Formosa 3.92 avg rating — 12 ratings — published 2009 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	West of Arabia: A Journey Home 3.50 avg rating — 8 ratings — published 2011 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Exchange Student: A Photo Memoir of China 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2022	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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