China watcher Graham Hutchings’ latest book explores the people and events behind the Chinese civil war to reveal how and why the Communists won in 1949.

Museum displays in Taiwan's oldest city marking social and economic advances under the Japanese would be unthinkable in other places Japan once ruled - but Tainan is different, writes Mark O'Neill. Photos by Antony Dickson

"We all ask God and especially those who live here in China to send a ray from heaven into the soul of this young man, so that he recognises the truth that we preach and opens a wide gate for the spread of His holy law in this great kingdom."

"The sheer magnitude of the rise of China, in the face of America's continued power and global network of alliances, is unprecedented in the history of nations.

In Asia's Cauldron, Robert Kaplan asks if there will be a war between China and the United States over the South China Sea.

Acu, 280 kilometres north of Rio de Janeiro, has been transformed from a seaside village into a huge port with a pier 3.2km-long which can handle Chinese ships that carry 400,000 tonnes of iron ore in a single journey.

Few are the foreign journalists who have visited Tibet. The number is even fewer since the Lhasa riots of March 2008 and the start of self-immolations in 2009, in which more than 40 have died.

This well-written book explains how China could become a model for the world - setting the example the US has failed to provide - based on its ancient philosophy: Confucianism.

"The story you are about to read will have to make do for the conversations we never had … I thank God for the loan of the four souls that were given into my care."

This book is about one of the most extraordinary experiments in human history: Mao Zedong's decision to send 17 million young Chinese from the cities to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution.