China Heist is a crime novel set in the lucky country, Australia, during the height of its multi-billion dollar mining boom. Robert Lee is a jaded detective in the Fraud Squad sent on an undercover assignment to entrap a Chinese businesswoman and her daughter suspected of fraudulently obtaining lucrative mining licenses. The sting goes terribly wrong when the businesswoman is killed in a bomb attack. Lee and the daughter survive only to become the targets of corrupt police, politicians and businessmen. Now on the run in Perth, Macau, Hong Kong and across the gold fields of the Western Australian outback, and with the body count increasing, Lee must protect the woman, find the murderers, expose the corruption, and seek to clear his name in this action-packed tale of international conflict and greed, financial terrorism and chilling murder in the high-stakes world of mineral resources exploitation.
A riveting true story of industrial espionage in which a Chinese-born scientist is pursued by the U.S. government for trying to steal trade secrets, by a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction. In September 2011, sheriff’s deputies in Iowa encountered three ethnic Chinese men near a field where a farmer was growing corn seed under contract with Monsanto. What began as a simple trespassing inquiry mushroomed into a two-year FBI operation in which investigators bugged the men’s rental cars, used a warrant intended for foreign terrorists and spies, and flew surveillance planes over corn country—all in the name of protecting trade secrets of corporate giants Monsanto and DuPont Pioneer. In The Scientist and the Spy, Hvistendahl gives a gripping account of this unusually far-reaching investigation, which pitted a veteran FBI special agent against Florida resident Robert Mo, who after his academic career foundered took a questionable job with the Chinese agricultural company DBN—and became a pawn in a global rivalry. Industrial espionage by Chinese companies lies beneath the United States’ recent trade war with China, and it is one of the top counterintelligence targets of the FBI. But a decade of efforts to stem the problem have been largely ineffective. Through previously unreleased FBI files and her reporting from across the United States and China, Hvistendahl describes a long history of shoddy counterintelligence on China, much of it tinged with racism, and questions the role that corporate influence plays in trade secrets theft cases brought by the U.S. government. The Scientist and the Spy is both an important exploration of the issues at stake and a compelling, involving read.
Discover the Thrilling World of Daring Bank Robberies Delve into the shadowy domain of cunning thieves, illustrious heists, and the relentless pursuit of justice. The Ultimate Heist: Unraveling the Mysteries of Bank Robberies immerses readers in the electrifying world of high-stakes bank robberies, detailing the intricate ballet between criminal masterminds and law enforcement. From the historical roots of bank heists to the modern methods employed by today's most sophisticated criminals, each chapter offers an adrenaline-pumping journey through time and tactics. Grasp the evolution of these audacious crimes as you explore their beginnings and the ingenious strategies employed in planning and execution. Feel the suspense of the infamous Great Train Robbery, the meticulous planning behind the Brink's Job, and the notorious Lufthansa Heist. Each tale, rich with drama and detail, captures the peril and excitement of these outlaw legends. Peek into the minds of notorious criminals like Jesse James, John Dillinger, and the enigmatic Pink Panthers, whose psychological profiles reveal the motivations and madness behind their infamous deeds. Understand how their calculated maneuvers and audacious escapades have cemented their places in criminal history. Witness the duel between these heist architects and the tireless law enforcement agents determined to thwart them. Gain insights into FBI strategies, evolving security measures, and the cultural impacts of these high-profile crimes, portrayed vividly in film and literature. Beyond the thrill, grapple with the ethical and legal questions these crimes pose, from the pursuit of justice to the rights of the accused. Learn from detailed case studies in prevention, showcasing both triumphant interventions and instructive failures. Finally, ponder the future of bank robberies in the era of digital currency and emerging technologies. Will the digital age spell the end of the classic bank heist, or merely transform it? For those enticed by tales of cunning, courage, and consequence, this book offers an unparalleled investigation into one of the most riveting facets of criminal lore.
An intriguing investigation into over 50 elusive artworks that were stolen and never recovered. Mona Lisa, Starry Night, Birth of Venus. People travel for hundreds of miles to observe these breathtaking paintings with their own eyes. Now discover the artworks that nobody can ever see… and the fascinating stories behind their disappearance. In this collection of daring heist stories, read about: Michelangelo’s Mask of a Faun Caravaggio’s Nativity Rembrandt’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Cézanne’s View of Auvers-sur-Oise Van Gogh’sThe Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring With meticulous research and engaging storytelling, this book uncovers the mysteries surrounding the thefts of these valuable artworks and many more. Each fated work will be discussed to reveal why it, and the artist who made it, was significant. Gain a deeper appreciation for these artists, and the lasting impact they've had on the art world. This book also answers key questions about each missing piece, including: Why and how was it stolen? What attempts have been made to recover it? Leads, red herrings, and suspects. Whether you're passionate about art or drawn to the thrill of solving mysteries, this book offers a compelling narrative that will keep you engaged from cover to cover. It's a must-read for anyone curious about the intersection of art, crime, and history.
This is a political treatise that deals with the China issue from a completely new perspective. Disparaging as he may sound, from page to page, toward "the old system" and the Communist Party's various wiles, the author demonstrates his mysteriously profound understanding of the Chinese leadership. Few men in North America would have such prescient perception of what is happening in Asia's (and also the world's) most populous country. It is a work of amazing knowledge and brilliance!
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An Edgar Award Nominee for Best First Novel Longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize Named a New York Times Best Crime Novel of 2022 Named A Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by *Marie Claire* *Washington Post* *Vulture* *NBC News* *Buzzfeed* *Veranda* *PopSugar* *Paste* *The Millions* *Bustle* *Crimereads* Goodreads* *Bookbub* *Boston.com* and more! "The thefts are engaging and surprising, and the narrative brims with international intrigue. Li, however, has delivered more than a straight thriller here, especially in the parts that depict the despair Will and his pals feel at being displaced, overlooked, underestimated, and discriminated against. This is as much a novel as a reckoning." —New York Times Book Review Ocean's Eleven meets The Farewell in Portrait of a Thief, a lush, lyrical heist novel inspired by the true story of Chinese art vanishing from Western museums; about diaspora, the colonization of art, and the complexity of the Chinese American identity History is told by the conquerors. Across the Western world, museums display the spoils of war, of conquest, of colonialism: priceless pieces of art looted from other countries, kept even now. Will Chen plans to steal them back. A senior at Harvard, Will fits comfortably in his carefully curated roles: a perfect student, an art history major and sometimes artist, the eldest son who has always been his parents' American Dream. But when a mysterious Chinese benefactor reaches out with an impossible—and illegal—job offer, Will finds himself something else as well: the leader of a heist to steal back five priceless Chinese sculptures, looted from Beijing centuries ago. His crew is every heist archetype one can imagine—or at least, the closest he can get. A con artist: Irene Chen, a public policy major at Duke who can talk her way out of anything. A thief: Daniel Liang, a premed student with steady hands just as capable of lockpicking as suturing. A getaway driver: Lily Wu, an engineering major who races cars in her free time. A hacker: Alex Huang, an MIT dropout turned Silicon Valley software engineer. Each member of his crew has their own complicated relationship with China and the identity they've cultivated as Chinese Americans, but when Will asks, none of them can turn him down. Because if they succeed? They earn fifty million dollars—and a chance to make history. But if they fail, it will mean not just the loss of everything they've dreamed for themselves but yet another thwarted attempt to take back what colonialism has stolen. Equal parts beautiful, thoughtful, and thrilling, Portrait of a Thief is a cultural heist and an examination of Chinese American identity, as well as a necessary critique of the lingering effects of colonialism.
The year 2018 marks the 15th anniversary of the establishment of ASEAN-China Strategic Partnership. Both ASEAN and China expect to seize this opportunity to take ASEAN-China strategic partnership to a new level.This book assesses ASEAN-China Strategic Partnership in the past 15 years by taking stock of the implementation of existing ASEAN-China cooperation frameworks, mechanisms and programs; defines overall goals and guiding principles of the ASEAN-China Strategic Partnership toward the end of 2030; sets specific targets, to be reached in 2030, for political and security cooperation, economic cooperation, and people-to-people exchanges between ASEAN and China and recommends concrete and practical measures (including short-term, mid-term and long-term measures) to deepen and widen future cooperation; and offers strategies for the 2030 Vision to be aligned with the ASEAN Community Vision 2025 and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in the three pillars of ASEAN-China cooperation.This book is a collection of conference papers and summary report of the Network of ASEAN-China Think-tanks (NACT) Special Working Group Meeting held in Beijing, China on 26 January 2018. Themed '2030 Vision for ASEAN-China Strategic Partnership' (2030 Vision), the meeting reviewed the past 15 years of ASEAN-China strategic partnership and discussed the reports on the 2030 Vision submitted by leading think tanks of all ASEAN member states and China.The Network of ASEAN-China Think-tanks (NACT) was proposed by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in 2013 to contribute scholarly work to the 'diamond decade' of China-ASEAN strategic partnership and to build a China-ASEAN community of shared future. It was officially launched in 2014. So far, a three-level working mechanism (including Country Coordinators' Meeting, Working Group Meeting and Annual Seminar) has been built, and a regional network of think-tanks has been formed. As a regular and institutionalized platform for think-tanks cooperation, NACT serves to promote joint studies on ASEAN-China relations, strengthen people-to-people ties and become a significant supplement to Track I diplomacy.
China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 was heralded as historic, and for good reason: the world's most populous nation was joining the rule-based system that has governed international commerce since World War II. But the full ramifications of that event are only now becoming apparent, as the Chinese economic juggernaut has evolved in unanticipated and profoundly troublesome ways. In this book, journalist Paul Blustein chronicles the contentious process resulting in China's WTO membership and the transformative changes that followed, both good and bad - for China, for its trading partners, and for the global trading system as a whole. The book recounts how China opened its markets and underwent far-reaching reforms that fuelled its economic takeoff, but then adopted policies - a cheap currency and heavy-handed state intervention - that unfairly disadvantaged foreign competitors and circumvented WTO rules. Events took a potentially catastrophic turn in 2018 with the eruption of a trade war between China and the United States, which has brought the trading system to a breaking point. Regardless of how the latest confrontation unfolds, the world will be grappling for decades with the challenges posed by China Inc.
One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2023 The Financial Times Business Book of the Year, this epic account of the decades-long battle to control one of the world’s most critical resources—microchip technology—with the United States and China increasingly in fierce competition is “pulse quickening…a nonfiction thriller” (The New York Times). You may be surprised to learn that microchips are the new oil—the scarce resource on which the modern world depends. Today, military, economic, and geopolitical power are built on a foundation of computer chips. Virtually everything—from missiles to microwaves—runs on chips, including cars, smartphones, the stock market, even the electric grid. Until recently, America designed and built the fastest chips and maintained its lead as the #1 superpower, but America’s edge is in danger of slipping, undermined by players in Taiwan, Korea, and Europe taking over manufacturing. Now, as Chip War reveals, China, which spends more on chips than any other product, is pouring billions into a chip-building initiative to catch up to the US. At stake is America’s military superiority and economic prosperity. Economic historian Chris Miller explains how the semiconductor came to play a critical role in modern life and how the US became dominant in chip design and manufacturing and applied this technology to military systems. America’s victory in the Cold War and its global military dominance stems from its ability to harness computing power more effectively than any other power. Until recently, China had been catching up, aligning its chip-building ambitions with military modernization. Illuminating, timely, and fascinating, Chip War is “an essential and engrossing landmark study" (London Times).
The contributors to New World Orderings demonstrate that China’s twenty-first-century rise occurs not only through economics and state politics but equally through the mutual entanglements of overlapping social, economic, and cultural worlds in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America. They show how the Chinese state has sought to reconfigure the nation’s position in the world and the centrality of trade, labor, religion, migration, gender, race, and literature to this reconfiguration. Among other topics, the contributors examine China’s post-Bandung cultural diplomacy with African nations, how West African “pastor-entrepreneurs” in China interpreted and preached the prosperity doctrine, the diversity of Chinese-Argentine social relations in the soy supply chain, and the ties between China and India within the complex history of inter-Asian exchange and Chinese migration to Southeast Asia. By examining China’s long historical relationship with the Global South, this volume presents a non-state-centric history of China that foregrounds the importance of transnational communicative and imaginative worldmaking processes and interactions. Contributors. Andrea Bachner, Luciano Damián Bolinaga, Nellie Chu, Rachel Cypher, Mingwei Huang, T. Tu Huynh, Yu-lin Lee, Ng Kim Chew, Lisa Rofel, Carlos Rojas, Shuang Shen, Derek Sheridan, Nicolai Volland
