Horse That Leaps Through Clouds | Retracing Mannerheim's Journey Across Asia: slideshow image 1
Horse That Leaps Through Clouds | Retracing Mannerheim's Journey Across Asia: slideshow image 2
Horse That Leaps Through Clouds | Retracing Mannerheim's Journey Across Asia: slideshow image 3
Horse That Leaps Through Clouds | Retracing Mannerheim's Journey Across Asia: slideshow image 4
Horse That Leaps Through Clouds | Retracing Mannerheim's Journey Across Asia: slideshow image 5
Horse That Leaps Through Clouds | Retracing Mannerheim's Journey Across Asia
    Mannerheim as Photographer

    Mannerheim as Photographer

    One of the riches treasures that Gustaf Mannerheim brought back from his journey along the Silk Road from 1906 to 1908 is his very considerable collection of photographs. The pictures contain a huge quantity of information, and the collection amounts to a colourful reportage of a bygone world and of peoples known to few Westerners at the time.

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    The Geography of Chinese Power

    The Geography of Chinese Power

    CNN’s Fareed Zakaria talks with Robert Kaplan, a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a correspondent for The Atlantic, about his article in Foreign Affairs titled “The Geography of Chinese Power.”

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    Coping with China's financial power

    Coping with China’s financial power

    Ken Miller, president of a merchant banking firm and director of the USA Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, has written a level-headed, sophisticated and cautiously optimistic article about China’s financial might in Foreign Affairs.

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    Russia's New Nobility lacks 'noblesse oblige'

    Russia’s New Nobility lacks ‘noblesse oblige’

    In 2000 to mark the anniversary of the founding of the Cheka, Nikolai Patrushev, who succeeded Vladimir Putin as director of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), made a rather frightful comment: “Our best colleagues, the honor and pride of the FSB, don’t do their work for the money… It is their sense of service. They are, if you like, our new ‘nobility.’”

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    The beast that is China's ruling party

    The beast that is China’s ruling party

    Richard McGregor’s new book, The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers, should be required reading for anyone wanting to do any kind of business in China. His narrative unfolds like Peter Matthiessen’s Snow Leopard, in which the writer tracks the mysterious cat through the Himalayas. With every gripping anecdote, McGregor gets closer to capturing the essence of the Party, but in the end this “beast”, like the snow leopard, proves elusive.

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    A sneak peek at first book from printers

    A sneak peek at first book from printers

    After what seemed like an eternity, the hard cover first edition of my book, published by Douglas & McIntyre, finally arrived this morning by courier. It has been a monumental project, which began a decade ago over a pint of lager at Lund University in Sweden.

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    Trekking through China's "Long Tail"

    Trekking through China’s “Long Tail”

    The whizzes at Chinfographics have recently designed some interesting graphics showing how China’s enormity also creates anonymity for its many large cities. This is especially true for cities in the vast interior of China, far from the coastal mega-cities such as Shanghai or Shenzhen that are so well known in the West. While researching my book, I trekked through many of these huge, unheard of cities.

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    China's 'ghost city' frighteningly unsustainable

    China’s ‘ghost city’ frighteningly unsustainable

    The final resting place of Genghis Khan is an utter wasteland—befitting, perhaps, of a ruthless conqueror who laid waste to so much of the world.
    It is located about 70 kilometres south of Dongsheng, the capital of the prefecture of Ordos in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Once dominated by Mongol nomads, the prefecture, with [...]

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    Ethnic violence in a Silk Road bazaar

    Ethnic violence in a Silk Road bazaar

    In 2006, I visited Osh, Central Asia’s most ancient Silk Road market in southern Kyrgyzstan, for a few days while researching my book. I spent time investigating the Osh and Karasuu bazaars as part of my interest in the New Silk Road. (Chapter 5 is titled “Travels on the Synthetic Road.”) I never felt any [...]

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    Study the past if you would divine the future

    Study the past if you would divine the future

    “To analyze China’s future,” Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd recently opined, “we need to better understand China’s extraordinary history, including its long evolution of reform and foreign engagement. That is a complex task.”

    Rudd should know. The Australian Prime Minister majored in Mandarin and Chinese history at university, and his country with its geographic proximity and [...]

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    THE ROUTE



    THE BOOK

    A Tale of Espionage, the Silk Road and the Rise of Modern China
    A Tale of Espionage, the Silk Road and the Rise of Modern China

    Two epic journeys along the Silk Road - past and present - offer a riveting and cautionary tale abou…

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    MANNERHEIM

    Secret Agent, Soldier and Statesman
    Secret Agent, Soldier and Statesman

    Of all the great explorers who plundered the ancient treasures of the Silk Road a century ago, Baro…

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    CHINA BLOG

    Mannerheim as Photographer
    Mannerheim as Photographer

    One of the riches treasures that Gustaf Mannerheim brought back from his journey along the Silk Road…

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    REVIEWS

    A resolutely, bullishly inquisitive quest
    A resolutely, bullishly inquisitive quest

    An excerpt of a review by Jonathan Clements, the author of Mannerheim: President, Soldier, Spy: Auth…

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    CONTEST

    Reader Review Contest
    Reader Review Contest

    My publisher Douglas & McIntyre and I are holding a reader review contest to help kick start the con…

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