Attention last-minute holiday shoppers! We have an easy-to-purchase gift to recommend. And we guarantee that it will fit all sizes, shapes and tastes.

This is assuming your intended recipients are intelligent, literate and eager to learn about the world. For as your intellectually slothful friends (if any), we recommend you just keep off your list entirely. Why waste your (presumably) hard-earned money on them? Let them spend their holiday watching football or something.

The answer to your gift-list problem is to buy your friends a book on China—in fact, any book on China, or any two or even three books. You absolutely cannot go wrong. In the last year not one book on China has been published in the US that’s not worth buying and reading. This is a serious statement.

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