Here is (for whoever may be interested) the list of books on China that I have read in the past 5-6 years;
in no particular order, with my assessments: 5 stars is the best, 2 the worst.
Books I reviewed on my blog are noted with ++.

John Palmer, The death of Mao, Faber & Faber, 2012 **
Jonathan Fenby, Will China dominate the 21st century, Polity, 2014 ***
Quan Yanchi, Mao: Man, not God ***
Jacques Gernet, Daily life in China on the Eve of Mongol Invasion 1250-76, Stanford UP, 1962. ****

++Giovanni Arrighi, Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the 21st Century, Verso, 2007. *****
Minxin Pei, China’s crony capitalism, Harvard UP, 2016. ****
Minxin Pei, China’s Trapped Transition, Harvard UP, 2006. ***

++Martin Jacques, When China rules the world, Penguin, 2012. *****
Cheng Li, Chinese politics in the Xi Jinping era, Brookings, 2016. ***
++Julian Gewirtz, Unlikely Partners Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China, Harvard 2017. ****

Zhao Ziyang, Prisoner of the state, Simon and Schuster, 2009. ****
++Wang fan-hsi, Memoirs of a Chinese Revolutionary, Columbia UP, 1991. *****
++Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence, Princeton UP, 2000. *****

0/ A holiday economic theory reading list. Some of my favorite pieces on theory that can be read with minimal sweat, but with the maximal intellectual reward. In no particular order:

1/ Myerson 1999. "Nash equilibrium & history of economic theory." JEL. Written with characteristic Myersonian elegance. "how a few short papers by a young mathematician achieved one of the great watershed breakthroughs in the history of social

2/ Blackwell & DeGroot 1986. “A conversation with David Blackwell.” Stat Science. After his PhD at 21, "There were 105 black colleges at that time & I wrote 105 letters of application." Beautiful discussion on a gamut of ideas & his intellectual life.

3/ Geanakoplos 1992. “Common Knowledge.” JEP. Zuper piece, lucidly written. Lots of interesting puzzles, great for teaching. When Moriarty says "All I have to say has already crossed your mind," Holmes retorts "then possibly my answer has crossed yours."

4/ Morris 1995. "The common prior assumption in economic theory.” E&P. This beauty was Stephen's first chap of PhD thesis! Does rationality imply CP? Does relaxing CP make theorizing uninteresting? Is failure of CP a failure of information processing?