Crimson rain:

This is an excellent book. In outlining the relationship between three groups, government, elites and peasantry, the book establishes a framework for power legitimation and contestation. Taxes, religion, serfdom and confucian loyalty are areas where these relationships become contested. Loyalty can be invoked towards genealogies and/or dynasties and is an intriguing area, but the economic situation of the poor is perhaps the general touchstone. In any event, when the relationships break down terrible sectarian violence is the result.
The final section of the book on the Civil war during the republican period from the 1920's to 1949 puts the ferocity of the communists' conflict with the nationalists in a new light. As ever the reader is left wondering how much the dynamics of power in China have changed and how much they have stayed the same! In this respect the book places such present day issues as Tiananmen, the FalunGong and Tibet/Xinjiang in a new perspective.  

Review: Crimson Rain: Seven Centuries of Violence in a Chinese County

Went into this with high hopes, but came out with 400 pages of narrative, and close to no analysis (throwing around the names of some Annalistes and Maurice Halbwachs DOES NOT count as analysis). The payoff was slight, and his conception of violence does not illuminate issues. Read full review