Born in Canada, Jeanne-Marie Gescher is a graduate of the universities of Durham and Aix-en-Provence, and a member of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple.

After founding one of the earliest private advisory firms in China, Jeanne-Marie has been honorary legal advisor to successive British ambassadors to the PRC from 1989 to 2015; she is a twice-elected former chair of the British Chamber of Commerce in China.

Awarded an OBE for her China work in 2001, she continues to be a long-term advisor on strategy, geopolicy and geovolution to individual business leaders, and an advisor on China to a number of policy institutions and non-governmental organisations. She is also a Senior Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of London University.

One of the two most powerful states in the world, China continues to be seen as a mystery even after decades of an open door. How does China work, what does it want, why does it want it, and what does its rise to global power mean for the rest of the world? As the twenty-first century looks set to be the stage for a battle about competing geopolitical ideals, these are urgent questions for everyone with an interest in what the future might bring.

Epic in scope, this is the story of how China became the state it is today and how its worldview is based on what has gone before. Weaving together inspirations, ideas, wars and dreams to reveal the heart of what it means to be Chinese and how the past impacts on the present.

Despite decades of a relatively open door relationship with the rest of the world, China is still a mystery to many outside it. A world of its own, China is both a microcosm and an amplification of questions and events in the wider world. China's story offers us an opportunity to hold a mirror to ourselves: to our own assumptions, to our values, and to our ideas about the most important question of all: what it means to be human in the world of the state.

Jeanne-Marie Gescher is one of the most respected of the foreign advisors on China. Her argument that history, geography and human nature are essential to understanding the country and its future is one that any China expert would wholeheartedly endorse.

If you can only read one book on China this year, read this. If you have time to finish two, read Hank Paulson's as well-but read Becoming China first.

A page-turning work of genius and originality: the history of a great and brilliant people, and the anatomy of China's soul

A tour de force that succeeds brilliantly in opening up this most complex of countries.