Yunqi Capital Book List | Finding Answers Beyond Code: How to Live With an Era of Upheaval
World Book Day, YQ Reads
In an era where change and uncertainty have become the norm, fragmented audio and video content is increasingly our primary source of information. As an explosion of content streams past our fingertips, deep thinking and self-understanding grow ever more scarce. Books, precisely, are what allow us to reconnect — serving as guides that reintroduce us to the world and to ourselves.
Today marks the 30th World Book Day, and we're sharing a reading list from the Yunqi Capital team. May we find more space for reflection beyond the world of code, and grasp the constants amid technological shifts and macroeconomic change.
Yunqi Capital Recommends
2025/4/23
Living with an Age of Upheaval
Book List
- Finite and Infinite Games
- Supply Chain Attack and Defense
- The Age of the Economically Pursued
- The Third Reich Trilogy
- How Asia Works
- Nexus
1. Finite and Infinite Games
James P. Carse
The book proposes two core frameworks for understanding games. Finite games aim at winning, operating within fixed rules and boundaries (exams, athletic competitions) with clear beginnings, endings, and victors. Infinite games, by contrast, are driven by the mission of continuing the game — perpetually expanding rules and boundaries to maintain openness (life, culture, scientific exploration), where participants co-create possibility rather than compete for victory.
What makes this framework remarkable is its near-universal applicability to competitive situations. Yet it doesn't reject competition outright; rather, it advocates approaching finite games with the open mindset of infinite play — finding freedom within rules, and transforming life into "a journey of continually expanding boundaries and creating meaning."
ISBN: 9787121215698
Chinese and English editions
191 pages
2. Supply Chain Attack and Defense
Lin Xueping
A timely read against the backdrop of escalating tariff wars. Tracing the restructuring of global supply chains, it offers a critical lens for understanding great-power competition. The book thoroughly analyzes the developmental trajectories of Globalization 1.0 and 2.0 and their underlying drivers, using extensive case studies to construct a "Three Forces" model of supply chains: connectivity, control, and design. In response to U.S.-driven "friend-shoring" and "near-shoring," the author argues that China must adopt a "re-globalization" strategy for the Globalization 2.0 era.
Chinese edition
387 pages
ISBN: 9787521760033
3. The Age of the Economically Pursued (Pursued Economy)
Richard Koo
A cycle-spanning action guide with relevance today for economies large and small, and individuals alike. The book divides economic evolution into three phases: urbanization, the golden age, and the pursued stage. In the pursued stage, advanced economies face competitive pressure from emerging markets due to rising labor costs and technology diffusion. The only path forward for such economies, the author argues, is "to redefine the rules of competition through innovation and reform" — a perspective that resonates with particular depth amid today's intensifying global economic uncertainty.
ISBN: 9787521760156
Chinese and English editions
479 pages
4. The Third Reich Trilogy
Richard J. Evans
This year marks the 80th anniversary of both the end of World War II and the founding of the United Nations. The world today stands at another crossroads of fragmentation; understanding how the forces that reshaped global order eight decades ago emerged and operated offers a valuable perspective for ordinary individuals navigating historical tides. This panoramic work examines the rise and fall of Nazi Germany in full scope, acclaimed by scholars as "the most comprehensive history of the Third Reich in any language." Drawing on extensive official archives, private diaries, and Gestapo documents, the author moves beyond traditional "Hitler-centric" narratives to reveal how ordinary Germans, buffeted by economic and social upheaval, became complicit in totalitarianism through both fervent support and passive acquiescence.
Chinese and English editions
728 pages
ISBN: 9787510886768
5. How Asia Works
Joe Studwell
Published a decade ago, this book retains prescient and provocative insights on the China model — affirming how "export discipline" propelled heavy-industry upgrading, while warning of demographic aging and insufficient innovation in consumer industries. The author, a veteran journalist with two decades of reporting across East Asia, brings an "old Asia hand's" sharp eye to comparing development paths in Northeast and Southeast Asia, probing the deeper causes behind Asia's economic miracles and traps. The book's core argument, that economic development hinges on policy choices rather than cultural determinism, offers a framework for understanding emerging economies that combines historical depth with incisive contemporary critique.
ISBN: 9787508644783
Chinese and English editions
338 pages
6. Nexus
Yuval Noah Harari
If you've had your fill of technical discussions on AI, this book offers a fresh angle from which to consider its implications — through the arc of human civilization itself. In Harari's view, AI's disruptive power lies not merely in technological iteration, but in its reshaping of "inter-subjective reality": as algorithms colonize human cognition through data, and as digital bureaucracies erode privacy and freedom, humanity faces a transfer of power from biological to non-biological networks. Safeguarding what makes us human amid this technological evolution requires embedding error-correction mechanisms into the very process of technological development. Such concerns may seem distant today, yet this perspective yields valuable insights for observing many present-day contradictions.
Chinese and English editions
256 pages
ISBN: 9787521768527