The Siege of Tsingtao

This year marks the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War; rhetorical flourishes have already begun comparing the current Asian geopolitical situation to Europe in months before the assassination in Sarajevo. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe might not have been so quick to invoke 1914 in regard to China's relations with its neighbors had he first read Jonathan Fenby's new book The Siege of Tsingtao.