Former British prime minister Tony Blair on Tuesday launched the Chinese edition of "A Journey", the memoirs in which he recounts his decade in power, state media reported.

During the launch party, Blair praised the "unprecedented progress" achieved by China over the past thirty years, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Blair's 718-page account of his time in Downing Street, from 1997 to 2007, includes an unprecedented attack on his "strange" successor Gordon Brown, whose premiership he branded a disaster.

It details the personal toll the job took on him, how he used whisky, gin and wine as a "prop", the "animal" feelings he had for his wife, and his relationship with the royal family after princess Diana died.

But it is Blair's decision to take Britain into the US-led invasion of Iraq that lies at the heart of the book.