Into China

A protrayal of the geographical and human diversity of China.

Engaging China is a concise account of the evolution and state of the Canadian approach to China, its achievements, disappointments, and current dilemmas.

There is a World Heritage Craze in China. China claims to have the longest continuous civilization in the world and is seeking recognition from UNESCO. This book explores three dimensions of the UNESCO World Heritage initiative with particular relevance for China: the universal agenda, the national practices, and the local responses. With a sociological lens, this book offers comprehensive insights into World Heritage, as well as China’s deep social, cultural, and political structures.

Undisputedly, China has become the world's manufacturing powerhouse, accounting for around half of all personal computers, digital cameras and kitchen appliances. However, the country is fast transitioning from low-cost manufacturing to a higher-value, innovation-led economy, a critical transformation that is at the heart of this new title. Companies are the essential engines of the wealth-creation process, particularly in the areas of internet and mobile telecommunications, and firms such as Tencent and Xiaomi are showing clear potential to become major players. Demonstrating strong commitment to the country's relentless progress in the realm of innovation, the Chinese government has encouraged the development of a business environment in which firms can experiment, operate and thrive. Created in China provides an examination of the critical human factors at play, as well as re-assessing some of the metrics traditionally used to describe and measure China's capacity for innovation. As Chinese firms begin to transform the country into a truly global innovator, the emerging patterns of future innovation are identified and reviewed. New and dynamic practices are arising that are recognisably Chinese, yet at the same time capable of competing on the world stage. Following the successes of firms such as Huawei, Haier and Lenovo, a growing number of technology-focused firms are now turning their attention towards markets outside of China – a development that will not only benefit the country but will provide exciting opportunities for businesses throughout the world.

Essays address expressions of modernity in relation to non-Western politics and national cultures. Topics range from the installation of gas streetlights in Shanghai to urban planning efforts aimed at improving daily routines of work and leisure.

A systematic historical survey of Chinese thought is followed by an investigation of the historical-metaphysical questions of modern technology, asking how Chinese thought might contribute to a renewed questioning of globalized technics. Heidegger's critique of modern technology and its relation to metaphysics has been widely accepted in the East. Yet the conception that there is only one—originally Greek—type of technics has been an obstacle to any original critical thinking of technology in modern Chinese thought. Yuk Hui argues for the urgency of imagining a specifically Chinese philosophy of technology capable of responding to Heidegger's challenge, while problematizing the affirmation of technics and technologies as anthropologically universal. This investigation of the historical-metaphysical question of technology, drawing on Lyotard, Simondon, and Stiegler, and introducing a history of modern Eastern philosophical thinking largely unknown to Western readers, including philosophers such as Feng Youlan, Mou Zongsan, and Keiji Nishitani, sheds new light on the obscurity of the question of technology in China. Why was technics never thematized in Chinese thought? Why has time never been a real question for Chinese philosophy? How was the traditional concept of Qi transformed in its relation to Dao as China welcomed technological modernity and westernization? In The Question Concerning Technology in China, a systematic historical survey of the major concepts of traditional Chinese thinking is followed by a startlingly original investigation of these questions, in order to ask how Chinese thought might today contribute to a renewed, cosmotechnical questioning of globalized technics.

This book presents a uniquely dynamic and fluid model of political evolution in the world's largest and most powerful authoritarian regime.

From one of China’s most acclaimed writers: a unique, intimate look at the Chinese experience over the last several decades. Framed by ten phrases common in the Chinese vernacular, China in Ten Words uses personal stories and astute analysis to reveal as never before the world’s most populous yet oft-misunderstood nation. In "Disparity," for example, Yu Hua illustrates the expanding gaps that separate citizens of the country. In "Copycat," he depicts the escalating trend of piracy and imitation as a creative new form of revolutionary action. And in "Bamboozle," he describes the increasingly brazen practices of trickery, fraud, and chicanery that are, he suggests, becoming a way of life at every level of society. Witty, insightful, and courageous, this is a refreshingly candid vision of the "Chinese miracle" and all of its consequences.