Italy S Encounters With Modern China

Developed by an international team of historians, sociologists, political scientists and economists, this collection is the most comprehensive reader of the history of Sino-Italian relations currently available in the English language.

Developed by an international team of historians, sociologists, political scientists and economists, this collection is the most comprehensive reader of the history of Sino-Italian relations currently available in the English language.

This book offers a critical analysis of global mobilities across China and Italy in history. In three periods in the twentieth century, new patterns of physical mobilities and cultural contact were established between the two countries which were either novel at the time of their emergence or impactful on subsequent periods. The first two chapters provide overviews of writings by Italians in China and by Chinese in Italy in the twentieth century. The remaining chapters cover: Republican China’s relationships with Italy and Italian Fascist colonialism in China during the 1920s–1930s; Italian travelers to China during the Cold War from the 1950s to the 1970s; migrations between China and Italy during the 2000s–2010s. In analyzing these cultural mobilities, this book opens a new line of inquiry in Chinese-Italian Cultural Studies, which has been dominated by historical study, and contributes a significant case study to the scholarship on global cultural mobilities.

This volume represents one of the first extensive studies that investigates the persistence of questions of race and racism in Italy from the liberal age to the present, through colonialism, Fascism and post-war Italy. It adopts an interdisciplinary perspective to investigate the intertwining of the cultural, social, legislative and political dynamics of discrimination in Italy’s past and present. Drawing upon the expertise of historians, political scientists, sociologists, scholars of literature and experts in cultural studies, the original essays collected in this volume show a remarkable continuity and the persistence of racism in the Italian cultural and political discourse, in society and in the representation of Others. They also speak of the shifting of practices of Othering from one group to another in different historical contexts.

To understand the turnaround in Spain’s stance towards Japan during World War II, this book goes beyond mutual contacts and explains through images, representations, and racism why Madrid aimed at declaring war on Japan but not against the III Reich -as London ironically replied when it learned of Spain’s warmongering against one of the Axis members.

The local experiences of foreigners in China in the 19th and early 20th centuries exemplify the often latent or tacit patterns of social encounters, individually or in groups, with certain cultural boundedness, stability, and homogeneity. This book takes into account virtual, mediated, imaginative contact zones and looks back at much slower and delimited times and focuses primarily on some selective experiences by Italians and Germans. In doing so it accounts for trajectories from individual and small groups with local, territorial, physical and fully sensual interfaces to fully programmed and highly steered contact zones in the 21st century.

This book offers critical insights into the China-led Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) from an EU perspective. It analyzes the political, cultural, and diplomatic effectiveness of Xi's efforts to expand socio-cultural ties and build new trade corridors between Europe and the Far East, and sheds light on the lasting success and influence of China-led economic programs. The book is divided into three parts. The first part provides an overview of the various dimensions of the BRI initiative, including the challenges and opportunities of the EU-China trade relationship, China's geopolitical interests, and foreign policy approaches. The second part analyzes BRI cooperation from the perspective of the business sector, while the third part presents case studies that examine the impacts and responses of various European countries to the BRI.

Interweaving political, intellectual, cultural and diplomatic histories, Tsui demonstrates how the Guomindang's national revolution turned conservative after the 1927 anti-Communist coup and contributed to the ascendancy of the global radical right. This revisionist reading of Nationalist China will appeal to a wide range of students and scholars.