The Search For Modern China

This collection of primary source documents--many translated into English for the first time and available only in this book--gather proclamations, treaties, laws, and other public acts with pieces reflecting everyday life, family, social networks, and culture.

"This rich gathering of primary-source documents puts students in direct contact with the major characters and events in modern Chinese history. Revised to reflect updates to The Search for Modern China, third edition, this outstanding collection displays a strong blend of social history (pieces dealing with everyday life, family, social networks, and culture) and political history (critical proclamations, treaties, laws, and other public acts). Many documents are translated into English for the first time and are available only in this book."--

Look no further for a comprehensive narrative of Chinese history from the fall of the Ming dynasty to the present.

Klaus Mühlhahn situates modern China in the nation's long, dynamic tradition of overcoming adversity and weakness through creative adaptation--a legacy of crisis and recovery that is apparent today in China's triumphs but also in its most worrisome trends. Mühlhahn's panoramic survey rewrites the history of modern China for a new generation.

China today is never out of the news: from human rights controversies and the continued legacy of Tiananmen Square, to global coverage of the Beijing Olympics, and the Chinese 'economic miracle'. It seems a country of contradictions: a peasant society with some of the world's most futuristic cities, heir to an ancient civilization that is still trying to find a modern identity. This Very Short Introduction offers the reader with no previous knowledge of China a variety of ways to understand the world's most populous nation, giving a short, integrated picture of modern Chinese society, culture, economy, politics and art. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Jean-Louis Rocca's admirably concise A Sociology of Modern China wears its scholarship lightly and paints an intimate and complex portrait of Chinese society, all the while avoiding clichés and simplifications. He delves into China's history and examines the country's many different social strata so as to better understand the enormous challenges and opportunities with which its people are confronted. After discussing the long march toward reform and the crises along the way - among them the 1989 protests which culminated in the events in Tiananmen Square and elsewhere - Rocca dedicates the second half of the book to the major questions facing the country (or, at the very least, its political elites) today: new forms of social stratification; the interaction between the market and the state; growing individualism; and the pressures exerted by social conflict and political change. In eschewing culturalist visions, Rocca thoroughly and successfully deconstructs received wisdom about Chinese society to reveal a thriving nation and its people.

Jonathan D. Spence is George Burton Adams Professor of History at Yale University and author of eight acclaimed books on China. Here he has written a very readable history of this fascinating country. "To understand . . . China's past there is no better place to start than Jonathan D. Spences excellent new book".--The New York Times Book Review front page review. 136 pages of photographs.

This lavishly illustrated volume explores the history of China during a period of dramatic shifts and surprising transformations, from the founding of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) through to the present day. The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China promises to be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand this rising superpower on the verge of what promises to be the 'Chinese century', introducing readers to important but often overlooked events in China's past, such as the bloody Taiping Civil War (1850-1864), which had a death toll far higher than the roughly contemporaneous American Civil War. It also helps readers see more familiar landmarks in Chinese history in new ways, such as the Opium War (1839-1842), the Boxer Uprising of 1900, the rise to power of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, and the Tiananmen protests and Beijing Massacre of 1989. This is one of the first major efforts — and in many ways the most ambitious to date — to come to terms with the broad sweep of modern Chinese history, taking readers from the origins of modern China right up through the dramatic events of the last few years (the Beijing Games, the financial crisis, and China's rise to global economic pre-eminence) which have so fundamentally altered Western views of China and China's place in the world.