The Literature of China in the Twentieth Century


Book Description

The written culture of 20th-century China has only recently begun to receive sustained attention from Western readers and critics. This book presents illuminating information on writers, audiences, and the impact of various literary works on politics and culture--and provides a unique window on Chinese society.




Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World


Book Description

Throughout this lively and concise historical account of Mao Zedong’s life and thought, Rebecca E. Karl places the revolutionary leader’s personal experiences, social visions and theory, military strategies, and developmental and foreign policies in a dynamic narrative of the Chinese revolution. She situates Mao and the revolution in a global setting informed by imperialism, decolonization, and third worldism, and discusses worldwide trends in politics, the economy, military power, and territorial sovereignty. Karl begins with Mao’s early life in a small village in Hunan province, documenting his relationships with his parents, passion for education, and political awakening during the fall of the Qing dynasty in late 1911. She traces his transition from liberal to Communist over the course of the next decade, his early critiques of the subjugation of women, and the gathering force of the May 4th movement for reform and radical change. Describing Mao’s rise to power, she delves into the dynamics of Communist organizing in an overwhelmingly agrarian society, and Mao’s confrontations with Chiang Kaishek and other nationalist conservatives. She also considers his marriages and romantic liaisons and their relation to Mao as the revolutionary founder of Communism in China. After analyzing Mao’s stormy tenure as chairman of the People’s Republic of China, Karl concludes by examining his legacy in China from his death in 1976 through the Beijing Olympics in 2008.




Survey of Chinese History in the Twentieth Century


Book Description

This book presents a panoramic history of the Chinese nation spanning the twentieth century, with the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation as its central theme. In their unwavering pursuit of national independence, universal emancipation, and a country of power and shared prosperity, the Chinese people undertook an arduous journey that saw China fundamentally transformed by such historic events and experiences as the overthrow of the imperial system in the 1911 Revolution, the founding of the People’s Republic of China, reform and opening up, and the construction of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Massive in scope, meticulously documented, and rigorously written, this volume has few rivals among general histories of China in the twentieth century.




Medical Transitions in Twentieth-Century China


Book Description

“Rich insights into how one country has dealt with perhaps the most central issue for any human society: the health and wellbeing of its citizens.” —The Lancet This volume examines important aspects of China’s century-long search to provide appropriate and effective health care for its people. Four subjects—disease and healing, encounters and accommodations, institutions and professions, and people’s health—organize discussions across case studies of schistosomiasis, tuberculosis, mental health, and tobacco and health. Among the book’s significant conclusions are the importance of barefoot doctors in disseminating western medicine; the improvements in medical health and services during the long Sino-Japanese war; and the important role of the Chinese consumer. This is a thought-provoking read for health practitioners, historians, and others interested in the history of medicine and health in China.




Chinese History in Geographical Perspective


Book Description

The authors in this volume believe that long-term, profound, and sometimes tumultuous changes in the last five hundred years of the history of China have been no less geographical than social, political, or economic. From the dialectics of local-empire relations to the imperial state’s persistent array of projects for absorbing and transforming ethnic regions on the margins of empire; from the tripling of imperial territories in the Qing to the disputes over the identity of the former “outer zones” in the early Republican era; and from the universalistic imagination of “all-under-heaven” to the fraught processes of re-drawing a new set of nation-state boundaries in the twentieth century, the study of the dynamics of geography, broadly conceived, promises to provide insight into the contested development of the geographical entity which we, today, call 'China.'




The Magic of Concepts


Book Description

In The Magic of Concepts Rebecca E. Karl interrogates "the economic" as concept and practice as it was construed historically in China in the 1930s and again in the 1980s and 1990s. Separated by the Chinese Revolution and Mao's socialist experiments, each era witnessed urgent discussions about how to think about economic concepts derived from capitalism in modern China. Both eras were highly cosmopolitan and each faced its own global crisis in economic and historical philosophy: in the 1930s, capitalism's failures suggested that socialism offered a plausible solution, while the abandonment of socialism five decades later provoked a rethinking of the relationship between history and the economic as social practice. Interweaving a critical historiography of modern China with the work of the Marxist-trained economist Wang Yanan, Karl shows how "magical concepts" based on dehistoricized Eurocentric and capitalist conceptions of historical activity that purport to exist outside lived experiences have erased much of the critical import of China's twentieth-century history. In this volume, Karl retrieves the economic to argue for a more nuanced and critical account of twentieth-century Chinese and global historical practice.




Taiwan in the Twentieth Century


Book Description

This book brings together a group of experts on Taiwan who attempt to analyse change on this dynamic island during the whole of the twentieth century. Thus in contrast to many works on Taiwan, this book shows just how important the Japanese colonial antecedents were to the formation of today's Taiwan and help us to understand the complexity of the problems this island will face in the twenty-first century.




The Search for Modern China


Book Description

This work chronicles the history of China for over four hundred years through the spring of 1989.




A Companion to Chinese History


Book Description

A Companion to Chinese History presents a collection of essays offering a comprehensive overview of the latest intellectual developments in the study of China’s history from the ancient past up until the present day. Covers the major trends in the study of Chinese history from antiquity to the present day Considers the latest scholarship of historians working in China and around the world Explores a variety of long-range questions and themes which serves to bridge the conventional divide between China’s traditional and modern eras Addresses China’s connections with other nations and regions and enables non-specialists to make comparisons with their own fields Features discussion of traditional topics and chronological approaches as well as newer themes such as Chinese history in relation to sexuality, national identity, and the environment




The Monster That Is History


Book Description

In ancient China a monster called Taowu was known for both its vicious nature and its power to see the past and the future. Since the seventeenth century, fictive accounts of history have accommodated themselves to the monstrous nature of Taowu. Moving effortlessly across the entire twentieth-century literary landscape, David Der-wei Wang delineates the many meanings of Chinese violence and its literary manifestations.