This penetrating study of China’s social and cultural contacts with the West, first published in 1979, analyses the early images that China and the West had of one another, and the illusions and misconceptions that arose from these images. The book centres on the question, why did China fail to become modernised through contact with the West before the 1930s? The author examines the roles played by the agents of change – emigrants, missionaries, traders, scholars and diplomats – and the political, economic, social and cultural developments which the transmission of their...