Kategoria BISAC: History >> Asia - China

The most distinguished Chinese journalist of the past fifty years, Liu Binyan has earned the sobriquet "China s conscience." Between 1956 and 1987, there were nine years during which the Communist Party of China allowed Liu to write the truth as he saw it. Expelled from the Party in 1957, later re-admitted and expelled again, he has lived in exile since 1988. He has continued indefatigably to read, think, and write about his beloved China: the saga of its modern history, the moral wasteland of its present condition, and its place in the global order. In Two Kinds of Truth Liu reflects on...

In 1577, during a great court debate over the formulation of china's policy toward its nomadic neighbors, the Ming scholar-official Feng Feng-shih observed: "When there are markets and tribute, there is no war." For two millennia, tension between nomad and chinese along China's northern frontier threatened to erupt into war, and for two millennia, the essential element determining whether peace or war existed was trade. This fascinating book tells the story of the centuries-long confrontation along the Great Wall of China.

With Part I of the two-part fifth volume of Ssu-ma Ch'ien's Shi chi (The Grand Scribe's Records), we enter the world of the shih chia or "hereditary houses." These ten chapters trace the history of China's first states, from their establishment in the 11th century B.C. until their incorporation in the first empire under the Ch'in in 221 B.C. Combining myth, anecdote, chronicle, and biography based on early written and oral sources, many no longer extant, the narratives make for compelling reading, as dramatic and readable as any in this grand history.

A philosophical analysis informed by history, this work examines the reasons for the highly destructive behavior of the Red Guards in the early part of China's Cultural Revolution. By probing the political, educational, and psychological factors influencing the Red Guards, Jing Lin sheds light on how teenagers and young adults were able to justify violence in the name of class struggle and human rights. She concludes that non-critical, categorical thought--buttressed by the political and educational systems--was pivotal.

Jing Lin introduces the work with a discussion of democratic and...

The December 1937 incident that has come to be known as the Rape of Nanking is, without doubt, a tragedy that will not soon be forgotten. While acknowledging that a tremendous loss of life occurred, this study challenges the current prevailing notion that the incident was a deliberate, planned effort on the part of the Japanese military and analyzes events to produce an accurate estimate of the scale of the atrocities. Drawing on Chinese, Japanese, and English sources, Yamamoto determines that what happened at Nanking were unfortunate atrocities of conventional war with precedents in both...

This fully updated second edition provides a succinct and self-contained history of China. The text emphasizes the relationship between China's modern era and its past, employing a unique approach that presents the story in terms of traditional Chinese historical theories. When the West enters the scene in modern times, Schrecker fits its impact into the Chinese story, rather than the reverse, as is commonly done. This study demonstrates that traditional China was not homogeneous or changeless, thus offering a much-needed corrective to common stereotypes about other cultures that is...

This fully updated second edition provides a succinct and self-contained history of China. The text emphasizes the relationship between China's modern era and its past, employing a unique approach that presents the story in terms of traditional Chinese historical theories. When the West enters the scene in modern times, Schrecker fits its impact into the Chinese story, rather than the reverse, as is commonly done. This study demonstrates that traditional China was not homogeneous or changeless, thus offering a much-needed corrective to common stereotypes about other cultures that is...

This concise account of Taiwan's history makes a cogent, compelling argument for the right of the Taiwanese people to declare their nation independent, if they so choose. Davison's bold stand unprecedented from a Western author challenges the one China notion advanced in the Shanghai Communique of 1972 and states unequivocally that, should independence be proclaimed, it could only be taken away by force if the international community sides with contemporary might over historical right. He argues that the possible conflict could be sufficiently incendiary to induce a major military clash...

The Chinese-speaking Muslims have for centuries been an inseperable but anomalous part of Chinese society--Sinophone yet incomprehensible, local yet outsiders, normal but different. Long regarded by the Chinese government as prone to violence, they have challenged fundamental Chinese conceptiosn of Self and Other and denied the totally transforming power of Chinese civilization by tenaciously maintaining connectios with Central and West Asia as well as some cultural differences from their non-Muslim neighbors.

Familiar Strangers narrates a history of the Muslims of northwest...

Nestled against the Tibetan highlands in the remote mountains of Liangshan in southwest China, the land of the Nuosu people was until the 1950s beyond the easy reach of the Chinese government, and the culture of the Nuosu (a branch of the Yi group) developed with little Chinese influence. In the 1960s China's Cultural Revolution suppressed and eroded Nuosu culture, but since the 1980s there has been a resurgence of Nuosu ethnic identity and culture, and a revival of traditional arts.

An introductory chapter presents the history and culture of the Nuosu, and essays illustrate each of...

China's 1911-12 Revolution, which overthrew a 2000-year succession of dynasties, is thought of primarily as a change in governmental style, from imperial to republican, traditional to modern. But given that the dynasty that was overthrown--the Qing--was that of a minority ethnic group that had ruled China's Han majority for nearly three centuries, and that the revolutionaries were overwhelmingly Han, to what extent was the revolution not only anti-monarchical, but also anti-Manchu?

Edward Rhoads explores this provocative and complicated question in Manchus and Han, analyzing...

Occupying much of imperial China's Yangzi River heartland and costing more than twenty million lives, the Taiping Rebellion (1851-64) was no ordinary peasant revolt. What most distinguished this dramatic upheaval from earlier rebellions were the spiritual beliefs of the rebels. The core of the Taiping faith focused on the belief that Shangdi, the high God of classical China, had chosen the Taiping leader, Hong Xiuquan, to establish his Heavenly Kingdom on Earth.

How were the Taiping rebels, professing this new creed, able to mount their rebellion and recruit multitudes of followers...

Is modernity in non-Western societies always an "alternative" modernity, a derivative copy of an "original modernity" that began in the West? No, answer the contributors to this book, who then offer an absorbing set of case studies from modern China to make their point. By focusing on people's ordinary routines of working, eating, going to school, and traveling, the authors examine the notion of modernity as it has been staged in the minute details of Chinese life.

Essays explore people's basic search for food, water, and lighting during the late-Qing -- early republican era;...

"It is a book that brings history...