Are the United States and China on a collision course? In response to remarks made by Donald Trump’s secretary of state, China’s state-run newspaper Global Times asserted, "Unless Washington plans to
Are the United States and China on a collision course? In response to remarks made by Donald Trump’s secretary of state, China’s state-run newspaper Global Times asserted, "Unless Washington plans to
The attack on the British frigate Amethyst on the Yangtze River by Chinese Communists in 1949 made world headlines. There was even more publicity when the ship made a dramatic escape after being trapp
Provides information about the Great Wall of China, including the fact that it wasn't the first large wall built in China and that it is made out of many different materials.
The rise of youth is among the most dramatic stories of modern China. Since the last years of the Qing dynasty, youth has been made a new agent of history in Chinese intellectuals’ visions of national
The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. This history of China derives mainly from the writings of the Flemish Jesuit Ferdinand Verbiest (1623–1688), who was sent as a missionary to China, and eventually, despite violent opposition, became Head of the Mathematical Board and Director of the Beijing Observatory for the Kangxi Emperor. The introduction to this 1854 edition sketches the life of Verbiest and discusses the sources of the text; an appendix gives a description by Verbiest himself of a hunting expedition on which he accompanied the emperor.
Since the mid-twentieth century China and India have entertained a difficult relationship, erupting into open war in 1962. Shadow States is the first book to unpack Sino-Indian tensions from the angle of competitive state-building - through a study of their simultaneous attempts to win the approval and support of the Himalayan people. When China and India tried to expand into the Himalayas in the twentieth century, their lack of strong ties to the region and the absence of an easily enforceable border made their proximity threatening - observing China and India's state-making efforts, local inhabitants were in a position to compare and potentially choose between them. Using rich and original archival research, Bérénice Guyot-Réchard shows how India and China became each other's 'shadow states'. Understanding these recent, competing processes of state formation in the Himalayas is fundamental to understanding the roots of tensions in Sino-Indian relations.
The ace pilots of the Republic of China Air Force have long been shrouded in mystery and obscurity, as their retreat to Taiwan in 1949 and a blanket martial law made records of the RoCAF all but impos
In the early twentieth century, the Chinese state made strenuous efforts to broaden and deepen its authority over rural society. This book is an ambitious attempt to offer both a method and a framewor
The Great Wall of China is renowned as one of the most impressive and intriguing man-made structures on earth. It is also the subject of an awesome mythology, embedded in both learned and popular imaginations, which has grown up and now obscured the historical record. Even the maps which chart the Wall's position offer erroneous accounts of a phenomenon which has never been accurately surveyed. Arthur Waldron reveals that the notion of an ancient and continuously existing Great Wall, one of modern China's national symbols and a legend in the eyes of the West, is in fact a myth. His fascinating account reveals the strategic and political context for the decision to build walls as fortified defences, and explores its profound implications for nomadic and agricultural life under the Ming dynasty. Taking up the insights offered into more recent Chinese politics, the book concludes with a searching investigation of the Wall's new meanings in the myths - departing from that history - fostere
Since the mid-twentieth century China and India have entertained a difficult relationship, erupting into open war in 1962. Shadow States is the first book to unpack Sino-Indian tensions from the angle of competitive state-building - through a study of their simultaneous attempts to win the approval and support of the Himalayan people. When China and India tried to expand into the Himalayas in the twentieth century, their lack of strong ties to the region and the absence of an easily enforceable border made their proximity threatening - observing China and India's state-making efforts, local inhabitants were in a position to compare and potentially choose between them. Using rich and original archival research, Bérénice Guyot-Réchard shows how India and China became each other's 'shadow states'. Understanding these recent, competing processes of state formation in the Himalayas is fundamental to understanding the roots of tensions in Sino-Indian relations.
This book shares the observations made in 1998 by Chinese Foreign Service experts, who had planned meetings of President Nixon with Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai, during interviews by the authors and E
In 1964, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) made a momentous policy decision. In response to rising tensions with the United States and Soviet Union, a top-secret massive military industrial complex in the mountains of inland China was built, which the CCP hoped to keep hidden from enemy bombers. Mao named this the Third Front. The Third Front received more government investment than any other developmental initiative of the Mao era, and yet this huge industrial war machine, which saw the mobilization of fifteen million people, was not officially acknowledged for over a decade and a half. Drawing on a rich collection of archival documents, memoirs, and oral interviews, Covell Meyskens provides the first history of the Third Front campaign. He shows how the militarization of Chinese industrialization linked millions of everyday lives to the global Cold War, merging global geopolitics with local change.
Weakened by two Opium Wars and a succession of internal rebellions in the mid-1800s, China’s imperial leaders made a historic decision—to break a tradition of isolation and seek education outside the
Beginning early in the 19th century, the American missionary movement made slow headway in China. Alabamians became part of that small beachhead. After 1900 both the money and personnel rapidly expand
In the vast majority of literature on 'Chinese nationalism' the distinction between nation and state is rarely made, consequently nationalism usually appears as loyalty to the state rather than identi
The Chinese made the world's first bronze chime-bells, which they used to perform ritual music, particularly during the Shang and Zhou dynasties (ca. 1700-221 B.C.). Lothar von Falkenhausen's rich and
In a formative period of Chinese culture, early medieval writers made extensive use of a diverse set of resources, in which such major philosophical classics as Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Classic of Changes
Through the Yang-tse Gorges is Archibald Little's diary (published in London in 1888) of his journey up the Yangtze River from Shanghai to Chongqing by a native junk boat in 1883. Little strongly advocated the introduction of steam travel on the upper part of the river between Yichang and Chongqing, a port open to Western trade. The upper Yangtze was full of gorges and rapids which made travel treacherous; Little's journey by junk boat took a month, whereas the journey by steamship would have taken only 36 hours. He was repeatedly rebuffed in his attempts to introduce steam travel to the upper Yangtze by the Chinese government, which he accused of standing in the way of modernisation. He successfully introduced a steamship on the upper Yangtze river in 1898. Several other books by Little and by his intrepid wife are also reissued in this series.
Scottish missionary Alexander Williamson (1829–90) spent several years preaching in northern China. From 1863 to 1866, he was there as the first overseas agent of the National Bible Society of Scotland. During this time, he travelled as far as Mongolia and Manchuria, a considerable undertaking in those days. He later became secretary of the Society for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge among the Chinese, and formed the Chinese Book and Tract Society in 1884. In this illustrated two-volume work, first published in 1870, he records the observations he made during extensive travels that took him via the home of Confucius while propagating the Bible in Chinese script. Volume 1 offers introductory remarks on China's physical geography, people, culture, government and foreign influences. It also provides descriptions of the northern Chinese provinces and accounts of travels starting from Shandong province.
