Belknap Press
Making China Modern: From the Great Qing to XI Jinping
Key Metrics
- Klaus M�hlhahn
- Belknap Press
- Hardcover
- 9780674737358
- 9.4 X 6.5 X 2 inches
- 2.75 pounds
- History > Asia - China
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
A panoramic survey of China's rise and resilience through war and rebellion, disease and famine, that rewrites China's history for a new generation.
It is tempting to attribute China's recent ascendance to changes in political leadership and economic policy. Making China Modern teaches otherwise. Moving beyond the standard framework of Cold War competition and national resurgence, Klaus M�hlhahn situates twenty-first-century China in the nation's long history of creative adaptation.
In the mid-eighteenth century, when the Qing Empire reached the height of its power, China dominated a third of the world's population and managed its largest economy. But as the Opium Wars threatened the nation's sovereignty from without and the Taiping Rebellion ripped apart its social fabric from within, China found itself verging on free fall. A network of family relations, economic interdependence, institutional innovation, and structures of governance allowed citizens to regain their footing in a convulsing world. In China's drive to reclaim regional centrality, its leaders looked outward as well as inward, at industrial developments and international markets offering new ways to thrive.
This dynamic legacy of overcoming adversity and weakness is apparent today in China's triumphs--but also in its most worrisome trends. Telling a story of crisis and recovery, Making China Modern explores the versatility and resourcefulness that matters most to China's survival, and to its future possibilities.
Author Bio
Professor Dr. Klaus Mühlhahn from Berlin, social scientist and specialist in cultural studies, is the new President of the ZU. Born in Constance, was elected by the ZU Senate and officially appointed to his position as President and also appointed as Director by the ZU Foundation, the supporting foundation of the ZU.
Professor Mühlhahn is currently the Vice-President of Research at the Freie Universität (FU) Berlin. He will take up his post in Friedrichshafen by September 1st for five years.
In 1993 Mühlhahn received a Master's degree in Sinology from the Free University of Berlin, where he also worked as research assistant from 1993 to 2002 in the Department of Sinology. In 1998 he received his Ph.D. in Sinology at the FU Berlin with his dissertation "Herrschaft und Widerstand in der 'Musterkolonie' Kiautschou". From 2002 to 2004 he was visiting fellow at the Center for Chinese Studies, at University of California, Berkeley.
From 2004 to 2007 he was Professor of Contemporary Chinese and Asian History at the Institute for History of the University of Turku. In 2007-2010 he was Professor of History and Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the Indiana University in Bloomington. Since 2010 he has been Professor of Chinese History and Culture at the FU Berlin and since 2014 vice president.
In 2009 Mühlhahn was awarded the John K. Fairbank Prize of the American Historical Association for his book Criminal Justice in China: A History.
Source: Zepplin University, Wikipedia, and Freie University of Berlin.
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