Modern China: A Very Short Introduction

by Mitter, Rana

• ISBN13: 9780199228027
• ISBN10: 0199228027
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-04-07
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

China today is never out of the news: from human rights controversies and the continued legacy of Tiananmen Square, to global coverage of the Beijing Olympics, and the Chinese 'economic miracle'. It seems a country of contradictions: a peasant society with some of the world's most futuristiccities, heir to an ancient civilization that is still trying to find a modern identity. This iVery Short Introduction/i offers the reader with no previous knowledge of China a variety of ways to understand the world's most populous nation, giving a short, integrated picture of modern Chinesesociety, culture, economy, politics and art.

Author Biography

Rana Mitter is University Lecturer in the History and Politics of Modern China at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of St Cross College. He is the author of The Manchurian Myth: Nationalism, Resistance and Collaboration in Modern China, and A Bitter Revolution: China's Struggle with the Modern World (OUP, 2004), for which he won the title Times Higher Education Young Academic Author of the Year 2005. The book was also runner-up for the Longman/History Today Book of the Year prize, a finalist for the British Academy Book Prize, and named by Foreign Affairs as one of five "must-read" Notable Books on China. He presents and comments regularly on radio and television, and his reviews and essays have appeared in the Financial Times, History Today, and London Review of Books.

Table of Contents

What is modern China?

The old order and the new

Making China modern

Is Chinese society modern?

Is China's economy modern?

Is Chinese culture modern?

Further Reading and References

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.