Jonathan Fenby, "Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power, 1850 to the Present"

No country on earth has suffered a more bitter history in modern times than China. In the second half of the nineteenth century, it was viewed as doomed to extinction. Its imperial rulers, heading an anachronistic regime, were brought low by enormous revolts, shifting social power patterns, republican revolutionaries, Western incursions to "split the Chinese melon" and a disastrous defeat by Japan.

The presence of predatory foreigners has often been blamed for China's troubles, but the much greater cause came from within China itself. In the early twentieth century, the empire was succeeded by warlordism on a massive scale, internal divisions, incompetent rule, savage fighting between the government and the Communists, and a fourteen-year invasion from Japan. Four years of civil war after 1945 led to the Maoist era, with its purges and repression; the disastrous Great Leap Forward; a famine that killed tens of millions; and the Cultural Revolution.

Yet from this long trauma, China has emerged amazingly in the last three decades as an economic powerhouse set to play a major global political role, its future posing one of the great questions for the twenty-first century as it grapples with enormous internal challenges. Understanding how that transformation came about and what China constitutes today means understanding its epic journey since 1850 and recognizing how the past influences the present.

Jonathan Fenby tells this turbulent story with brilliance and insight, spanning a unique historical panorama, with an extraordinary cast of characters and a succession of huge events. As Confucius said, To see the future, one must grasp the past.

Reviews
"[T]he most compelling and judicious account of China's phoenix years that is currently available. If it cannot exactly delight, it certainly impresses… a journalist's eye for detail, undemanding prose and a thunderous sense of narrative assure Jonathan Fenby of a triumph. The highly readable trounces the nigh unspeakable."—Times Literary Supplement (London)

"Panoramic narrative… a wonderful resource… One does not often feel that an author has got it just about all covered but Mr. Fenby is approaching the mark."—Far Eastern Economic Review

"His book is a powerful revisionist account of a country whose history needs to be understood if the west is to comprehend China's role in the present and future… That century-old dilemma of how to create a strong China in a world buffeted by global forces in painfully relevant today. Jonathan Fenby's account of how China has coped with that dilemma makes his illuminating book the first major history that looks at the country with the eyes of the 21st century rather than the 20th."—Financial Times

Contents

Acknowledgements
Note on Transliteration and Currency
List of Illustrations
List of Maps

Introduction

Part 1: End of Empire
 1 Sons of Heaven
 2 Upheavals
 3 Strength and Weakness
 4 Reform and Reaction
 5 On the Ropes
 6 Final Act

Part 2: Revolution and Republic
 7 A Very Young Baby
 8 Warlords
 9 Ice and Ancient Charcoal
 10 Divided We Stand

Part 3: Wars Without End
 11 Enemy of the Heart
 12 Enemy of the Skin
 13 Mao's March
 14 Total War
 15 The Great Retreat
 16 Tangled Alliance
 17 The Last Battle

Part 4: The Rule of Mao
 18 The Winner
 19 Plots and Plans
 20 Leaping to Disaster
 21 Famine and Retreat
 22 Demons and Monsters
 23 All-Out Civil War
 24 American Interlude
 25 Only Heaven Knows

Part 5: The Age of Deng
 26 Little Peace Plays His Trumps
 27 To Get Rich is No Sin
 28 Gathering Storm
 29 Beijing Spring
 30 Three Weeks in May
 31 Massacre in Beijing

Part 6: Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao
 32 The New-Old Generations

Epilogue

Notes
Bibliography
Appendices
 Who's Who in Modern China
 The Late-Qing Emperors
 China's Growth 1976–2006
 Communist Party Leaders in the People's Republic
 Communist Party Organization at the Centre
Index

Tags: qChina, qHistory, qWorldPolitics

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