Contemporary Chinese Studies

This series provides new scholarship and perspectives on modern and contemporary China, including China's contested borderlands and minority peoples; ongoing social, cultural, and political changes; and the varied histories that animate China today.

Showing 1-20 of 44 items.

Not Just a Man’s War

Chinese Women’s Memories of the War of Resistance against Japan, 1931–45

UBC Press

Not Just a Man’s War uncovers the extraordinary stories of ordinary Chinese women during the horrific fourteen-year War of Resistance against Japan, from 1931 to 1945.

  • Copyright year: 2024
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The YWCA in China

The Making of a Chinese Christian Women's Institution, 1899–1957

UBC Press

The YWCA in China traces the history of this Christian organization – and the social philosophies of the Chinese women who led it – through the tumultuous first half of the twentieth century.

  • Copyright year: 2023
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China’s Asymmetric Statecraft

Alignments, Competitors, and Regional Diplomacy

UBC Press

China’s Asymmetric Statecraft uncovers the different narratives and paradigms that constitute Chinese foreign policy toward its weaker neighbours, alerting us to a dramatically changing international environment.

  • Copyright year: 2023
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Frontier Fieldwork

Building a Nation in China’s Borderlands, 1919–45

UBC Press

Frontier Fieldwork exposes the transformative power that early-twentieth-century fieldwork had in placing the Sino-Tibetan borderlands at the centre of China’s nation-making process and race to modernity.

  • Copyright year: 2022
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Saving the Nation through Culture

The Folklore Movement in Republican China

UBC Press

Saving the Nation through Culture tells the little-known story of how a group of Chinese scholars attempted to use “low culture” to promote national unity during a long period of crisis.

  • Copyright year: 2019
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Yuan Shikai

A Reappraisal

UBC Press

This first major comprehensive study of Yuan Shikai in more than half a century explores the controversial life of one of the most important figures in China’s transition from empire to republic.

  • Copyright year: 2018
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Beyond the Amur

Frontier Encounters between China and Russia, 1850–1930

UBC Press

Beyond the Amur charts the pivotal role that an overlooked frontier river region and its environment played in Qing China’s politics and Sino-Russian relations.

  • Copyright year: 2017
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A Frontier Made Lawless

Violence in Upland Southwest China, 1800-1956

UBC Press

In the first Western language history of Liangshan, Joseph Lawson argues that the region was not inherently violent but made violent by turmoil elsewhere in China.

  • Copyright year: 2017
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Empire and Environment in the Making of Manchuria

Edited by Norman Smith
UBC Press

This unique analysis of Manchuria’s environmental history provides an overview of the climatic and imperialist forces that have shaped an area of ongoing geopolitical importance.

  • Copyright year: 2017
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State of Exchange

Migrant NGOs and the Chinese Government

UBC Press

This exploration of the interactive relationship between Chinese NGOs and the Chinese state provides fresh insights into how the Chinese government operates and why it needs non-governmental organizations to survive.

  • Copyright year: 2017
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Banished to the Great Northern Wilderness

Political Exile and Re-education in Mao’s China

UBC Press

Through newly accessed labour farm archives and recently uncovered Chinese-language sources, this book brings to life the experience of political exiles in Mao’s China.

  • Copyright year: 2017
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The Pragmatic Dragon

China’s Grand Strategy and Boundary Settlements

UBC Press

Presenting a historical survey of China’s boundary disputes and settlements, Hyer demonstrates that its approach to territorial disputes has been pragmatic and strategic.

  • Copyright year: 2015
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Remembering the Samsui Women

Migration and Social Memory in Singapore and China

UBC Press

A study of the Samsui women who migrated from China to Singapore, where they have been commemorated as nation-builders.

  • Copyright year: 2014
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The Business of Culture

Cultural Entrepreneurs in China and Southeast Asia, 1900-65

UBC Press

The first critical analysis of Chinese “cultural entrepreneurs,” businesspeople whose entrepreneurial endeavours in China and Southeast Asia the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries transformed the cultural sphere.

  • Copyright year: 2015
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Staging Corruption

Chinese Television and Politics

UBC Press

A study of the television dramas about government corruption that became hugely popular in the mid-1990s and their reflection of China’s post-Socialist anxieties.

  • Copyright year: 2014
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Diasporic Chineseness after the Rise of China

Communities and Cultural Production

UBC Press

Leading international scholars examine the production of culture during China’s rise to global superpower in the last quarter of a century.

  • Copyright year: 2014
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Cultivating Connections

The Making of Chinese Prairie Canada

UBC Press

The voices of Chinese immigrants who settled in the pre-1950s Canadian prairies come alive in this extraordinary record of migration, settlement, and community life.

  • Copyright year: 2014
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Coping with Calamity

Environmental Change and Peasant Response in Central China, 1736-1949

UBC Press

The first environmental and socioeconomic history of the Jianghan plain in central China, focusing on the peasants’ relationship with a volatile environment.

  • Copyright year: 2014
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The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850-1960

UBC Press

A history of the convergence of Western and Chinese medical practices in modern China.

  • Copyright year: 2014
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Milestones on a Golden Road

Writing for Chinese Socialism, 1945-80

UBC Press

Milestones on a Golden Road examines works of fiction written in China between 1945 and 1980, when the arts were required to reflect a Maoist vision of history and society.

  • Copyright year: 2013
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