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.
The Power of Words
Literacy and Revolution in South China, 1949-95
This social and political history of the struggle for literacy in rural China shows how China's revolutionary leaders conceived and promoted literacy in the countryside and how villagers made use of the literacy education they were offered.
The Chinese in Vancouver, 1945-80
The Pursuit of Identity and Power
Wing Chung Ng captures the fascinating story of the city's Chinese in their search for identity.
Scars of War
The Impact of Warfare on Modern China
A forceful look at the long-term social and psychological impact of warfare on modern China’s civilian population.
Gender and Change in Hong Kong
Globalization, Postcolonialism, and Chinese Patriarchy
This sophisticated collection of essays provides an innovative analysis of gender relations at the nexus of globalization, Chinese patriarchy, and post-colonialism in Hong Kong.
Obedient Autonomy
Chinese Intellectuals and the Achievement of Orderly Life
This anthropological study of Chinese archaeologists shows how the discipline works within a Chinese social structure, and uncovers the complex underpinnings of that context.
The Cult of Happiness
Nianhua, Art, and History in Rural North China
The Cult of Happiness is among the first studies in any field to treat folk art and folk print as historical text. As such, this richly illustrated volume will appeal to a wide range of scholars in Asian studies, history, art history, folklore and print, as well as anyone having a passion for the creativity and culture of rural society.
Gutenberg in Shanghai
Chinese Print Capitalism, 1876-1937
Gutenberg in Shanghai demonstrates how Western technology and evolving traditional values resulted in the birth of a unique form of print capitalism whose influence on Chinese culture was far-reaching and irreversible.
Tibet and Nationalist China's Frontier
Intrigues and Ethnopolitics, 1928-49
A counterpoint to erroneous historical assumptions, this book argues that Nationalist sovereignty over Tibet and China's other border regions was the result of rhetorical grandstanding by Chiang Kai-shek and his regime.
Teachers’ Schools and the Making of the Modern Chinese Nation-State, 1897-1937
This innovative account examines the social and political impacts of Chinese teacher's schools in the early 20th century, their role in a society in transition, and their production of grassroots forces that lead to the Communist Revolution.
Resisting Manchukuo
Chinese Women Writers and the Japanese Occupation
The Chinese State at the Borders
The essays in this volume look at China's relationships with border peoples over a long span of time, questioning whether the process of expansion was a benevolent civilizing mission.
The New Silk Road Diplomacy
China's Central Asian Foreign Policy since the Cold War
The New Silk Road Diplomacy traces how China, faced with internal and external challenges to its authority following the collapse of the Soviet Union, constructed a gradualist approach to Central Asia that prioritized multilateral diplomacy.
Art in Turmoil
The Chinese Cultural Revolution, 1966-76
This book decodes the rhetoric of China’s turbulent decade, a time of both brutal iconoclasm and radical experimentation in the arts, to offer new insights into works that have transcended their times.
Administering the Colonizer
Manchuria’s Russians under Chinese Rule, 1918-29
A revisionist history of a unique administrative experiment – the Chinese administration of Manchuria’s Russians in the 1920s – that supports a more nuanced view of Chinese nationalism and China’s relationship with minority cultures.
Smokeless Sugar
The Death of a Provincial Bureaucrat and the Construction of China's National Economy
An investigation into the 1936 execution of a Cantonese official leads to a reassessment of regional and national politics and state-led industrialization in Republican China.
Eating Bitterness
New Perspectives on China's Great Leap Forward and Famine
Eating Bitterness reveals what the Great Leap Forward meant for ordinary men and women in Maoist China.
Beyond Suffering
Recounting War in Modern China
This collection moves beyond the geopolitical sphere to examine the multiple fronts – personal, social, and institutional – on which wars in modern China have been fought, experienced, and remembered.
A School in Every Village
Educational Reform in a Northeast China County, 1904-31
Engaging with topics central to scholarly debates on modern China, this book shows that China’s early twentieth-century school system, a product of negotiation and compromise, was more successful than previous scholarship has allowed.
Intoxicating Manchuria
Alcohol, Opium, and Culture in China's Northeast
Examines how alcohol, opium, and addiction were portrayed in the culture of China’s Northeast during the first half of the twentieth century.
Merry Laughter and Angry Curses
The Shanghai Tabloid Press, 1897-1911
Merry Laughter and Angry Curses investigates the proliferation of late-Qing-era tabloid journalism and the tabloids’ role in subverting the political and intellectual establishment.
Chieftains into Ancestors
Imperial Expansion and Indigenous Society in Southwest China
An in-depth examination of how the Chinese imperial state impacted the social order of southwestern China’s minority peoples and redefined their histories and culture.
Sporting Gender
Women Athletes and Celebrity-Making during China’s National Crisis, 1931-45
This book explores the casting of China’s earliest female Olympians as celebrities within the context of a national crisis, born of internal conflicts and external attack by Japan.
Chinese Comfort Women
Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves
This is the first English-language book to record the experiences and testimonies of Chinese women abducted and detained as sex slaves in Japanese military “comfort stations” during Japan’s 1931-45 invasion of China.
Milestones on a Golden Road
Writing for Chinese Socialism, 1945-80
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.
Coping with Calamity
Environmental Change and Peasant Response in Central China, 1736-1949
The first environmental and socioeconomic history of the Jianghan plain in central China, focusing on the peasants’ relationship with a volatile environment.
Cultivating Connections
The Making of Chinese Prairie Canada
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.
Diasporic Chineseness after the Rise of China
Communities and Cultural Production
Leading international scholars examine the production of culture during China’s rise to global superpower in the last quarter of a century.
Staging Corruption
Chinese Television and Politics
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.
The Business of Culture
Cultural Entrepreneurs in China and Southeast Asia, 1900-65
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.
Remembering the Samsui Women
Migration and Social Memory in Singapore and China
A study of the Samsui women who migrated from China to Singapore, where they have been commemorated as nation-builders.
The Pragmatic Dragon
China’s Grand Strategy and Boundary Settlements
Presenting a historical survey of China’s boundary disputes and settlements, Hyer demonstrates that its approach to territorial disputes has been pragmatic and strategic.
The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850-1960
A history of the convergence of Western and Chinese medical practices in modern China.
Banished to the Great Northern Wilderness
Political Exile and Re-education in Mao’s China
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.
State of Exchange
Migrant NGOs and the Chinese Government
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.
Empire and Environment in the Making of Manchuria
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.
A Frontier Made Lawless
Violence in Upland Southwest China, 1800-1956
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.
Beyond the Amur
Frontier Encounters between China and Russia, 1850–1930
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.
Yuan Shikai
A Reappraisal
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.
Saving the Nation through Culture
The Folklore Movement in Republican China
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.