The search for modern China
by Jonathan D. Spence · first published 1990
5mentions
4recommended by
5HN commenters
2015–2026first – last mentioned
80% recommend20% neutral
This book is the second edition of the author's history of modern China. The new discussions in this revision include the extension of imperial power into central Asia by the eighteenth century emperors, women's literacy and education in the Qing, the early development of Chinese nationalism, the roots of Chinese communism and alternatives to Mao, the early stages of the Great Leap Forward and of the Cultural Revolution. Also, there is a new chapter at the end of the book on economic, cultural, and political developments since 1989.
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Jonathan Spence's The Search for Modern China is fairly decent, although it is not light-weight. http://www.amazon.com/Search-Modern-China-Jonathan-Spence/dp...
on “China to Lift Ban of 400,000 DWT 'Valemax' Mega-Ships” ↗…that maintained high levels of family and clan based organization which counterbalance the atomization and individuality that you see in modern "Washington Consensus" societies. I highly recommend "The Search for Modern China" if you are truly interested in thinking about these things in context. It's very pleasing and readable. Modern China isn't as straightforwardly authoritarian as you might want to compare against. North…
on “Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness (2013)” ↗On Chinese history: The Search for Modern China by Spence (1990) On China's history told through several biographies: The Search for Modern China by Schell and Delury On modern China and it's ambitions, from Xi himself (these are speeches so there…
on “Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping” ↗…the most popular china's history book for these years. highly recommnded. i read a lot but i doubt many of them has a non-chinese version. the above ones are the ones i can think of now. also <The Search for Modern China> is highly recommmend, but i foget if i have read it or not. oh also another book on how chinese characters are made, 《China: Empire of Living Symbols》。 writen by a Sweden author Cecilia Lindqvist. i…
on “Ask HN: What are you reading?” ↗"The very fact that you can't have any political party of the CCP makes it undemocratic." This claim is not accurate. I'm currently reading The Search for Modern China, and I was surprised to learn that there are, in fact, eight officially recognized political parties in China — all operating under the leadership of the CCP. One of them is even called the 'Taiwan Democratic…
on “We already live in social credit, we just don't call it that” ↗