This book interprets the typical Chinese concepts of fengjian (feudalism) and jingji (economy) by reviewing the mistranslation and mismatching of concepts from ancient to modern times and from a Western language to Chinese and exploring Chinese and Western acculturation, which is in line with Mr. Chen Yinque’s theory—”To interpret a Chinese character is to write a history of culture”. In the coordinates of time and space for the transformation of Chinese concepts from ancient to modern times and their translation from Western languages, this book explores the generation and evolution of Chinese concepts; using the semantic window of Chinese characters, the book reviews the historical and cultural connotations of the semantic changes and the history of the long-lasting culture of Chinese characters. This volume moves from reviewing the semantic changes of fengjian and jingji to elaborating concepts of thought; it makes the study of the history of terms and concepts the study of the history of culture and thought; it analyzes words as part of cultural history to welcome the era of cultural and historical research with a focus on words. This book is both scholarly and readable, satisfying both the academic needs of specialized researchers and the cultural curiosity of those with secondary education or above.

This book interprets the typical Chinese concepts of fengjian (feudalism) and jingji (economy) by reviewing the mistranslation and mismatching of concepts from ancient to modern times, from a Western language to Chinese, and exploring Chinese and Western acculturation, which is in line with Mr. Chen Yinque's theory-"To interpret a Chinese character is to write a history of culture." In the coordinates of time and space for the transformation of Chinese concepts from ancient to modern times and their translation from Western languages, this book explores the generation and evolution of Chinese concepts; using the semantic window of Chinese characters, the book reviews the historical and cultural connotations of the semantic changes and the history of the long-lasting culture of Chinese characters. This volume moves from reviewing the semantic changes of fengjian and jingji to elaborating concepts of thought; it makes the study of the history of terms and concepts the study of the history of culture and thought; it analyzes words as part of cultural history to welcome the era of cultural and historical research with a focus on words. This book is both scholarly and readable, satisfying both the academic needs of specialized researchers and the cultural curiosity of those with secondary education or above. Feng Tianyu (January 12th, 2023), an expert in Chinese culture and history, senior professor at Wuhan University, who used to be the director of Research Centre of Chinese Traditional Culture at Wuhan University (the Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Sciences of Ministry of Education) and the head of the Innovation Base of Chinese Traditional Culture and Its Modern Transformation. He was the member of the Social Science Committee of the Ministry of Education, vice-president of Association of Chinese Historians, deputy director of Academic Committee at Wuhan University, and deputy chief-editor of local chronicles of Hubei province and Wuhan city. In recent decade, Prof. Feng focused on the study of the modern transformation of Chinese culture under the circumstance of the interaction between Chinese and Western cultures. His works achieved the first prize of China Book Award, the second prize of Outstanding Achievements in Humanities and Social Sciences Research from Ministry of Education and other prizes. Some of his papers have been published abroad in foreign languages, such as in Japanese, English and Spanish.

In The Magic of Concepts Rebecca E. Karl interrogates "the economic" as concept and practice as it was construed historically in China in the 1930s and again in the 1980s and 1990s. Separated by the Chinese Revolution and Mao's socialist experiments, each era witnessed urgent discussions about how to think about economic concepts derived from capitalism in modern China. Both eras were highly cosmopolitan and each faced its own global crisis in economic and historical philosophy: in the 1930s, capitalism's failures suggested that socialism offered a plausible solution, while the abandonment of socialism five decades later provoked a rethinking of the relationship between history and the economic as social practice. Interweaving a critical historiography of modern China with the work of the Marxist-trained economist Wang Yanan, Karl shows how "magical concepts" based on dehistoricized Eurocentric and capitalist conceptions of historical activity that purport to exist outside lived experiences have erased much of the critical import of China's twentieth-century history. In this volume, Karl retrieves the economic to argue for a more nuanced and critical account of twentieth-century Chinese and global historical practice.

New Chinese migration is a recent development that has just entered an initial phase. An overarching theme and conclusion across the sixteen chapters in this volume is that China’s policy towards Chinese migrants has changed from period to period, and it is still too early for us to determine if Beijing will continue to pursue the policy of luoye guigen (return to original roots) or will revert to one of luodi shenggen (sink into local roots). The various chapters also show that the profile, motivations and outlooks of xin yimin (new Chinese migrants) have become more diverse, while local reactions to these new migrants have become less accommodating with increasing nationalism.

Twenty years after a return from fundamentalism to economic reality, China has become the world's tenth largest economy and an increasingly important global power. Despite the rise of fundamentalism and post-modernism, the pursuit of modernity was an ongoing historical movement in late twentieth century China. He Ping focuses on China's quest for and experience of modernity. Implicitly comparative, the author discusses broad aspects of both Chinese and western civilizations, including their scientific traditions and socio-economic structures, with reference to modernization. He seeks to enhance our understanding of the cultural changes behind China's phenomenal rise and provides a fresh case study for the global cultural discourse.

The assumption still made in much social science research that Europe provides a universal model of development is fundamentally mistaken, according to R. Bin Wong. The solution is not, however, simply to reject Eurocentric norms but to build complementary perspectives, such as a Sinocentric one, to evaluate current understandings of European developments. A genuinely comparative perspective, he argues, will free China from wrong expectations and will allow those working on European problems to recognize the distinct character of Western development.

Outcasts and pariahs are known to exist in several Asian countries but have usually not been associated with traditional Chinese society. Chinese Outcasts shows that some Chinese were in fact treated as outcasts or semi-outcasts. They include the boat people of South China and certain less well-known groups in different regions, including the "musicians' households" and the "fallen people". The reasons for their inferior status and perceived impurity is examined, as well as the intent behind a series of imperial emancipation edicts in the 1720s and 30s. The edict provided an escape route from inferior legal status but failed to put a quick end to customary social discrimination.

"This study discusses the role of history and tradition in the legitimization of the state in the People's Republic of China. In Chinese political debate, history has traditionally been the most important source of argumentation. Today, the Party-state is reinventing history and tradition to bolster its legitimacy, but the project has met with opposition. This study introduces and analyzes the related debate, ongoing among various actors in different public fora in China, and engaged in both by those affiliated with the Party-state and those outside the establishment"--Summary.