Highlighting the interwoven relationship between Chinese rural society and larger historical forces, this book charts the evolution of China’s rural society from 1901 to 1949, concentrating on the major changes of this period and the scenarios developed to modernize rural society during the half century leading up to the Revolution. The modern history of rural China is one of sweeping institutional and structural transformation across many dimensions. As the first half of the twentieth century unfolded, against a backdrop of turbulent changes across a country that underwent industrialization, urbanization and modernization, China’s agriculture, rural population and rural communities encountered many crises, but also showed remarkable resilience and capacity for adaptation and reform. In each of the six chapters, the author delves into one aspect or examines one period of this massive transformation, and identifies the social, economic, political and cultural signifi cance of these tumultuous processes at work. The book will appeal to both scholars and general readers interested in modern Chinese history and the transformation of rural China.

Highlighting the interwoven relationship between Chinese rural society and larger historical forces, this book charts the evolution of China's rural society from 1901 to 1949, concentrating on the major changes of this period and the scenarios developed to modernize rural society during the half century leading up to the Revolution. The modern history of rural China is one of sweeping institutional and structural transformation across many dimensions. As the first half of the twentieth century unfolded, against a backdrop of turbulent changes across a country that underwent industrialization, urbanization and modernization, China's agriculture, rural population and rural communities encountered many crises, but also showed remarkable resilience and capacity for adaptation and reform. In each of the six chapters, the author delves into one aspect or examines one period of this massive transformation, and identifies the social, economic, political and cultural signifi cance of these tumultuous processes at work. The book will appeal to both scholars and general readers interested in modern Chinese history and the transformation of rural China.

This comprehensive volume traces the Chinese military and its experiences over the past 2,500 years, describing clashes with other kingdoms and nations as well as internal rebellions and revolutions. As the first book of its kind, China at War: An Encyclopedia expands far beyond the conventional military history book that is focused on describing key wars, battles, military leaders, and influential events. Author Xiaobing Li—an expert writer in the subjects of Asian history and military affairs—provides not only a broad, chronological account of China's long military history, but also addresses Chinese values, concepts, and attitudes regarding war. As a result, readers can better understand the wider sociopolitical history of the most populous and one of the largest countries in the world—and grasp the complex security concerns and strategic calculations often behind China's decision-making process. This encyclopedia contains an introductory essay written to place the reference entries within a larger contextual framework, allowing students to compare Chinese with Western and American views and approaches to war. Topics among the hundreds of entries by experts in the field include Sunzi's classic The Art of War, Mao Zedong's guerrilla warfare in the 20th century, Chinese involvement in the Korean War and Vietnam War, and China's nuclear program in the 21st century.

The rural county of Poyang, lying in northern Jiangxi Province, goes largely unmentioned in the annals of modern Chinese history. Yet records from the Public Security Bureau archive hold a treasure trove of data on the every day interactions between locals and the law. Drawing on these largely overlooked resources, Tiger, Tyrant, Bandit, Businessman follows four criminal cases that together uniquely illuminate the dawning years of the People's Republic. Using a unique casefile approach, Brian DeMare recounts stories of a Confucian scholar who found himself allied with bandits and secret society members; a farmer who murdered a cadre; an evil tyrant who exploited religious traditions to avoid prosecution; and a merchant accused of a crime he did not commit. Each case is a tremendous tale, complete with memorable characters, plot twists, and drama. And while all depict the enemies of New China, each also reveals details of village life during this most pivotal moment of recent Chinese history. Together, the narratives bring rural regime change to life, illustrating how the Chinese Communist Party cemented its authority through mass political campaigns, careful legal investigations, and sheer patience. Balancing storytelling with historical inquiry, this book is at once a grassroots view of rural China's legal system and its application to apparent counterrevolutionaries, and a lesson in archival research itself.

Did the Chinese Communists use money or banking systems during their struggle for national power? In the West, this question was not answered, or even raised, for sixty years after the Communists took over China in 1949. This book examines the Communists’ revenue and supply system during the Japanese occupation in Shandong, a coastal province in northern China. It explores how the Communists manipulated currency exchange rates to turn trade within the occupied zones into their principal source of revenue and transform the Japanese army and navy into their most important customers. Thus enabling them to stockpile the materials needed for the race against the Nationalists into Manchuria, China’s only industrialized area, immediately after Japan’s surrender.

In 1937, the Nationalists under Chiang Kaishek were leading the Chinese war effort against Japan and were lauded in the West for their efforts to transform China into an independent and modern nation; yet this image was quickly tarnished. The Nationalists were soon denounced as militarily incompetent, corrupt, and antidemocratic and Chiang Kaishek, the same. In this book, van de Ven investigates the myths and truths of Nationalist resistance including issues such as: the role of the US in East Asia during the Second World War the achievements of Chiang Kaishek as Nationalist leader the respective contributions of the Nationalists and the Communists to the defeat of Japan the consequences of the Europe First strategy for Asia. War and Nationalism in China offers a major new interpretation of the Chinese Nationalists, placing their war of resistance against Japan in the context of their prolonged efforts to establish control over their own country and providing a critical reassessment of Allied Warfare in the region. This groundbreaking volume will interest students and researchers of Chinese History and Warfare.

Employing the classic Chinese saying “returning home with glory” (man zai rong gui) as the title, Michael Williams highlights the importance of return and home in the history of the connections established and maintained between villagers in the Pearl River Delta and various Pacific ports from the time of the Californian and Australian gold rushes to the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Conventional scholarship on Chinese migration tends to privilege nation-state factors or concepts which are dependent on national boundaries. Such approaches are more concerned with the migrants’ settlement in the destination country, downplaying the awkward fact that the majority of the overseas Chinese (huaqiao) originally intended to (and eventually did) return to their home villages (qiaoxiang). Williams goes back to the basics by considering the strong influence exerted by the family and the home village on those who first set out in order to give a better appreciation of how and why many modest communities in southern China became more modern and affluent. He also gives a voice to those who never left their villages (women in particular). Designed as a single case study, this work presents detailed research based on the more than eighty villages of the Long Du district (near Zhongshan City in Guangdong Province), as well as the three major destinations—Sydney, San Francisco, and Honolulu—of the huaqiaowho came from this region. Out of this analysis of what truly mattered to the villagers, the choices they had and made, and what constituted success and failure in their lives, a sympathetic portrayal of the huaqiao emerges. Returning Home with Glory inaugurates the Hong Kong University Press book series “Crossing Seas”. “From the very local qiaoxiang or home village of migrants to the transnational destinations in America and Australia, this book is a model of how to write ‘diaspora’ into modern Chinese history. The Cantonese Pacific comes alive in this highly readable book that is sure to capture our imagination.” —Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Brown University “A perceptively conceptualized and well-researched case study of an emigrant community in the Pearl River Delta that extended its reach to Sydney, the Hawaiian Islands, and San Francisco. Williams offers a refreshing qiaoxiang perspective through which to understand the experiences of Chinese immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.” —Yong Chen, University of California, Irvine “This welcome study of Chinese mobility among settler societies of the Pacific places the family and the village at its heart, just as its subjects did over the century under review, to 1949. A path-breaking study based on first-hand research.” —John Fitzgerald, Swinburne University of Technology

Since the outbreak of the Pacific War, British India had been taken as the main logistic base for China's war against the Japanese. Chinese soldiers, government officials, professionals, and merchants flocked into India for training, business opportunities, retreat, and rehabilitation. This book is about how the activities of the Chinese sojourners in wartime India caused great concerns to the British colonial regime and the Chinese Nationalist government alike and how these sojourners responded to the surveillance, discipline, and check imposed by the governments. This book provides a subaltern perspective on the history of modern India-China relations that has been dominated by accounts of elite cultural interaction and geopolitical machination.

This book examines socio-economic relationships and cultural changes in contemporary rural China, focusing on the experience of a typical Chinese village the working-age population of which has been hollowed out by outbound labor migration. The volume sheds light on the inherent complexity of peasants’ material, economic, and emotional dependency on the countryside, and how these relationships shape their experience of migration and the personal transformation that comes with it. Simplistic binaries such as “traditional” and “modern” are left to one side in favour of a multifaceted approach to understanding the interactions among people, institutions, and the natural environment. The book will appeal to academics of sociology and anthropology and general readers interested in China’s rural society.