What Is China?

Territory, Ethnicity, Culture, and History
Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-0-674-73714-3
Verlag: Harvard University Press

Buch, Englisch, 224 Seiten, Format (B × H): 159 mm x 241 mm, Gewicht: 473 g

Ge Zhaoguang, an eminent historian of traditional China and a public intellectual, takes on fundamental questions that shape the domestic and international politics of the world’s most populous country and its second largest economy. What Is China? offers an insider’s account that addresses sensitive problems of Chinese identity and shows how modern scholarship about China—whether conducted in China, East Asia, or the West—has attempted to make sense of the country’s shifting territorial boundaries and its diversity of ethnic groups and cultures. Ge considers, for example, the ancient concept of tianxia, or All-Under-Heaven, which assigned supremacy to the imperial court and lesser status to officials, citizens, tributary states, and tribal peoples. Does China’s government still operate with a belief in divine rule of All-Under-Heaven, or has it taken a different view of other actors, inside and outside its current borders? Responding both to Western theories of the nation-state and to Chinese intellectuals eager to promote “national learning,” Ge offers an insightful and erudite account of how China sees its place in the world. As he wrestles with complex historical and cultural forces guiding the inner workings of an often misunderstood nation, Ge also teases out many nuances of China’s encounter with the contemporary world, using China’s past to explain aspects of its present and to provide insight into various paths the nation might follow as the twenty-first century unfolds.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ge, Zhaoguang

Weitere Mitwirkende

Hill, Michael Gibbs

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein Historiographie
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Entwicklungsstudien
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Stadt- und Regionalsoziologie
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Internationale Wirtschaft Entwicklungsökonomie & Emerging Markets
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Regionalwissenschaften, Regionalstudien

Über Autor(innen)

Hill, Michael Gibbs
Michael Gibbs Hill is Associate Professor of Chinese Studies at William & Mary and author of <i>Lin Shu, Inc.: Translation and the Making of Modern Chinese Culture</i>.

Ge, Zhaoguang
<p>Ge Zhaoguang is Professor of the National Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies and the
Department of History at Fudan University in Shanghai.</p>