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The Formation of Modern China
Li Huaiyin
Guangxi Normal University Press, 2022
Where did Today's China come from? How can modern China avoid the fate of the collapse and division of a multi-ethnic empire and build a highly effective and long-term stable state? What is the historical rationality and uniqueness of its territorial composition, ethnic composition, and political form? Can the Chinese state continue to maintain a "big and strong" pattern in the future? This book convincingly answers these extremely challenging questions.
This book is a work of modern and contemporary Chinese history with a grand vision and new insights. The book mainly focuses on the re-understanding of the formation process of modern China and the problems existing in the historical writing of modern Chinese history. From the perspective of global history, the author focuses on the three elements of geopolitics, financial military and political identity, comprehensively discusses the formation process of modern China in the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, and explores the unique path of modern China formation from the perspective of world history. The book is broad-minded, rich in content, and insightful, and is a wonderful book not to be missed for researchers and ordinary readers trying to understand the past and future of modern China.
Mr. Li Huaiyin's "The Formation of Modern China (1600-1949)" is a good book that can not only help readers sublimate historical knowledge into historical understanding, but also inspire thinking. The book is fascinating in two ways:
First, the author has integrated and reorganized many scattered knowledge of modern and modern history that we know a little, and after in-depth thinking and logical analysis, he has explained the history of the formation of modern China from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries from a macroscopic perspective;
Second, there are many refreshing views and expositions, for example: Teacher Li strives to prove that unlike the traditional narrative of the history of humiliation and failure, the modernization of the late Qing Dynasty needs to be re-examined and evaluated in many aspects, such as it avoids the separation of the frontier and the gradual modernization of political power construction.
In addition, it is worth mentioning that the binding design of the book is very compatible with the content of the book. The cover mainly uses two pictures: "Qianlong Southern Tour Map" Suzhou part, reflecting the role of finance and taxation in the southeast to the great unified country; "Qianlong West Expedition Map", reflecting the pacification of the northwest frontier, laid the basic map of China's modern state. At the same time, it is the abundant fiscal and taxation in the southeast that provides indispensable economic support for the use of troops in the northwest.
1. Li Huaiyin, a well-known scholar of modern and contemporary Chinese history, and The "University Question and Practice Social Science Series" No. 005 edited by "Super Professor" Huang Zongzhi;
2. Zhong Weimin, Zhao Shiyu, Chen Feng, Wu Chongqing, Li Lifeng unanimously recommended, "Journal of Asian Studies" "Twentieth Century China" reviewed the introduction;
3. New sights emerge. This book has unique insights into the study of geopolitics, ethnic relations, and traditional governance that have influenced the formation of modern China, the analysis of the traditional order of East Asia and the theory of modern sovereign states, and the reflection on the European-centric theory of revolution and modernization.
4. New research methods. Adopting the research path of "macro history", striving to break away from the hollowing out of the grand historical narrative and the fragmentation of daily historical narrative from a comprehensive perspective, sublimating many micro studies into macro considerations, and establishing a new analytical structure;
5. The field of vision is grand. Starting from the perspective of global history, this book understands and examines the national transformation of china in the near future from the perspective of modern world history, based on a deep understanding of Chinese history, and convincingly explains the uniqueness of the formation of China's modern sovereign state;
6. Long time span. It makes a comprehensive discussion of the formation process of modern China in the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, breaks the phased barrier between ancient and modern, modern and modern, which is accustomed to Chinese historians at home and abroad, and regards the history of China's national transformation that has lasted for several centuries as a complete process with different links and coherence;
7. Strong realistic care. Standing at the height of global geopolitics in the new millennium, we will re-explore challenging issues in understanding the history of today's China, and ponder deep issues such as the development and transformation of contemporary China's country;
8. Rich historical materials. Make full use of the large number of original archives, private memories, and official publications, and the arguments in the book are supported by solid documentary historical materials and data charts.