Print Price: $18.95

Format:
Paperback
208 pp.
5.5" x 8.25"

ISBN-13:
9780190659080

Publication date:
March 2018

Imprint: OUP US

China in the 21st Century

What Everyone Needs to Know, Third Edition

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom and Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

Series : What Everyone Needs to Know

In this fully revised and updated third edition of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know®, Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Maura Elizabeth Cunningham provide cogent answers to the most urgent questions regarding the newest superpower, and offer a framework for understanding China's meteoric rise from developing country to superpower. Focusing their answers through the historical legacies - Confucian thought, Western and Japanese imperialism, the Mao era, and the massacre near Tiananmen Square - that largely define China's present-day trajectory, Wasserstrom and Cunningham introduce readers to the Chinese Communist Party, the building boom in Shanghai, and the environmental fall-out of rapid Chinese industrialization. They also explain unique aspects of Chinese culture such as the one-child policy, and provide insight into Chinese-American relations, a subject that has become increasingly fraught during the Trump era. As Wasserstrom and Cunningham draw parallels between China and other industrialized nations during their periods of development, in particular the United States during its rapid industrialization in the 19th century, they also provide guidance on the ways we might expect China to act in the future vis-à-vis the United States, Russia, India, and its East Asian neighbors.

Updated to include perspectives on Hong Kong's shifting political status, as well as expanding on President Xi Jinping's time in office, China in the 21st Century provides a concise and insightful introduction to this significant global power.

Readership : General readers, as well as those studying Chinese history, Asian history, and/or political science.

Reviews

• "Wasserstrom is a sure-footed guide through the thickets of China's history and the turbo-driven landscape of its current affairs. Indispensable reading."
  
  --Andrew Ross, author of Fast Boat to China: Lessons from Shanghai
  
  
• "Readers who know a fair bit about China already will be left better informed, looking at what they already knew in another light. Readers new to the subject couldn't start in a better place."
  
  --Urbanatomy.com
  
  
• "Wasserstrom, a preeminent scholar of Chinese history, here provides a useful resource for those who want a greater understanding of the how and why of China's emergence as a global power."
  
  --Library Journal
  
  
• Praise for the first edition: "Wasserstrom has accomplished a remarkable feat: melding the insights from deep scholarly immersion in history with an up-to-the-minute grasp on contemporary developments in China and beyond. Written in a crisp prose,...questions big and small, alarmingly complex and deceptively simple--from who Confucius was to how the Communists defeated the Nationalists and whether China was bent on world domination--are answered with aplomb and precision.... I for one am grateful to have this little book in hand when I greet the next round of fresh-faced undergraduates coming to my classes wishing to know something about 'China.'"
  
  --Haiyan Lee, Stanford University