China: A History

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It’s a quintessentially Chinese work, it’s fundamental to Chinese culture and, yet, it has elements in it that do not fit in at all with the stereotyped vision of China as this place of Confucian hierarchies where familial ties and stability are all that matters. It’s the story of an adventure, a trip on the road by these characters with magical capabilities. The Monkey King, the novel’s provocative and provoking protagonist, likes to turn the world upside down and revels in chaos. In the introduction I wrote to the Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China—which is coming out early in 2022 in an updated edition as the Oxford History of Modern China—I paired it with one of the other novels that’s familiar to so many people of Chinese descent, inside and outside of Asia: Dream of the Red Chamber or The Story of the Stone. In that novel, the action takes place mainly within the extended family compound and has much more of the stereotyped view of a harmony-focused and settled down China. Monkey King is late Ming, so 16th century. The Dream of the Red Chamber is a Qing creation, early 18th century. I think these two novels are both crucially part of what Chinese culture is—and yet, by placing them side by side, they show that you can’t reduce it to a single set of values, any more than you could the West. Some political leaders get chapters: Jiang Zemin, for example, is the representative of the years around 2000. Following the defeat of Japan in 1945, the war between the Nationalist government forces and the CCP resumed, after failed attempts at reconciliation and a negotiated settlement. By 1949, the CCP had established control over most of the country. Odd Arne Westad says the Communists won the Civil War because they made fewer military mistakes than Chiang, and because in his search for a powerful centralized government, Chiang antagonized too many interest groups in China. Furthermore, his party was weakened in the war against the Japanese. Meanwhile, the Communists told different groups, such as peasants, exactly what they wanted to hear, and cloaked themselves in the cover of Chinese Nationalism. [86] During the civil war both the Nationalists and Communists carried out mass atrocities, with millions of non-combatants killed by both sides. [87] These included deaths from forced conscription and massacres. [88] When the Nationalist government forces were defeated by CCP forces in mainland China in 1949, the Nationalist government retreated to Taiwan with its forces, along with Chiang and a large number of their supporters; the Nationalist government had taken effective control of Taiwan at the end of WWII as part of the overall Japanese surrender, when Japanese troops in Taiwan surrendered to the Republic of China troops. [89] It’s a dark story: there’s no way around that. But he is somebody who—to return to the theme—fills his book with real people. He’s sensitive to things like poetry, which is incredibly important as a form of expression among Uyghurs, both within the PRC and now in exile. You’re not simply reading a catalogue of human rights abuses. It’s the story of a slide toward a very dystopian daily life. In the Camps is designed to give a feel for the human experience of having the ground pulled out from under you in every conceivable way. Forms of movement become constrained, everything you’re doing is watched. People are disappearing into camps, but also going silent because of fear of being targeted. It’s an incredibly important story, because of the impact it has on the people involved. Also—and this is something Byler gets at—while it’s a very distinctive and unusual story, it’s not an isolated one. This is an extreme example, with both the assault on the Uyghurs and on Islam as a religion, but the effort to control forms of difference is something that’s happening in other places across China, too.

Deng Xiaoping was the Paramount Leader of China from 1978 to 1992, although he never became the head of the party or state, and his influence within the Party led the country to significant economic reforms. The CCP subsequently loosened governmental control over citizens' personal lives and the communes were disbanded with many peasants receiving multiple land leases, which greatly increased incentives and agricultural production. In addition, there were many free market areas opened. The most successful free market area was Shenzhen. It is located in Guangdong and the property tax free area still exists today. This turn of events marked China's transition from a planned economy to a mixed economy with an increasingly open market environment, a system termed by some [93] as " market socialism", and officially by the CCP as " Socialism with Chinese characteristics". The PRC adopted its current constitution on 4 December 1982.

Go deeper by reading books about China’s history

It’s a good book to give a sense of more individuals than just Mao and Deng Xiaoping and maybe a famous dissident or two—who will be the only people that many readers know about. It’s a nicely varied collection that focuses on life stories, which is a recurring theme in the books that I tend to be drawn to.

China: Free Xinjiang 'Political Education' Detainees". Human Rights Watch. 10 September 2017 . Retrieved 10 September 2017.Zhang Jinfan (張晉藩) (2014). The Tradition and Modern Transition of Chinese Law. Springer Science & Business Media. p.159. ISBN 978-3642232664.

The Tang dynasty was a golden age of Chinese civilization, a prosperous, stable, and creative period with significant developments in culture, art, literature, particularly poetry, and technology. Buddhism became the predominant religion for the common people. Chang'an (modern Xi'an), the national capital, was the largest city in the world during its time. [64] According to the U.S. Department of Defense, as many as 3 million Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minority groups are being held in China's internment camps which are located in the Xinjiang region and which American news reports often label as "concentration camps". [101] The camps were established in late 2010s under Xi Jinping's administration. [102] [103] Human Rights Watch says that they have been used to indoctrinate Uyghurs and other Muslims since 2017 as part of a " people's war on terror", a policy announced in 2014. [104] [105] [102] The camps have been criticized by the governments of many countries and human rights organizations for alleged human rights abuses, including mistreatment, rape, and torture, with some of them alleging genocide. [106] Roberts, John Morris (1997). A Short History of the World. Oxford University Press. p.272. ISBN 0-19-511504-X. Archived from the original on 25 November 2022.Hsu, Cho-yun (1965). Ancient China in Transition: An Analysis of Social Mobility, 722-222 B.C. Stanford Studies in the Civilizations of Eastern Asia. Stanford University Press.

Yes, it’s very timely, with the diplomatic boycott by the United States—and other countries—of the Olympics. This is due to multiple concerns about China, including Peng Shuai. But I think if there was one thing to point to, it’s Xinjiang. It’s become a focus in the way that in 2008, when there was talk about a potential boycott, Tibet was the place that came to mind. That they are connected stories comes out in the book. It’s not an isolated thing: some of the methods now being used in Xinjiang were tried out in Tibet or against Falun Gong members. The Party keeps experimenting with and refining techniques and technologies of control. There are also echoes of Mao-era reeducation camps in this as well. Kate O'Keeffe; Katy Stech Ferek (14 November 2019). "Stop Calling China's Xi Jinping 'President', U.S. Panel Says". The Wall Street Journal. Isorena, Efren B. (2004). "The Visayan Raiders of the China Coast, 1174–1190 Ad". Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society. 32 (2): 73–95. JSTOR 29792550. Chau Ju-Kua, writing in the thirteenth century, probably was the first to mention that certain ferocious raiders of China's Fukien coast probably came by way of the southern portion of the island of Formosa, He referred to them as the Pi-sho-ye. Gaddis, John Lewis (1972). The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947. Columbia University Press. pp. 24–25. ISBN 978-0-231-12239-9. Hoopes, Townsend, and Douglas Brinkley FDR and the Creation of the U.N. (Yale University Press, 1997)In 1556, during the rule of the Jiajing Emperor, the Shaanxi earthquake killed about 830,000 people, the deadliest earthquake of all time.