Wealth and Power: China's Long March to the Twenty-first

Wealth and Power: China's Long March to the Twenty-first Century

Through a series of lively and absorbing portraits of iconic modern Chinese leaders and thinkers, two of todayâ€™s foremost specialists on China provide a panoramic narrative of this countryâ€™s rise to preeminence that is at once analytical and personal. How did a nation, after a long and painful period of dynastic decline, intellectual upheaval, foreign occupation, civil war,Â andÂ revolution,Â manage to burst forth onto the world stage with such an impressive run of hyperdevelopment and wealth creationâ€”culminating in the extraordinary dynamism of China today?
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Wealth and Power answers this question by examining the lives of eleven influential officials, writers, activists, and leaders whose contributions helped create modern China. This fascinating survey begins in the lead-up to the first Opium War with Wei Yuan, the nineteenth-century scholar and reformer who was one of the first to urge China to borrow ideas from the West. It concludes in our time with human-rights advocate and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, an outspoken opponent of single-party rule. Along the way, we meet such titans of Chinese history as the Empress Dowager Cixi, public intellectuals Feng Guifen, Liang Qichao, and Chen Duxiu, Nationalist stalwarts Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek, and Communist Party leaders Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Zhu Rongji.
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The common goal that unites all of these disparate figures is their determined pursuit of fuqiang,Â â€œwealth and power.â€ This abiding quest for a restoration of national greatness in the face of a â€œcentury of humiliationâ€ at the hands of the Great Powers came to define the modern Chinese character. Itâ€™s what drove both Mao and Deng to embark on root-and-branch transformations of Chinese society, first by means of Marxism-Leninism, then by authoritarian capitalism. And this determined quest remains the key to understanding many of Chinaâ€™s actions today.
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By unwrapping the intellectual antecedents of todayâ€™s resurgent China, Orville Schell and John Delury supply much-needed insight into the countryâ€™s tortured progression from nineteenth-century decline to twenty-first-century boom. By looking backward into the past to understand forces at work for hundreds of years, they help us understand China today and the future that this singular country is helping shape for all of us.
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NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
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â€œSuperb . . . beautifully written and neatly structured.â€â€”Financial Times
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â€œ[An] engaging narrative of the intellectual and cultural origins of Chinaâ€™s modern rise.â€â€”The New York Times Book Review
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â€œInformative and insightful . . . a must-read for anyone with an interest in the worldâ€™s fastest-rising superpower.â€â€”Slate
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â€œIt does a better job than most other books of answering a basic question the rest of the world naturally asks about Chinaâ€™s recent rise: What does China want?â€â€”The Atlantic
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â€œThe portraits are beautifully written and bring to life not only their subjects but also the mood and intellectual debates of the times in which they lived.â€â€”Foreign Affairs
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â€œExcellent and erudite . . . [The authors] combine scholarly learning with a reportorial appreciation of colorful, revealing details.â€â€”The National Interest

From the Hardcover edition.
Country USA
Manufacturer Random House
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2013-07-16
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Random House
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2013-07-16
Format	Kindle eBook

Wealth and Power: China's Long March to the Twenty-first Century

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