Ediscovering China

Rediscovering China

This engrossing and evocative account of the profound changes overtaking China explores the major dilemmas it confronts at the turn of the millennium. Shanghai-born and Western-educated, Cheng Li provides the unique dual perspective of a local resident and a political scientist who returned to his homeland to observe from the grassroots China's remarkable social transformations. During his travels, Li interviewed people from all walks of life, including local officials, technocrats, entrepreneurs, intellectuals, and migrant laborers. His first-hand account shows how broad changes in rural industrialization, urban privatization, and internal migration have deeply influenced people's lives and ways of thinking. The magnitude of these transformations is unprecedented in Chinese history. His account brings a sense of immediacy to the crucial issues that have bedeviled the country: official corruption, growing disparities between rich and poor, the halting reform of state-owned enterprises, transportation and infrastructure bottlenecks, and environmental degradation. In rediscovering his native country, full of energy, irony, paradox, and contradiction, Li challenges some mainstream perceptions of China and presents a fresh perspective on U.S.-Sino relations during this period of uncertainty. His clear-eyed and engaging account provides the reader with the sounds and smells, tastes and textures of this rapidly changing country.

Wei Yuan and China's Rediscovery of the Maritime World

Remaking China's Public Philosophy for the Twenty-first Century

In this book, author Jinghao Zhou uses for the first time the prism of public philosophy to examine Chinese society, modernization, globalization, and democratization as a whole. Challenging conventional thinking in China studies, he examines China systematically in seven aspects: history, ideology, economy, politics, religion, education, and China's future, and does so from both Eastern and Western perspectives. The volume asserts that the remaking of China's public philosophy is they key for the nation to achieve both economic and political prosperity, making the bold argument that this remaking can contribute profoundly not only to China's development, but to international peace and development as well. In Remaking China's Public Philosophy for the Twenty-First Century, author Jinghao Zhou uses for the first time the prism of public philosophy to examine Chinese society, modernization, globalization, and democratization as a whole. Challenging conventional thinking in China studies, he examines China systematically in seven aspects: history, ideology, economy, politics, religion, education, and China's future, and does so from both Eastern and Western perspectives. The volume asserts that the remaking of China's public philosophy—the very principles and precepts it now takes for granted—is they key for the nation to achieve both economic and political prosperity. Zhou aims for a peaceful revolution of China's democratization while he explores a new paradigm in China studies, making the bold argument that this remaking can contribute profoundly not only to China's development, but to international peace and development as well.