In Search of Modern China (Three Editions Revised by Jonathan Spence, Fourteen Years Later)

The Search for Modern China(Third Edition)

To understand China today, you must understand its past!
From the fall of the late Ming Dynasty to modern China's ambition to dominate the world,
Using politics as the core and economics as the basis, Jonathan Spence has woven a new generation of Chinese history that is both grand and objective!

Let’s step out of the familiar historical perspectives and re-examine with the eyes of others – how China became China!

Following his books Kangxi and Cao Yin, Changing China, Kangxi, and Tiananmen, the leading scholar of Ming and Qing history, Spencer, authored In Search of Modern China to provide Western students with a more systematic understanding of the complexities of modern Chinese history. With its vivid descriptions and elegant prose, the book has not only become a gateway to Chinese history in the West, but has also become a classic for understanding contemporary China in the Chinese community.

The first volume examines the impact of the Ming Dynasty's land tax system on people's livelihoods, from the fall of the dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. The evolution of mainstream doctrines, from Neo-Confucianism and textual criticism to the principle of "Chinese learning as the basis, Western learning for practical application," influenced the court's selection of talent and even the rise and fall of the nation. After experiencing border troubles and civil unrest, the arrival of international powers further complicated the situation. Constant internal and external troubles ultimately led to the collapse of the Qing Empire and the establishment of the Republic. The struggle between personal ambition and national interests, and the balance of power between local and central governments, has plagued China in various forms since the late Ming Dynasty and remains unresolved to this day.

The second volume begins with the decline of the Qing Empire, moving through the turbulent Republic of China and into the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. In Spence's narrative, Chinese intellectuals finally awaken from their Celestial Empire dreams and begin to contemplate how to connect with the West, learning from Western theories and reconstructing their ideal of a unified China. From Yuan Shikai to Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, the shift and struggle of power never ceased; the Kuomintang and the Communist Party struggled between capitalism and socialism; yet international powers watched intently, seeking to manipulate the regime's development for greater gain. At this moment, China resembled a giant, dead beast, its carcass still trembling. The awakening and resistance of the grassroots reflect the economic and class weakness and corruption of the ruling regime. Faced with the country's chronic illnesses, the casualties and chaos of power transitions, and the loss of ideological support, who will mobilize the wrath of the land and its people? Where will China head?

The second volume begins with the 1949 split between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party and the Korean War, concluding with the resurgence of Neo-Confucianism in Chinese politics, charting the evolution of Chinese politics, economy, and diplomacy over the past seventy years. Jonathan Spence begins by stating that from the late Ming Dynasty to the present, China's power structure has been plagued by a persistent lack of peaceful transitions. This occurred with the scholars of the late Ming Dynasty, the late Qing Dynasty's Reform Movement, and the early Republican era, and the cycle continued relentlessly in post-1949 China. As Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Hua Guofeng, Deng Xiaoping, Hu Yaobang, and Zhao Ziyang clashed for power, behind the scenes, generations of intellectuals and common people, trapped in a confined and conservative atmosphere, shed blood and sacrificed their lives in their quest for democracy within the cracks of totalitarianism. Tiananmen Square, standing before the Imperial City, has witnessed the revolutionary spirit of generations, the endless open and covert struggles that have persisted for a century, and the people's desire for national prosperity.

When Jonathan Spence wrote The Search for Modern China at the end of the last century, just before the June 4th Tiananmen Square Incident, he focused on a closed China. At the time, China was no different from the late Ming Dynasty, desperate for internal reform and riven by unrest. Leaders, under the guise of truth, consolidated their power, limiting the people's ambitions in all fields. While economic reforms sparked hopes of enlightenment, each one triggered a cycle of bloody repression aimed at consolidating power, and the cycle continued. For Spence, if China wanted to forge its own path, and if the West wanted to understand China, especially the reasons for the divergence in modernization between East and West after the Great Divergence, they could not avoid the formation of China from the late Ming Dynasty to the modern era. This was the inspiration for the first edition of The Search for Modern China.

The third edition in 2013 not only expanded the chronology to include the "Hu-Wen system" under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, but also significantly increased the amount of money and economic detail based on the economic trends of recent years. Furthermore, the discussion of how various regimes used "liberalism" and "democracy" to consolidate power has never been absent from the third edition. Reflecting on "In Search of Modern China," readers will find that it is not only a classic introduction to modern Chinese history in the West, but also fills the gap in neutrality often found in cross-strait histories, which often suffer from distinct perspectives and information asymmetry.

2019-08-27

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