Klaus Muhlhahn - Making China Modern : From the Great Qing to Xi Jinping

Making China Modern

FROM THE GREAT QING TO XI JINPING

Klaus Mhlhahn

The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

LONDON, ENGLAND2019

Copyright 2019 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

All rights reserved

Book design by Dean Bornstein

Jacket artwork by Qiu Zhijie

Jacket design by Jill Breitbarth

978-0-674-73735-8 (alk. paper)

978-0-674-91607-4 (EPUB)

978-0-674-91608-1 (MOBI)

978-0-674-91606-7 (PDF)

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Names: M hlhahn, Klaus, author.

Title: Making China modern : from the Great Qing to Xi Jinping / Klaus M hlhahn.

Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018008769

Subjects: LCSH : ChinaHistoryQing dynasty, 16441912. | ChinaHistoryRepublic, 19121949. | ChinaHistory1949

Classification: LCC DS 754 .M84 2018 | DDC 951dc23

LC record available at https:// lccn .loc .gov /2018008769

For Sophia, Clara, and Julius

Our nation is new, but at the same time very ancient; it is modern and prosperous, but at the same time feudal and autocratic; it is westernized, but also intrinsically Asian. The world is transforming the nation, even as the nation is simultaneously transforming the world, and through this process the nations innovation lies in its use of an unfathomable reality to challenge the limits of human imagination. As a result, the nation has come to acquire a sort of unrealistic reality, a non-existent existence, an impossible possibilityin short, it has come to possess an invisible and intangible set of rules and regulations.

Yan Lianke, The Explosion Chronicles