This subject explores major events, themes and issues in the history of China from the turn of the twentieth century to the 1970s. We begin with the failed attempt by the Qing dynasty to reassert its authority after the Boxer Rebellion debacle, and then move on to investigate how the country sought to reinvent itself through reforms and revolutions. We examine how various political figures and organizations experimented with constitutional monarchism, republicanism, revolutionary socialism and state socialism as they searched for an appropriate way of governance, crafting society and engaging the populace. Throughout the semester, we consider the extent to and means by which the citizenry, itself an unstable category, contributed to their society’s transformation under different regimes. We will also consider the meaning of “modernization” and how this concept intersects with other key terms in the study of twentieth-century China.

Lecture 1: Modernization, Modernity and Nation-building

Jonathan D. Spence, “Preface,” The Search for Modern China, 1^st edition (New York: W. W. Norton & Company), xiv–xxi.
Arif Dirlik, “Sisyphus in China,” Transitions, no. 55 (1992), 94–104

Lecture 2: Constitutional Monarchism and the 1911 Revolution

David Strand, “Slapping Song Jiaoren,” An Unfinished Republic: Leading by Word and Deed in Modern China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 13–51.

Lecture 3: A Troubled Republic

Edward A. McCord, “Toward a Social History of Modern Chinese Warlordism,” Journal of Chinese Military History, vol. 11 (2022), 34–55.

Lecture 4: New Culture and the May Fourth Movement

Fabio Lanza, “The Displacement of Learning,” Behind the Gate: Inventing Students in Beijing (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 122–45.

Lecture 5: The Nationalist Revolution

Marie-Claire Bergère, “Sun’s Last Years: National Revolution and Revolutionary Nationalism, 1920–1925,” Sun Yat-sen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 287–419.

Lecture 6: Nanjing Decade

Eugenia Lean, “The Making of a Public: Emotions and Media Sensation in 1930s China,” Twentieth-Century China, vol. 29 (2004), 39–61.

Lecture 7: Urban Life and the New Life Movement

Brian Tsui, “The Masses: A Youth Movement for the Conservative Revolution,” China’s Conservative Revolution : The Quest for a New Order, 1927–1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 68–115.

Lecture 8: War of Resistance

Rana Mitter, “Massacre in Nanjing,” Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937–1945 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013), 68–115.

Lecture 9: Civil War

Odd Arne Westad, “The Chase: Crossing the Yangzi,” Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946–1950 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 215–55.

Lecture 10: The Early People’s Republic – New Democracy

Elizabeth Perry, “Masters of the Country? Shanghai Workers in the Early People’s Republic,” in Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People’s Republic of China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 59-79.

Lecture 11: Between Radicalism and Bureaucratic State-building

Rebecca E. Karl, “Great Leap and Restoration, 1958–1965,” Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010), 99–116.

Lecture 12: The Cultural Revolution

Mobo Gao, “The Cultural Revolution,” Gao Village: Rural Life in Modern China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1999), 142-70.

Lecture 13: China in the Twentieth-Century World – Diplomacy and Internationalism

William C. Kirby, “China’s Internationalization in the Early People’s Republic: Dreams of a Socialist World Economy,” The China Quarterly, no. 188 (2006), 870–90.

[Topics and reading materials will be subject to changes.]

Book chapters will be provided in digital form. Please download journal articles from the library website. Students are expected to have read the assigned materials before coming to lectures and tutorials.

No textbook is assigned for this course. Students may refer to relevant sections of Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China (New York: W. W. Norton, 2013) and Klaus Mühlhahn, Making China Modern: From the Great Qing to Xi Jinping (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019), among others, for solid narratives of the period under study. Those with no background in Chinese history should read chapters 11 and 12 of Patricia Buckley Ebrey, The Cambridge Illustrated History of China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022) for the basics.

As this course is delivered in English, knowledge of Chinese is not assumed. Chinese-speaking students can refer to Chinese versions of reading materials if they wish.

Students will be divided into groups and deliver an oral report (15%) on the assigned primary source. The presentation should introduce the background against which a source was produced, its principal contents, historical significance, and scholarly assessments of it. Presenters should be prepared to respond to questions and comments (5%) from their peers and their tutor.

The other 10% will be rewarded for attendance at the four scheduled tutorials and posing relevant and informed questions to the presenting group. Please read all assigned materials regardless of whether you are presenting.

To facilitate interaction and discussion, students must attend all four tutorials (16:30–18:15). Please provide a reason (sickness, family emergency, representing the University or a region/country in competitions, etc.) and documentation if you need to be absent. Otherwise, 2.5% will be deducted for missing a tutorial.

Tutorial One
Lu Xun, “Kong Yiji” (1919)

Tutorial Two
Emergency Law for the Suppression of Crimes Against the Safety of the Republic (1931)

Tutorial Three
Mao Zedong, “On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship” (1949)

Tutorial Four
Lei Feng’s Diary (1963)

请注意大学有关学术着作诚信的政策和规则，及适用於犯规事例的纪律指引和程序。详情可浏览网址：https://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/。

学生递交作业时，必须连同已签署的声明一併提交，表示他们知道有关政策、规则、指引及程序。

• 如属小组习作，则所有组员均须签署声明；所有组员（不论有否签署声明及不论有否直接或间接撰写有问题的内容）均须负上集体责任及受到惩处。
• 如作业以电脑制作、内容以文字为主，并经由大学「维诚」系统 (VeriGuide) 提交者，学生将作业的电子档案上载到系统後，便会获得收据，收据上已列明有关声明。

未有夹附签署妥当的声明的作业，老师将不予批阅。

学生只须提交作业的最终版本。

学生将作业或作业的一部份用於超过一个用途（例如：同时符合两科的要求）而没有作出声明会被视为未有声明重覆使用作业。学生重覆使用其着作的措辞或某一、二句句子很常见，并可以接受，惟重覆使用全部内容则构成问题。在任何情况下，须先获得相关老师同意方可提交作业。