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)

請注意大學有關學術著作誠信的政策和規則，及適用於犯規事例的紀律指引和程序。詳情可瀏覽網址：https://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/。

學生遞交作業時，必須連同已簽署的聲明一併提交，表示他們知道有關政策、規則、指引及程序。

• 如屬小組習作，則所有組員均須簽署聲明；所有組員（不論有否簽署聲明及不論有否直接或間接撰寫有問題的內容）均須負上集體責任及受到懲處。
• 如作業以電腦製作、內容以文字為主，並經由大學「維誠」系統 (VeriGuide) 提交者，學生將作業的電子檔案上載到系統後，便會獲得收據，收據上已列明有關聲明。

未有夾附簽署妥當的聲明的作業，老師將不予批閱。

學生只須提交作業的最終版本。

學生將作業或作業的一部份用於超過一個用途（例如：同時符合兩科的要求）而沒有作出聲明會被視為未有聲明重覆使用作業。學生重覆使用其著作的措辭或某一、二句句子很常見，並可以接受，惟重覆使用全部內容則構成問題。在任何情況下，須先獲得相關老師同意方可提交作業。