Wealth and Power: China's Long March to the Twenty-first Century - Softcover

Schell, Orville; Delury, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1408704978 ISBN 13: 9781408704974

Publisher: Little, Brown, 2013

Synopsis

By now everyone knows the basic facts of China's rise to pre-eminence over the past three decades. But how did this erstwhile sleeping giant finally manage to arrive at its current phase of dynamic growth? How, after such a long and painful period of dynastic decline, intellectual upheaval and revolution, foreign occupation and civil war, did a country once derided as the 'sick man of Asia' manage to break out of its old pattern of repeatedly failed reform efforts to burst forth onto the world stage with such an impressive run of hyperdevelopment and wealth creation? How did the century-long succession of failures to change somehow culminate in the extraordinary dynamism of China today?

By examining the lives of eleven influential officials, writers, activists, and leaders whose contributions helped create modern China, Wealth and Power addresses these questions. This fascinating survey begins in the lead-up to the first Opium War with Wei Yuan, the nineteenth-century scholar and reformer who was one of the first to urge China to borrow ideas from the West. It concludes in our time with human-rights advocate and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, an outspoken opponent of single-party rule. Along the way, we meet titans of Chinese history, intellectuals and political figures.

By unwrapping the intellectual antecedents of today's resurgent China, Orville Schell and John Delury supply much-needed insight into the country's tortured progression from nineteenth-century decline to twenty-first-century boom. By looking backward into the past to understand forces at work for hundreds of years, they help us understand China today and the future that this singular country is helping shape for all of us.

About this title

Review:

Wealth and Power offers everything readers might expect from its two eminent authors. It is both sweeping and specific, authoritative and lively, sympathetic and critical, offering the perspective of both the hedgehog and the fox. The hardest challenge in writing about China, or finding things to read about it, is perceiving significant patterns while remaining aware of the chaos and contradictions. Orville Schell and John Delury meet that challenge in exemplary form. I only wish that they'd written the book years ago, so that (along with other readers) I could have been taking advantage of its insights all along (James Fallows, national correspondent, The Atlantic)

A brilliantly original and essential book: the road map to China's quest for national salvation. This is a story of ideas and the vibrant figures who shaped them: rebels, thinkers, and rivals, united by the quest for reinvention. It is required reading for anyone seeking to understand China's motives and the future of global competition, and is, quite simply, a pleasure to read. Vivid, literate, and brimming with insights, Wealth and Power deserves to become a classic (Evan Osnos, staff writer, The New Yorker)

In Wealth and Power, their crisp and comprehensive introduction to the history of modern China, historians Orville Schell and John Delury present us with the historical background we need to understand the driving mechanism that lies at the center of China today. By no longer presenting China's past two centuries as a record of recurrent failures and humiliations, they give us a portrait of a nation in the making, and of leaders with the skills and determination to redirect China's energies on a global scale. The change of perspective is valuable and challenging (Jonathan D. Spence, author of The Search for Modern China)

Book Description:

A series of lively and absorbing portraits of iconic modern Chinese leaders and thinkers, Wealth and Power is a panoramic narrative of the nation's ascent from imperial doormat to global economic powerhouse.

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1408704978
• ISBN 13: 9781408704974
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496