The Age of Openness: China before Mao by Frank Dikotter

by Frank Dikötter

The era between empire and communism is routinely portrayed as a catastrophic interlude in China's modern history. But in this book, Frank Dikötter shows that the first half of the twentieth century was characterized by unprecedented openness. He argues that from 1900 to 1949, all levels of Chinese society were seeking engagement with the rest of the world and that pursuit of openness was particularly evident in four governance, including advances in liberties and the rule of law; greater freedom of movement within the country and outside it; the spirited exchange of ideas in the humanities and sciences; and thriving and open markets and the resulting sustained growth in the economy.

Hong Kong University Press

Genres: History, China, Nonfiction, Politics, Asia

Paperback

First published July 1, 2008

About the author

Frank Dikötter (Chinese: 馮客; pinyin: Féng Kè) is the Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong and Professor of the Modern History of China on leave from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Born in the Netherlands in 1961, he was educated in Switzerland and graduated from the University of Geneva with a Double Major in History and Russian. After two years in the People's Republic of China, he moved to London where he obtained his PhD in History from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in 1990. He stayed at SOAS as British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow and as Wellcome Research Fellow before being promoted to a personal chair as Professor of the Modern History of China in 2002. His research and writing has been funded by over 1.5 US$ million in grants from various foundations, including, in Britain, the Wellcome Trust, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, The Economic and Social Research Council and, in Hong Kong, the Research Grants Council and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation.

He has published a dozen books that have changed the ways historians view modern China, from the classic The Discourse of Race in Modern China (1992) to China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower (2022). His 2010 book Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe was selected as one of the Books of the Year in 2010 by The Economist, The Independent, The Sunday Times, the London Evening Standard (selected twice), The Telegraph, the New Statesman and the BBC History Magazine, and is on the longlist for the 2011 Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction.

Reviews

[Steve]

With this short work, Professor Dikötter hoped to enhance understanding for China’s republican era, to promote the notion that cosmopolitanism and economic vibrancy are deserving descriptors for that time period. I’m only partly persuaded. Maybe I’m too rooted in Barbara Tuchman’s words, those describing Joseph Stilwell’s experiences in China. And yet, there is an important message, one that transcends China, that large societies cannot be so easily reduced to simple themes, that there are important crosscurrents to be appreciated and understood. In other words, we must always be on guard against ‘black and white’ thought.

[Joe Sampson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about China under the Nationalists. The author shows that it was a fairly open society unlike under the Communists.

[Oliver Shields · Rating 5 out of 5]

The nearly 50 years ongoing republican era of China (1900-1949), as is described in this book, and of which the myths and (communist) propaganda are debunked by Frank Dikötter, is an age of open governance, open borders, cosmopotitanism, open minds and economic openness (open markets). The country, arguebly being at it's most diverse on the eve of WWII.

Loc 1194, Open minds: "(...): republican China, (...), was led by men of double culture, 'and no understanding of China which ignores this fact is possible'."

[Graham · Rating 2 out of 5]

Frank Dikötter's neoliberal turn is on full display here, couched in the language of the era (2008) and describing increasing inequality in early 1930s China as not so bad, as long as the poor were getting a little less poor. This book mostly seems an attempt to characterize the Beiyang government as a contemporary of the Weimar Republic, moving towards greater openness and modernity not so much despite but because of the weakness of any central Chinese government, allowing for individual exploration and expression to thrive. But while it certainly was a time of mutual intellectual exchange and many societies and publications were founded, do these really represent the whole experience of the average Chinese in this period?

The other half of Dikotter's thesis is to rebut any notion of "hurtling towards revolution," to portray the Chinese Civil War as anything but inevitable and in fact an interruption of progressive momentum only in recent years resuming its course. But, as Rebecca Karl's equally slim but more convincing China's Revolutions in the Modern World: A Brief Interpretive History demonstrates, constant revolution and revision is not a one-time aberration but rather a constant in China's history and twentieth-century modernization. Despite Dikotter's attempt to downplay the May 4th movement in terms of the culture, as a political phenomenon it paved the way for the continuous low-level "Competing Revolutions in the Nanjing Decade (1927-1937)" and, in turn, for Mao and the CCP.

All this is to say that nothing Dikotter writes is incorrect, per se. But The Age of Openness only demonstrates the presence of some modern, Westward-looking intellectual currents and elites, rather than a society-wide phenomenon or any sort of national project. In the wake of the Second World War, and without a Mao, would China has resumed a whiggish progression towards liberal democracy? Or would the fundamental conditions responsible for the rise of the CCP have remained in any event? Might China have become the equivalent of the ROK under Syngman Rhee? Or subsumed under the aegis of Soviet protection, like other fledgling democracies in Czechoslovakia and Poland? A case for many possible alternate futures for China can be made, but that fact itself means that Dikotter's rosy vision of progress interrupted is far from a complete picture of China between the wars.

[Georgios · Rating 4 out of 5]

Small in volume, big in essence. Frank Dikotter's first book of his highly acclaimed 20th-century China series (followed by ''Mao's Great Famine'' and ''The Tragedy of Liberation'') sets the record straight on one of the most neglected parts of modern Chinese historiography, namely the Republican period (1911-1949).

Set against the backdrop of growing secondary literature and consensus-breaking attitudes that have been re-evaluating modern Chinese history during the past couple of decades, ''The Age of Openness’’ shares the same intellectual tradition with the pivotal ''Reappraising Republican China’’ (China Quarterly 1997) and provides the most effective and all-encompassing summary of the state of studies on the Republican period, drawing from an interdisciplinary body of knowledge that challenges the conventional wisdom of the warlord-ridden, backward and reactionary nature of Republican China.

Highly recommended for both the amateur and seasoned reader of modern China.

[Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very simple to follow and supports an interesting thesis that sees globalism in the republican era before the rise of communism in China. Nevertheless, the analysis is not extremely in depth. It seems to be so fixated on proving the thesis rather than on providing a nuanced perspective.

[Daniel DeLappe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting read. Very short book that sets up the next three books on China. I could not help but think that America and where it is now headed. Openness is a great theory that should be brought back to the forefront in this country.

[Edward · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[哲伦 周 · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting take.

[R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Torn between a 3 and a 4, but gave it a 4 because I'm a ratings softie.

It's a short book, about a hundred pages without the endnotes. It really isn't enough space to defend a huge thesis that challenges common conceptions about republican China. Granted, he references a few books and journal articles that do this task at greater detail. Perhaps that's why he didn't do this as a proper book instead of a short monograph, or maybe not.

I think he does offer enough evidence though to challenge the simple view of the time as one of lawless warlords and exploitative colonial capitalism. The truth is obviously far fuzzier than that, and so long as that's his constrained goal, it is surpassed.

But truly, there's some meat on these bones. Dikötter could have gotten a stew going instead of making the petite point and peacing out.

[Pres · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is a dry thesis arguing about open, so it is not so appealing for me.