GRAY:REBELLIONS & REVOLUTIONS:CHINA FROM 1880S TO 2000 2E SOHMW PAPER: China from the 1800s to 2000

by Jack Gray

This is a study of China from the 1800s to the present day. It focuses on China's problems of development - the decay and collapse of the Chinese Empire, its failure to recover in the first half of the twentieth century, and its rapid emergence in world affairs since the Communist Party Revolution of 1949. This new edition examines economic growth, updates Chinese foreign policy, provides a revised account of the Tiananmen Incident, and brings the chronology completely up to date.

Genres: China, History, Nonfiction

575 pages, Paperback

First published May 15, 2003

Reviews

[Markus Hietanen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Someone on Amazon decried this piece of literature as "dry as the Gobi desert" and that the author was potentially "biased against Chinese society". I certainly don't see what he based the second comment on. I can see how the prose might plausibly be considered dry. However, I myself was enthralled by it because of it richness in detail. Contrary to some historical literature which tell history in a very narrative way so to speak, with this book I never found myself interrupted by a sense that something was missing in terms of explanation of the events and actions that I was reading about. Having read some chinese history already, with Rebellions and Revolutions I probably felt for the first time that I got a really detailed, nuanced, dispassionate and matter-of-fact (perhaps dry, but I don't mind dry - superficial is worse for me) account of the events during the last 200 hundred years of chinese history. I kept feeling like Gray had the approach of an Economic historian, with ample economic data and careful tracing of domestic supply chains (like the explanation why British wool didn't succeed in Chinese markets). Controversial figures like Mao, and controversial events like the Opium Wars are both treated with surprisingly restrained and dispassionate language, giving me instead a much fuller understanding of both. Frankly, reading a history book, I prefer a solid analysis of the course of history and, indeed, dry explanations of causes and motivations, rather than diatribes or lamentations about the evils of Mao and imperialism. And I feel you got the first one with this book. If I was more interested and caught up in the style of writing I might well have found it "dry", but I give this one 5 stars on the merit of giving me a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the course of modern chinese history.

[Alok Ghimire · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a splendid history. The strong points:
1) Sophistication of economic analysis: The account of the Opium Wars, western economic influence from dynastic times to modern times and most importantly the discussions on "collective enterprises" in contradistinction with Stalinist style of planning, Western freestyle capitalism and even incentive capitalism of the South Eastern nations - all of these analyses are very detailed, nuanced and appetizing.
2) A general immersion into the Chinese brand of thought. The author has his personal world set up around intellectual traditions ( mainly within the Confuscian school). He brings this to bear in an ambitious, although not always convincing way to all kinds of analysis on intellectual debates around every period.
A weak point:
The chapters on Warlordism and later on the Cultural Revolution arent amply baked. The author takes it for granted that the reader remembers every clique from every province with all their complex motivations and shifting alliances. Sometimes when a paragraph starts with the name of a warlord and what he is upto, you simply cannot remember what he was upto yesterday and you wonder if the author isnt over familiar with these men. The same kind of irritation is the effect when reading the chapters on Cultural Revolution. The party hierarchy isn't properly established - who controls what and why is Mao not murderously indignant when being sabotaged by party members. Where is the PLA? Which general is loyal to which party member?