Broken tools -- The name is changed, but the tale is told of you -- Double exposure -- Looking backward? -- The national classicist -- Becoming Wang Jingxuan -- Conclusion : pure and chaste writing

Channel coding lies at the heart of digital communication and data storage, and this detailed introduction describes the core theory as well as decoding algorithms, implementation details, and performance analyses. In this book, Professors Ryan and Lin provide clear information on modern channel codes, including turbo and low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. They also present detailed coverage of BCH codes, Reed-Solomon codes, convolutional codes, finite geometry codes, and product codes, providing a one-stop resource for both classical and modern coding techniques. Assuming no prior knowledge in the field of channel coding, the opening chapters begin with basic theory to introduce newcomers to the subject. Later chapters then extend to advanced topics such as code ensemble performance analyses and algebraic code design. 250 varied and stimulating end-of-chapter problems are also included to test and enhance learning, making this an essential resource for students and practitioners alike.

This translation of the Introduction to Wang Hui’s Rise of Modern Chinese Thought (2004) makes part of his four-volume masterwork available to English readers for the first time. A leading public intellectual in China, Wang charts the historical currents that have shaped Chinese modernity from the Song Dynasty to the present day, and along the way challenges the West to rethink some of its most basic assumptions about what it means to be modern. China from Empire to Nation-State exposes oversimplifications and distortions implicit in Western critiques of Chinese history, which long held that China was culturally resistant to modernization, only able to join the community of modern nations when the Qing Empire finally collapsed in 1912. Noting that Western ideas have failed to take into account the diversity of Chinese experience, Wang recovers important strains of premodern thought. Chinese thinkers theorized politics in ways that do not line up neatly with political thought in the West—for example, the notion of a “Heavenly Principle” that governed everything from the ordering of the cosmos to the structure of society and rationality itself. Often dismissed as evidence of imperial China’s irredeemably backward culture, many Neo-Confucian concepts reemerged in twentieth-century Chinese political discourse, as thinkers and activists from across the ideological spectrum appealed to ancient precedents and principles in support of their political and cultural agendas. Wang thus enables us to see how many aspects of premodern thought contributed to a distinctly Chinese vision of modernity.

This Pivot reconsiders the controversial literary figure of Lin Shu and the debate surrounding his place in the history of Modern Chinese Literature. Although recent Chinese mainland research has recognized some of the innovations introduced by Lin Shu, he has often been labeled a 'rightist reformer' in contrast to 'leftist reformers' such as Chen Duxiu and the new wave scholars of the May Fourth Movement. This book provides a well-documented account of his place in the different polemics between these two circles ('conservatives' and 'reformers') and provides a more nuanced account of the different literary movements of the time. Notably, it argues that these differences were neither in content nor in politics, but in the methodological approach of both parties. Examining Lin Shu and the 'conservatives' advocated coexistence of both traditional and modern thought, the book provides background to the major changes occurring in the intellectual landscape of Modern China.

An accessible textbook that uses step-by-step explanations, relatively easy mathematics and numerous examples to aid student understanding.

Ge Zhaoguang, an eminent historian of traditional China and a public intellectual, takes on fundamental questions that shape the domestic and international politics of the world’s most populous country and its second largest economy. What Is China? offers an insider’s account that addresses sensitive problems of Chinese identity and shows how modern scholarship about China—whether conducted in China, East Asia, or the West—has attempted to make sense of the country’s shifting territorial boundaries and its diversity of ethnic groups and cultures. Ge considers, for example, the ancient concept of tianxia, or All-Under-Heaven, which assigned supremacy to the imperial court and lesser status to officials, citizens, tributary states, and tribal peoples. Does China’s government still operate with a belief in divine rule of All-Under-Heaven, or has it taken a different view of other actors, inside and outside its current borders? Responding both to Western theories of the nation-state and to Chinese intellectuals eager to promote “national learning,” Ge offers an insightful and erudite account of how China sees its place in the world. As he wrestles with complex historical and cultural forces guiding the inner workings of an often misunderstood nation, Ge also teases out many nuances of China’s encounter with the contemporary world, using China’s past to explain aspects of its present and to provide insight into various paths the nation might follow as the twenty-first century unfolds.

The year 1919 changed Chinese culture radically, but in a way that completely took contemporaries by surprise. At the beginning of the year, even well-informed intellectuals did not anticipate that, for instance, baihua (aprecursor of the modern Chinese language), communism, Hu Shi and Chen Duxiu would become important and famous – all of which was very obvious to them at the end of the year. Elisabeth Forster traces the precise mechanisms behind this transformation on the basis of a rich variety of sources, including newspapers, personal letters, student essays, advertisements, textbooks and diaries. She proposes a new model for cultural change, which puts intellectual marketing at its core. This book retells the story of the New Culture Movement in light of the diversifi ed and decentered picture of Republican China developed in recent scholarship. It is a lively and ironic narrative about cultural change through academic infi ghting, rumors and conspiracy theories, newspaper stories and intellectuals (hell-)bent on selling agendas through powerful buzzwords.