China's sense of today and its view of tomorrow are both rooted in the past--and we need to understand that connection, says China scholar Charles Horner. In Rising China and Its Postmodern Fate, Horner offers a new interpretation of how China's changed view of its modern historical experience has also changed China's understanding of its long intellectual and cultural tradition. Spirited reevaluations of history, strategy, commerce, and literature are cooperating--and competing--to define the future. The capstone of modern China was the founding of the People's Republic in 1949 and its rejection of Confucianism, capitalism, and modernity. Yet today's rising China retains few vestiges of what Mao wrought. What then, Horner asks, is post-Mao, postmodern China? Where did it come from? How did it get here? Where is it going? Contemporary views of the great periods in Chinese history are having a significant influence on the development of rising China's national strategy, says Horner. He looks at the revival of interest in, and changing interpretations of, three dynasties--the Yuan (1272-1368), the Ming (1368-1644), and the Qing (1644-1912)--that, together with the People's Republic of China, provide examples of great power success. The future of every major country is now connected to China's, and this book explains how China, now seeing itself as the complex and thriving result of the old and the new, is poised to change the world.

In Volume II of his study, Rising China and Its Postmodern Fate, Charles Horner continues his examination of how China’s continuously changing view of its modern historical experience is also changing its understanding of its long intellectual and cultural tradition.

A China Scholar's Long March is a collection of forty-seven pieces written between 1978 and 2015 by Charles Horner, a China Scholar, a former U.S. government official, and the author of the two-volume work Rising China and Its Postmodern Fate. The pieces originally appeared in general interest publications such as The American Interest, The National Interest, and Commentary; in newspapers like the Wall Street Journal; and in some more specialized periodicals such as China Heritage Quarterly and the Naval War College Review. Together, the pieces are an unfolding story. "Americans are not given to introspection, "Horner comments, "but to enthusiasms, including the prospect for permanent harmony between the United States and China." "In the disputes that went on in China--between 'radicals' and 'pragmatists, ' we used to hope for the victory of the moderates, the less ideological, the more practical. We must now begin to think about the consequences of living with what we have wished for." When Horner wrote this, he also noted that American strategic analysis of the highest order was only beginning to sense a coming United States-China contest. Years later, that contest, with all of its dangers and uncertainties, is now upon us. -- Back cover

Combining a study of American Think Tanks and a study of American diplomatic policy on China following the Cold War, this book explores in detail the policy-making process, procedures and mechanisms, as well as the roles of various interest groups in the policy-making process for China-related policies. Further, it dissects the policy-making process with regard to selected sensitive policies, such as the US diplomatic policy on Taiwan, China; US trade policy on China; US human rights policy on China; and US environmental and energy policy on China; and analyzes the function and influence of the American Think Tanks in the policy debates. Characterized by its high theoretical value, wealth of historical materials and painstaking analysis, the book is not only of important academic value but also offers a valuable reference guide to support the practical work of related departments in the Chinese government.

One of the most momentous stories of the last century is China’s rise from a self-satisfied, anti-modern, decaying society into a global power that promises to one day rival the United States. Chiang Kai-shek, an autocratic, larger-than-life figure, dominates this story. A modernist as well as a neo-Confucianist, Chiang was a man of war who led the most ancient and populous country in the world through a quarter century of bloody revolutions, civil conflict, and wars of resistance against Japanese aggression. In 1949, when he was defeated by Mao Zedong—his archrival for leadership of China—he fled to Taiwan, where he ruled for another twenty-five years. Playing a key role in the cold war with China, Chiang suppressed opposition with his “white terror,” controlled inflation and corruption, carried out land reform, and raised personal income, health, and educational levels on the island. Consciously or not, he set the stage for Taiwan’s evolution of a Chinese model of democratic modernization. Drawing heavily on Chinese sources including Chiang’s diaries, The Generalissimo provides the most lively, sweeping, and objective biography yet of a man whose length of uninterrupted, active engagement at the highest levels in the march of history is excelled by few, if any, in modern history. Jay Taylor shows a man who was exceedingly ruthless and temperamental but who was also courageous and conscientious in matters of state. Revealing fascinating aspects of Chiang’s life, Taylor provides penetrating insight into the dynamics of the past that lie behind the struggle for modernity of mainland China and its relationship with Taiwan.