From “the best known and most talented historian of China writing in English today” (Los Angeles Times), an examination of a diverse collection of Western foreigners who attempted “to change China” "To change China" was the goal of foreign missionaries, soldiers, doctors, teachers, engineers, and revolutionaries for more than three hundred years. But the Chinese, while eagerly accepting Western technical advice, clung steadfastly to their own religious and cultural traditions. As a new era of relations between China and the United States begins, the tales in this volume will serve as cautionary histories for businessmen, diplomats, students, or any other foreigners who foolishly believe that they can transform this vast, enigmatic country.

China's Change injects timely, original ideas into the world's most important, if confused, debate over how to manage the twin challenges of anaemic economic growth and accelerating global disruption. Change is the cry from the US to Europe, Asia to Australasia. The snag is the West has no playbook to help. China however, to regain control of its future, has regularly reinvented itself by understanding change's nature through traditional philosophy. This book argues it is time to "Look to China" but stresses China's approach to managing change only supplies the process not individual policies: the how not the what. Policies have to be created locally. In managing change, traditional thought is China's X-Factor, the key to China's record-breaking economic transformation. To grasp this, China's Change provides an understanding of China's past, present and future through its philosophy, history, economics, business, politics, prospects and impact in a way that no other book has done. Two big global questions are answered. Can other countries, firms and individuals find paths out of their dim twilight by adapting China's change process? Can China continue to create one-third of world growth, more than the US, EU and Japan combined, to help cure the last decade's global economic malaise? China's roadmap for change enables anyone to navigate growing global disruption. Ironically China's process is built on such ignored-in-the-West ideas as long-term thinking, clear priorities, gradualism and non-ideological pragmatism that earlier powered two centuries of Western economic dominance. If the West and rest of Asia learn from China to manage change, the next global surprise could be another turning of the tables. There is no end to history, only more turns of the wheel: for now China's Change is again the Greatest Show on Earth. Contents: China and an Increasingly Disrupted World Change, the Chinese Principle and the Greatest Show on Earth History, Philosophy, Strategy and Governance 20 Essential Ideas for Life, Family, Business and Government Pivots of Change Managing Change: China's X-Factor The Overseas Connection Wen's Xun and Wenzhou Theatre Battling within the Party for Change Why Many Misunderstand China Why China's Economy is Misunderstood Economic Change: The Difference is Night and Day Four Strong Overlooked Pillars Ghosts, Nightmares, Middle-Income Trap and Reality Finding the Morning Sun to Avoid a Chaotic Era Readership: General public interested in the social, political, economic and financial development of China as well as world affairs. Keywords: China;China's Change;China's Economics;China's Business;China's Finance;Globalization;Disruption;Culture Wars;Post-BrexitReview: "Through the extraordinary array of people he has known and met over 40-years, Hugh Peyman tells the story of today's China in a way that has never been done before." Tony Hall BBC Director-General "It is rare for a foreigner to understand China from the ground up. Hugh's advantage is that he got to understand China's diaspora before working in China, going through the numbers at the ground level and meeting people engaged in both business and officialdom" Andrew Sheng Former Chief Adviser to the China Banking Regulatory Commission Head of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission and author of From Asian to Global Financial Crisis "Every time you hear the negative alarm about China, reach for China's Change."

This deeply informed and beautifully written book provides a comprehensive and comprehensible history of China from prehistory to the present. Focusing on the interaction of humans and their environment, Robert B. Marks traces changes in the physical and cultural world that is home to a quarter of humankind. Through both word and image, this work illuminates the chaos and paradox inherent in China's environmental narrative, demonstrating how historically sustainable practices can, in fact, be profoundly ecologically unsound. The author also reevaluates China's traditional "he.

Now in a fully updated edition, this accessible text provides a balanced history of modern China in a global context. The authors focus especially on China’s culture, warfare, and immediate neighbors and provide a unique comparative approach to bridge the cultural divide separating Chinese history from Western readers trying to understand it.

This guide to people, places, ideas, and events crucial to an understanding of a rising world power focuses on society and politics and their impact on China and the world. Hutchings provides over 200 short essays, arranged alphabetically, covering figures and events from Sun Yat-sen to Jiang Zemin and the Boxer Rebellion to Tiananmen Square.

This book describes through case studies how various factors, such as the single-party political system, traditional culture, market reform, and industrialization, shape public opinion and mass political behavior in urban China. Case studies focus on the process of conducting public opinion polls in China’s political environment, regime legitimacy and reform support, media control and censorship, interpersonal trust and democratization, mass political participation, labor relations and trade unions, and the role of intellectuals in political change. The book draws most of its empirical evidence from twelve Chinese public opinion surveys conducted between the late 1980s and the late 1990s. The same questions repeated in many of these surveys provide a rare opportunity to examine the changing pattern of the Chinese public mind during this period. The book ends with the provocative conclusion that China’s authoritarian political system proved to be less effective than traditional culture, marketization, and industrialization in shaping public opinion and mass political behavior. Liberal ideas and bottom-up political participation can emerge even in the absence of direct elections.

In this widely acclaimed history of modern China, Jonathan Spence achieves a fine blend of narrative richness and efficiency. The Search for Modern China offers a matchless introduction to China's history.