Paper for "World 2000: A Conference on Teaching World History and World Geography," Austin, Texas, February, 2000 (to be shortened for delivery)

Final draft (1/27/00)

In speaking of a "global perspective" on China, I have in mind two things: (1) an explicitly comparative way of looking at Chinese history and culture; and (2) a view of China that takes into account its role as an active participant in the transnational circulation of ideas, products, practices and people. [1]

Before discussing particulars, I would like to say a few words about pedagogy generally--especially the problem of teaching about the "other." [2] Although I am an historian of China by training, I have gradually moved toward a more anthropological interest in "culture." I am particularly taken by the idea of culture as "classification"--that is, the way groups of people name and arrange things and ideas into coherent systems of meaning. [3] By this I do not mean to imply that such systems are either static or monolithic. Clearly they vary significantly across space and time and according to variables such as class and gender. The meanings produced and promoted by the so-called "dominant" culture in any society are constantly contested by different groups and individuals.

Yet, as Marshall Sahlins points out, "In order for categories to be contested . . . there must be a common system of intelligibility, extending to the grounds, means, modes, and issues of disagreement." It would be difficult, he argues, "to understand how a society could function, let alone how any knowledge of it could be constituted, if there were not some meaningful order in the differences. If in regard to some given event or phenomenon the women of a community say one thing and the men another, is it not because men and women have different positions in, and experience of, the same social universe of discourse?" [4]

What we need to do in our teaching, then, is to help our students to see the intelligibility of other cultural systems, to appreciate other ways of making sense of experience. As Clifford Geertz points out, the greater the reach of our minds--that is, the broader the "range of signs we can manage somehow to interpret" in our effort to understand the cultural ways of "other" people--the more expansive and rich our own "intellectual, emotional and moral space" will become." [5] At the same time, sympathetic engagement with the "other" defamiliarizes what might otherwise appear to be normative.

In short, an honest effort to appreciate the way "alien" cultures see the world provides students with fresh perspectives on their own ways of worldmaking. [6] By encouraging them to think critically and creatively about the "other," we help them, I believe, to achieve a better understanding of themselves--not least, as the "other's" other.

One concrete way to promote a sympathetic understanding of "difference" on the part of our students is to suggest that they imagine themselves at a certain place and time (either "at home" or "abroad"), with a particular outlook informed by a specific philosophical or religious orientation, as well as a certain age, gender, and social status. Then ask each of them to respond "authentically," but naturally in diverse ways, to a given idea, issue, image or artifact. This sort of consciousness-raising exercise--which has the virtue of revealing tensions and divisions within a given culture (based, for example, on gender or class differences)--can also be directed toward a project of deeper cross-cultural understanding.

For instance, instead of accepting "Orientalist" constructions of Asian societies, students can engage in the opposite process: an Asian critique of the non-Asian "other." Thus, after providing them with sufficient background, we can ask for an authentic "Chinese" or "Japanese" evaluation of a "foreign" painting, poem, person, historical event or story--making sure, of course, that their perspective reflects a given place and time, and is informed by a particular social perspective.

Let me turn now to China. My specific focus today is the Qing dynasty (1644-1912), the last imperial regime and a crucial bridge between traditional and modern life in China. The Qing was the largest consolidated empire in Chinese history and by far the most successful dynasty of conquest. On the whole, the Qing period witnessed the fullest development of traditional Chinese political, economic, and social institutions, as well as the greatest degree of regional integration within China proper. No dynasty was more "Confucian" in outlook or more self-consciously antiquarian. Furthermore, thanks largely to the systematic policy of "sinicization" [7] undertaken by China's alien Manchu conquerors, and to the phenomenal peace and prosperity enjoyed by most Chinese during the reigns of the Kangxi (1662-1722), Yongzheng (1723-1735), and Qianlong (1736-1795) emperors, the Qing was a period of enrichment and "leisurely fulfillment" in material culture and the arts. [8] Contrary to stereotype, in many ways the Qing epitomized the best of China's cultural tradition, although ultimately the dynasty and the dynastic system itself fell victim to unprecedented internal pressures and erosion by Western technology and ideas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. [9]

What, in particular, can we learn from the Qing dynasty? For those with explicitly comparative interests, the Qing offers a vast field of fruitful possibilities--many of which expose the limitations of generalizations based solely Western experience. From the standpoint of social and cultural history, for example, students can profitably explore comparative questions of gender, ethnicity and class, using works such as Dorothy Ko's Teachers of the Inner Chambers (1994) or Susan Mann's Precious Records: Women in China's Long Eighteenth Century (1997). Such studies shed light on a wide range of central social issues, from marriage practices, family structures and social relations to labor markets, fashion, sex and aesthetics. Although in some respects the experiences of Chinese women parallel those of women in other cultures--both in premodern times and today--in many respects they do not. Mann points out, for instance, that in Qing China, unlike the West, "No religious institution [like the Church] offered a legitimate place for never-married women with a fine education, and no family allowed a promising young lady to escape marriage." [10]

Reformers and revolutionaries in twentieth century China have relentlessly emphasized that "Chinese women [in late imperial times] were the oppressed subjects of a Confucian patriarchy." Yet the research of Professors Ko, Mann and others shows clearly that "Far from being an era of unremitting female oppression, the Ming and Qing periods were dynamic and diverse centuries of social, political, and economic change," when--at least at certain times and in certain parts of China--elite women had remarkable freedom and enjoyed a high degree of both education and social prestige. [11]

But what about practices such as footbinding--which the early Qing rulers tried vigorously but in vain to suppress. Was not the crushing and crippling of young girl's feet a mark of oppression? Was it not emblematic of male fantasies about eroticism and confinement? No, according to Ko and Mann. Rather, Chinese women of the Qing period viewed footbinding as a mark of "status, purity and good breeding," and they therefore refused to comply with imperial edicts prohibiting it. Far from condemning the practice as a form of patriarchal tyranny, they valorized it in their poetry and prose. [12] Male critics of footbinding could always be found in China, but the practice was not discontinued until the twentieth century.(Students may find it illuminating to compare Chinese attitudes toward footbinding with Western fashions, including corsets, breast implants, liposuction and "tummy-tucks," or afflictions such as anorexia and bulemia, which are obviously related to prevailing standards of female beauty.)

In addition to social issues of this sort, the Qing period presents us with all kinds of comparative possibilities in realms such as politics, economics, language, philosophy, religion, art, literature and social customs. My book, China's Cultural Heritage: The Qing Dynasty, 1644-1912 (1994) is organized along these lines, facilitating comparisons based either on comparable time periods in other societies (e.g. Europe and America during the 250 years from the mid-17th century through the early 20th), or on contemporary life (with which our students can most easily relate). Here are a few examples of questions that they might be asked:

How do the traditional Chinese civil service examinations compare with contemporary testing systems in the United States--say, the SAT or TAAS? What does such a comparison reveal about the values and reward structures in each society?

How do traditional Chinese "myths" compare with traditional American or European "myths?" How do we account for similarities and differences? How do American culture heros (past or present) compare with Chinese culture heros (past or present), and how might we account for similarities and differences?

What are the most powerful and/or enduring visual or literary symbols in Chinese and American (or European, or Japanese) culture? Why? What does a comparison of Chinese and Western art/aesthetics reveal?

Here is a more specific question: The mid-eighteenth century Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou meng; also known as The Story of the Stone) is generally regarded as the greatest literary work in China, past or present. Is there a single comparable work in the Western tradition or in other traditions (say, Japan)? Why or why not? What do such works tell us about standards of cultural value?

How might we compare Chinese and Western (or Middle Eastern or African) religious beliefs, rituals, iconography, music, and institutions, etc.?

What does a comparison of Chinese and Western cartography over time reveal?

And so on.

Let us now turn briefly to the question of Sino-foreign relations. Again, the Qing period is rich in comparative and other possibilities. One important point made by a number of scholars recently is that pre-nineteenth century China was not nearly as isolated as it has often been portrayed, nor were its Manchu rulers particularly xenophobic. Joanna Waley-Cohen, for instance, abundantly documents the concerted efforts on the part of the Qing throne in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to appropriate Western science and technology; and James Hevia makes a compelling case for viewing the encounter between the Qing government and the ill-fated Macartney embassy of 1793 not simply as a clash between modern Western notions of diplomacy and the traditional Chinese "tributary system" but rather as a confrontation between two highly sophisticated and expansionistic imperial regimes. [13] Laura Hostetler, for her part, argues persuasively in a forthcoming book that "in building its empire the Qing state made extensive use of technologies of representation often associated exclusively with the early modern period in Europe," and that "Qing practices of mapping both territory and peoples were in many ways comparable with those used by Western colonial powers." [14]

Other scholars have begun to focus on the complex cultural interaction between Christian missionaries and Chinese intellectuals in the sixteenth, seventeeth and eighteenth centuries--in particular, the "transnational" and "translingual" discourse that emerged out of their sustained and substantial contact. Lionel Jensen goes so far, in fact, as to claim that the Jesuits actually "invented" (i.e. "manufactured") Confucianism in order to emphasize affinities between their own belief system and that of the Chinese. [15] My recent research on Jesuit interpretations of the Yijing (Book of Changes) reveals similar patterns of distortion, designed to show an equivalence between early Chinese religious beliefs and Christian theology. [16]

When we come to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Qing dynasty erupts with significance, illuminating four of the most significant themes in the history of the world: imperialism, nationalism, modernization and revolution. A particularly interesting feature of these four themes in the Chinese context is their cumulative effect. In a nutshell, imperialism generated nationalism, nationalism and imperialism together fed the impulse toward modernization, and all three themes influenced in fundamental ways the Republican Revolution of 1911 (which toppled the Qing dynasty) and later revolutionary movements as well. Japan figures in this story in complex and highly significant ways--not only as an imperialist threat but also as a modernizing model. [17] (An obvious question for comparative discussion might: How might we account for the differing historical experiences of the Chinese and Japanese in the nineteenth century?) [18]

In closing, let me urge you--if you have not already done so--to take a look at Andre Gunder Frank's Reorient: Global Economy in an Asian Age (1998). Although highly polemical and written in a rather turgid prose style, it provides a strong argument against Eurocentric interpretations of the global economy, including those advanced by David Landes in his controversial book The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Are Some So Rich and Others So Poor? (1998). Unlike Landes, who focuses primarily on the unique achievements of the Industrial Revolution and their relationship to European culture, [19] Frank emphasizes the global importance of Asia in the period from 1400-1800, arguing that until 1800, China (and secondarly India), had predominant roles in the world economy. According to Frank, the so-called "Decline of the East and Rise of the West" were mutually related and derived from "the structure and dynamic of the world economy itself, and not from any European miracle or exceptionalism." [20] My colleague at Rice, Gale Stokes, has just written an extremely valuable review article based on the writings of Frank, Landes, and many other scholars. It will appear in a forthcoming issue of the American Historical Review. [21] Don't miss it.

ENDNOTES

1. For some books employing one or both of these perspectives, see the following (listed in alphabetical order): S.A.M. Adshead, China in World History (1988), S.A.M. Adshead, Material Culture in Europe and China, 1400-1800 (1997); Chenyang Li, The Tao Encounters the West: Explorations in Comparative Philosophy (1999); Andre Gunder Frank, Reorient: Global Economy in an Asian Age (1998), Hajime Nakamura, A Comparative History of Ideas (1986); Karl-Heinz Pohl, ed. Chinese Thought in a Global Context (1999); Kenneth Pomeranz, The World That Trade Created: Society, Culture and the World Economy, 1400-Present (1999); Roxanne Prazniak, Dialogues Across Civilizations: Sketches in World History from the Chinese and European Experiences (1996); Charles Ronan and Bonnie Oh, East Meets West: The Jesuits in China, 1582-1773 (1988); Ben-Ami Scharfstein, Philosophy East/Philosophy West (1978); Fuwei Shen, Cultural Flow Between China and [the] Outside World Throughout History (1996); Joanna Waley-Cohen, The Sextants of Beijing: Global Currents in Chinese History (1999); R. Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience (1997); and Longxi Zhang, Mighty Opposites: From Dichotomies to Differences in the Comparative Study of China (1998). The most generally accessible of these works are Joanna Waley-Cohen's The Sextants of Beijing and S.A.M. Adshead's China in World History.

2. See Richard J. Smith, "The Virtues of Simulation: Reflections on Playing the Ch'ing [Qing] Game," for the Wisconsin International Outreach Consortium (WIOC) conference, "A Shifting Target: The Challenge of Teaching about Global Ethnicity in the College Classroom," Madison, Wisconsin, June 4, 1997. (http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~asia/conferencepapers/conference_papers.htm

3. For a discussion of this approach, see ibid. Some specific questions that might be asked of a cultural system are: How is knowledge organized? What are the primary categories of concern? How are things "named" and arranged (or renamed and rearranged)? What realms of knowledge are especially prized? What is the relationship between language and thought? What are the dominant symbolic structures and forms of communication within the culture? How does geography influence culture? How do cultures organize space? How do the people of a given culture view "the other?" How is time conceived and measured? How do people view their own history? What is its purpose? How is is it related to or distinguished from "myth" (or is it)? Who are the historical heros and villains of any given society, and why are they viewed in this way? How is government organized? How is it justified? How is it viewed by society at large? What is the place and purpose of law? How is society organized? What legal, moral and cosmological assumptions inform the social order? What are the dominant moral values of the society? Where do they come from? How are they expressed and/or reinforced? Are they related? Do they ever come into conflict? What are the mechanisms of social control? What are the organizing principles and basic assumptions of religious life? What role(s) does religion play in the society? What are the major categories of art? What sort of a vocabulary exists for talking about aesthetics? What sorts of artworks are especially prized? Why? What are the major categories of literature? Which forms of literature are most prized? Why? What are the most important rituals of the society (both secular and sacred)? How do people enjoy themselves (amusements, games, etc.)? What are the major holidays or festivals? Why are they important?

4. See Marshall Sahlins, "Goodbye to Tristes Tropes: Ethnography in the Context of Modern World History." Journal of Modern History, 65 (March, 1993).

5. Clifford Geertz, "The Uses of Diversity," Michigan Quarterly Review, 25 (1986), p. 113.

6. See, for example, George Marcus and Michael, Fischer, Anthropology As Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).

7. One of the great controversies surrounding the Qing dynasty is the notion of "sinicization"--that is, the historical process by which alien conquerers became culturally "Chinese." Pamela Crossley, in "Thinking about Ethnicity in Early Modern China," Late Imperial China, 1.1 (1990), argues that "sinicization" is "conceptually flawed, intellectually inert and impossible to apply," since Chinese culture has itself changed constantly in response to, among other things, the "challenging and differentiating effects of aboriginal, border and heterodox cultures." As she puts the matter, "historically it is surely true that the geographical and cultural entity of China is a totality of convergently and divergently related localisms." No modern scholar would quarrel with this characterization. Yet simply to speak of aboriginal, border and heterodox cultures is to acknowledge implicitly a hegemonic, "central" and "orthodox" culture in constant tension with them. For an illuminating debate over the issue of :sinicization," see Evelyn Rawski, "Reenvisioning the Qing: The Significance of the Qing Period in Chinese History," Journal of Asian Studies, 55.4 (November, 1996) and P.T. Ho's rather strident "In Defense of Sinicization: A Rebuttal of Evelyn Rawski's 'Reenvisioning the Qing,'" Journal of Asian Studies, 57.1 (February, 1998).

8. Ho, Ping-ti, "The Significance of the Ch'ing Period in Chinese History," Journal of Asian Studies, 26. 2 (February, 1967).

9. See the introduction and conclusion to Richard J. Smith, China's Cultural Heritage: The Qing Dynasty, 1644-1912 (1994)

10. Mann, Precious Records, p. 10. Jack Goldstone, for his part, argues that in contrast to the industrializing West, where women between puberty and marriage were typically wage-earners, young Chinese women worked in the home, so that cheap female and child labor was not as readily available as it was in the West, and domestic production was not so readily replaced by industrial production. See Jack Goldstone, "Gender, Work, and Culture: Why the Industrial Revolution Came Early to England But Late to China," Sociological Perspectives, 39.1 (1996); also, Richard J. Lufrano, Honorable Merchants: Commerce and Self-Cultivation in Late Imperial China (1997) on the absence of women in small Chinese businesses.

11. Ibid., p. 8.

12. For a fascinating on-line article on footbinding, see Dorothy Ko, "The Body as Attire: The Shifting Meanings of Footbinding in Seventeenth Century China," in the Journal of Women's History, 8.4. URL: http://iupjournals.org/jwh/jwh8-4.html

13. See James Hevia, Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793 (1995) and Joanna Waley-Cohen, The Sextants of Beijing: Global Currents in Chinese History (1999). For a somewhat different analysis of Chinese attitudes toward foreigners (based primarily on cartographic evidence), see Richard J. Smith, "Maps, Myths, and Multiple Realities: Chinese Representations of the 'Other' in Late Imperial Times" (http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/east/maps.html). See also Richard J. Smith, Chinese Maps: Images of "All Under Heaven" (1996).

14. See Hostetler, Laura, Mapping Territory, Depicting Peoples: The Qing Colonial Enterprise and the Shaping of Modern China (forthcoming, University of Chicago Press). Cf. Smith, cited in note 13 above.

15. Lionel Jensen, Manufacturing Confucianism: Confucian Traditions and Universal Civilizations (1997). This argument goes a bit too far, however. See the excellent review by Kai-wing Chow in the American Historical Review, 104.5 (December, 1999), pp. 1645-1646.

16. For a brief summary, see Richard J. Smith, "The Place of the Yijing (Classic of Changes) in World Culture: Some Historical and Contemporary Perspectives," Journal of Chinese Philosophy (Winter, 1998).

17. I have discussed this process at some length in my draft chapter "The Past in China's Present" (http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~anth220/thepast.html)

18. For two radically different perspectives on this issue, see E.O. Reischauer, Reischauer, E. O., "Modernization in Nineteenth-Century China and Japan," Japan Quarterly, 10.3 (July-September, 1963), which emphasizes domestic factors, and Frances Moulder, "Comparing Japan and China: Some Theoretical and Methodological Issues," in Alvin Coox and Hilary Conroy, eds., China and Japan: Search for Balance Since World War I (1978), which emphasizes extra-domestic factors. The latter article summarizes the argument of Moulder's controversial book, Japan, China, and the World Economy (1977).

19. According to Landes (in a nutshell), cultural traits such as a powerful work ethic, thrift, honesty, patience, tenacity, curiosity and toleration--together with a policy of loose restraints on commerce--explain the success of the Industrial Revolution.

20. See Frank's long and vigorous critique (and the comments of other scholars) in http://econ161.berkeley.edu/Feedback/Comments_landes.html.

21. The review is titled: "The Fates of Human Societies: A Review of Recent Macrohistories." (Stokes takes his title from Jared Diamond's influential book, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997). See also the review article by David Buck, "Was It Pluck Or Luck That Made the West Grow Rich," Journal of World History, 10.2 (Fall, 1999). Like Stokes, Buck gives attention to Bin Wong's excellent book China Transformed and to Kenneth Pomeranz's equally impressive The World That Trade Created (see note 1 above). Other interesting works in a similar vein include John Lee, "Trade and Economy in Preindustrial East Asia, c. 1500-c.1800: East Asia in the Age of Global Integration," Journal of Asian Studies, 58.1 (February 1999), Craig Clunas, "Modernity Global and Local: Consumption and the Rise of the West," American Historical Review, 104.5 (December, 1999) and S.A.M. Adshead, Material Culture in Europe and China, 1400-1800 (see note 1).

SOME BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SUGGESTIONS

CONTENTS:

I. Preliminary Note
II. Some Valuable Reference Works
III. Some Broad Surveys
IV. Some Excellent Collections of Articles
V. Some Excellent Translations of Documents
VI. Some General Works on the Qing (Ch'ing) Dynasty
VII. Some Specialized Works on Sino-Foreign Interactions in the Qing (Ch'ing) Dynasty
XIII. Some Basic Texts on Modern China
IX. Some China-Related Comparative Studies and Works on "Globalization"
X. Websites

A.Some Wide-ranging China-oriented Websites
B.The URLs of Some Useful Asia-Oriented Outreach Programs
C. Some Electronic Resources at Rice University

I. Preliminary Note: The most complete and up-to-date print bibliography on China is the annotated work by Charles Hayford titled China: World Bibliographical Series, volume 35 (1997). See also Harriet Zurndorfer's valuable China Bibliography (1995). An older, but still very useful bibliographical reference is G. William Skinner's massive three-volume work (separate volumes for Chinese-, Japanese- and Western-language articles and books), titled Modern Chinese Society (1973). ). For other useful references, see the bibliographical sections and notes of recent works such as Endymion Wilkinson, Chinese History: A Manual (1998), John K. Fairbank and Merle Goldman, China: A New History [1998], Hill Gates, China's Motor [1996], John Wills, Mountain of Fame [1994], Richard J. Smith, China's Cultural Heritage [1994], and Jonathan Spence, The Rise of Modern China [1999]).The best on-line bibliography is the Bibliography of Asian Studies, accessible at various major university libraries (http://bas.umdl.umich.edu/b/bas/). JSTOR (also accessible at major university libraries; http://www.jstor.org/) is a vast repository of useful on-line material.

II. Some Valuable Reference Works (see also the bibliographies cited in the "Preliminary Note," above)

Eberhard, Wolfram, A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols (1986).
Hook, Brian, ed., The Cambridge Encyclopedia of China (1991).
Hucker, Charles O., ed., A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China (1985).
Wilkinson, Endymion, Chinese History: A Manual (1998).

III. Some Broad Surveys

Bodde, Derk, Chinese Thought, Society and Science (1991).
Elvin, Mark, The Pattern of the Chinese Past (1973).
Fairbank, John K. and Denis Twitchett, general eds., The Cambridge History of China (1979-present)--multiple volumes covering most major periods.
Fairbank, John K. and Merle Goldman, China: A New History (1998).
Gates, Hill, China's Motor (1996).
Huang, Ray, Broadening the Horizons of Chinese History: Discourses, Syntheses, and Comparisons (1999).
Huang, Ray, China: A Macro-History (revised; 1996).
Jenner, W. J. F., The Tyranny of History (1992).
Smith, Richard J., Chinese Maps: Images of "All under Heaven" (1996).
Wills, John, Mountain of Fame (1994).

IV. Some Excellent Collections of Articles

Dawson, Raymond, ed., The Legacy of China (1964 [1990]).
Hao, Yen-p’ing and Hsiu-mei Wei, eds., Tradition and Metamorphosis in Modern Chinese History, 2 vols. (1998).
Peterson, Willard, et al., eds., The Power of Culture: Studies in Chinese Cultural History (1994).
Ropp, Paul, ed., Heritage of China (1991).
Spence, Jonathan, Chinese Roundabout: Essays in History and Culture (1992).

V. Some Excellent Translations of Documents

Chan, Wing-tsit, ed., A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (1963).
Cheng, Pei-kai and Michael Lestz, eds., The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection (1998).
*de Bary, W.T. and Irene Bloom, eds., Sources of Chinese Tradition, vols. 1 and 2 (second edition, 1999).
Ebrey, Patricia, ed., Chinese Civilization and Society (second edition, 1993).
Teng, S.Y. and John K. Fairbank, eds., China's Response to the West: A Documentary Survey, 1839-1923 (1965).

VI. Some General Works on the Qing (Ch'ing) Dynasty

Eastman, Lloyd, Family, Fields and Ancestors (1988).
Hummel, Arthur, ed., Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period, two vols. (1943-45).
Mann, Susan, Precious Records: Women in China’s Long Eighteenth Century (1997).
Naquin, Susan and Evelyn Rawski, Chinese Society in the Eighteenth Century (1987).
Rawski, Evelyn, The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions (1998).
Smith, Richard J., China's Cultural Heritage (1994).

VII. Some Specialized Works on Sino-Foreign Interactions in the Qing (Ch'ing) Dynasty

Banno, Masataka, China and the West, 1858-1861 (1964).
Chang, Hao, Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis (1987).
Chang, Hsin-pao, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War (1964).
Drake, Fred, China Charts the World (1975).
Fairbank, John K. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast, 1842-1854 (1953).
Hevia, James, Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793 (1995).
Jensen, Lionel, Manufacturing Confucianism: Chinese Traditions and Universal Civilizations (1997).
Laitinen, Kauko, Chinese Nationalism in the Late Qing Dynasty (1990)
Leonard, Jane Kate, Wei Yuan and China's Rediscovery of the Maritime World (1984).
Smith, Richard J., "Mapping China's World: Cultural Cartography in Late Imperial Times," in Yeh Wen-hsin, ed., Landscape, Culture and Power in Chinese Society (1998).
Wills, John Wills, Pepper, Guns and Parleys (1974).
Wills, John, Embassies and Illusions (1984).

VIII. Some Basic Texts on Modern China

Grasso, Judith, et al., eds., Modernization and Revolution in China (revised; 1997).
Immanuel Hsu, The Rise of Modern China (revised; 2000).
Spence, Jonathan, The Search for Modern China (second edition, 1999).
Vohra, Ranbir, China’s Path to Modernization: A Historical Review from 1800 to the Present (2000).

IX. Some China-Related Comparative Studies and Works on "Globalization"

Adshead, S.A.M., China in World History (1988).
Adshead, S.A.M, Material Culture in Europe and China, 1400-1800 (1997).
Bodde, Derk, Chinese Ideas in the West (1948).
Ch'en, Jerome, China and the West: Society and Culture 1815-1937 (1979).
Cohen, Paul, and Merle Goldman, eds., Ideas Across Cultures (1990)
Dawson, Raymond, ed., The Legacy of China (1964 [1990]).
de Bary, W.T. East Asian Civilizations (1987).
Embree, Ainslie T. and Carol Gluck, eds. Asia in Western and World History (1997).
Frank, Andre Gunder, Reorient: Global Economy in an Asian Age (1998).
Gernet, Lloyd, China and the Christian Impact: A Conflict of Cultures (1985).
Henderson, John, Scripture, Canon and Commentary: A Comparison of Confucian and Western Exegesis (1991).
Henderson, John, The Construction of Orthodoxy and Heresy: Neo-Confucian, Islamic, Jewish, and Early Christian Patterns (1998).
Hsu, Francis C.Y., Americans and Chinese (revised edition, 1981).
Huang, Ray, Broadening the Horizons of Chinese History: Discourses, Syntheses, and Comparisons (1999).
Larson, Gerald and Eliot Deutch, eds., Interpreting Across Boundaries (1988).
Lee, John, "Trade and Economy in Preindustrial East Asia, c. 1500-c.1800: East Asia in the Age of Global Integration," Journal of Asian Studies, 58.1 (February 1999).
Nakamura, Hajime, A Comparative History of Ideas (1986).
Nakamura, Hajime, Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples (1971).
Pohl, Karl-Heinz, ed. Chinese Thought in a Global Context (1999).
Pomeranz, Kenneth, The World That Trade Created: Society, Culturte and the World Economy, 1400-Present (1999).
Prazniak, Roxanne, Dialogues Across Civilizations: Sketches in World History from the Chinese and European Experiences (1996).
Ronan, Charles and Bonnie Oh, East Meets West: The Jesuits in China, 1582-1773 (1988).
Scharfstein, Ben-Ami, Philosophy East/Philosophy West (1978).
Shen, Fuwei, Cultural Flow Between China and [the] Outside World Throughout History (1996).
Smith, Richard J. "All Under Heaven: The West and 'the Rest' in Humanistic Education," in Tamar March, ed. Interpreting the Humanities. (1986).
Smith, Richard J. "China and the West: Some Comparative Possibilities," Liberal Education, 73.4 (September/October, 1987).
Waley-Cohen, Joanna, The Sextants of Beijing: Global Currents in Chinese History (1999).
Wong, R. Bin, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience (1997).
Zhang, Longxi. Mighty Opposites: From Dichotomies to Differences in the Comparative Study of China (1998).

X. Websites

A. Some Wide-ranging China-oriented Websites:

*China--A Country Study [Library of Congress; word-search capacity]: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/cntoc.html
China News Digest: http://www.cnd.org/
China WWW Virtual Library: http://sun.sino.uni-heidelberg.de/igcs/
Chinese Studies Virtual Library: http://coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVLAsian/China.html
Complete Reference to China/Chinese-Related Web Sites: http://www.chem.mtu.edu/~hwu/aweto.html
Finding News about China: http://freenet.buffalo.edu/~cb863/china.html
Gate of Heavenly Peace home page: http://www.nmis.org/Gate/
Inside China: http://www.insidechina.com/
*Internet East Asian History [China] Sourcebook [a vast store of materials]: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/eastasia/eastasiasbook.html
Internet Guide for Chinese Studies: http://www.univie.ac.at/Sinologie/netguide.htm
Internet Guide to Chinese Studies Newsletter: http://sun.sino.uni-heidelberg.de/igcs/ignew.htm
Muzi China network: http://www.mzn.com/ and http://china.muzi.net/news/
United States embassy: http://www.redfish.com/usembassy-china/frames.htm

B. The URLs of Some Useful Asia-Oriented Outreach Programs

C. Some Electronic Resources at Rice University