(Part 2) Best chinese history books according to redditors
We found 1,051 Reddit comments discussing the best chinese history books. We ranked the 422 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
China's had a huge rise in car ownership in only a few years, so there's a lot of people driving who had little experience of being driven around or family car ownership. This is creating challenges.
There's an excellent book called Country Driving by Peter Hessler that is partly about this.
Edit: belated link to the book on Amazon. Really recommend it, it's a lot of fun and full of interesting stuff.
He quotes some questions from the written drivers exam, such as:
Q 81: After passing another vehicle you should
a) wait until there is a safe distance between the two vehicles, make a right turn signal, and return to the original lane.
b) cut in front of the other car as quickly as possible.
c) cut in front of the other car and then slow down.
Q 269 When you enter a tunnel you should
a) honk and accelerate.
b) slow down and turn on your lights.
c) honk and maintain speed.
I recommend https://www.amazon.com/Opium-Wars-Addiction-Corruption-Another/dp/1402201494
Wrote a paper about the subject in college, it's beyond deplorable, and absolutely unforgivable, what the British did. But that's pretty much the story of the British Empire!
TL;DR - the British empire pumped drugs into China and essentially forced addiction on their people because IIRC, they wouldn't trade with them
One thing that Westerners need to get through their heads is that China will never be like them. I'm going to quote excerpts from Graham Allison's recent book:
>These philosophical differences between China and the US are reflected in each country’s concept of government. The American idea was summed up in the most widely read pamphlet during the American Revolution, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. In it, Paine explained, “Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.”
>The Chinese conception of government and its role in society could hardly be more different. History has taught the Chinese the primacy of order and the indispensability of government in achieving that order. As Lee Kuan Yew observed, “The country’s history and cultural records show that when there is a strong center (Beijing or Nanjing), the country is peaceful and prosperous. When the center is weak, then the provinces and their counties are run by little warlords.”
Going on:
>Americans urge other powers to accept a “rule-based international order.” But through Chinese eyes, this appears to be an order in which Americans make the rules, and others obey the orders. A former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, became familiar with the predictable resentment this elicited from China. “One of the things that fascinated me about the Chinese is whenever I would have a conversation with them about international standards or international rules of behavior, they would inevitably point out that those rules were made when they were absent from the world stage,” Dempsey remarked. “They are no longer absent from the world stage, and so those rules need to be renegotiated with them.”
This attitude comes from the "Century of humiliation" rhetoric that you highlighted.
Moreover:
>In Kissinger’s apt summary, “The conviction that American principles are universal has introduced a challenging element into the international system because it implies that governments not practicing them are less than fully legitimate." He goes on to explain how this tenet, which we take for granted, predictably breeds resentment among nations who are made to feel they live in a benighted political system awaiting redemption by American values. Needless to say, this type of righteousness does not go over well in China.
All emphasis added. The current Chinese government derives its mandate from performance not democratic consent.
>China scholar Mark Elliott has highlighted “a bright line drawn directly from empire to republic. The People’s Republic has become the successor state of the Qing . . . and increasingly has come to rely upon this equation for its legitimacy...”
>As Geoff Dyer has explained, “The Communist Party has faced a slow-burning threat to its legitimacy ever since it dumped Marx for the market.” Thus the Party has evoked past humiliations at the hands of Japan and the West “to create a sense of unity that had been fracturing, and to define a Chinese identity...
> As Lee Kuan-Yew put it pointedly, “If you believe that there is going to be a revolution of some sort in China for democracy, you are wrong. Where are the students of Tiananmen now?” he asked provocatively. And he answered bluntly: “They are irrelevant. The Chinese people want a revived China.”So long as Xi can deliver on his promise to restore China’s past greatness, the Party’s future (and his own) would seem secure.
If the West's position is that the CCP is somehow illegitimate, tensions will prevail. Always. I'm a pretty harsh critic of the CCP, however, I have to come down equally as hard on Western sanctimony. While I acknowledge the CCP's abuses, and they are many, I also recognise that they have managed to do something unprecedented in human history: lifted roughly 600 million people out of poverty.
I speak as someone who has traveled to and across China extensively over the past 20 years.
Joseon era:
I prefer the 'Review' more, but it might come across as a little dry. I feel that it does a fair job of discussing a number of topics related to the creation and running of the Joseon Dynasty, breaking the dynasty up into smaller components and then focusing on some areas (arts, military, cultural practices) within those smaller time frames. 'Sources' for me came across as more academic than 'Review' but you might enjoy it more. 'Sources' includes translations of primary sources, which is helpful, while 'Review' includes images such as paintings and maps.
General:
A comic book that goes into the 'making' of Korea and Korean culture. I have some reservations about this one but if you don't take it too seriously it can be a fun and easy way to get introduced to a number of topics related to Korea.
'Modern' Korea:
Lankov's book is a collection of newspaper articles he wrote entertaining subjects like the story of Korea's first automobiles, the introduction of the first telephones, etc. Easy to digest and they offer a glimpse of what society was like at each point in time; not a 'serious' book on Korean history, though. Neff's book was a chore to get through and it felt like no editing had gone into the book before publishing. If I'm not mistaken this also started out as a series of articles for one of the local newspapers; the transition from article to book did not go quite as well.
It's probably been 10 years since I read the books from Breen, Oberdorfer and Cummings, which makes it a little difficult to write a lot about them. Cummings I know gets criticized for being pro-North Korea in his writing, so that's something to keep in mind, while Oberdorfer I think was a correspondent living in Korea so may have a more 'eyewitness' approach to some of the events. Bird's book is a description of her travels in Korea during the Joseon period and I remember it being an interesting read. Not a balanced historical account by any means - and it obviously suffers from being written from an outside perspective at a time when ethnocentrism was more prevalent - but it may be an alternative to consider. You should be able to find a .pdf copy of that one online.
Haven't read this one, but I've seen others mention it in the past. It's another first-person account from Korea at the cusp of the 20th century, this time from the perspective of a medical missionary. Again, not an objective history book, but if you prefer first-person narratives it may at least be worth a look. A .pdf copy has been published online, this one by the University of Oregon.
Edit: One I forgot to mention, but which I've also heard is used in some English-language classes on Korean history/studies:
I haven't gotten around to reading it yet, but I've heard good things about Graham Allison's book on the Thucydides Trap. It gives numerous examples of hegemonic rise and fall throughout history, and draws parallels to today's America against a rising China.
> "spot the spy"
None of this is new.
>How many ‘bandits’ and ‘secret agents’ were still threatening to overthrow the communist regime in October 1950? Quite a few according to the propaganda machine, relentlessly pumping out dark warnings of sabotage and subversion by hidden spies and fifth columnists. Paranoia was intrinsic to the regime, which lived in fear of its own shadow. The party had long developed a habit of blaming every setback on real or imagined enemies. Behind every poisoned well or granarythat went up in flames lurked a spy or landlord. Every act of resistance by ordinary farmers – and there were many – was seen as proof of counter-revolution. Tension was also deliberately cultivated to keep people on edge and justify ever more intrusive forms of policing.
>seriously, buy this fucking book already
>It's, like, 10 bucks
>here, i'll make it easy
>https://www.amazon.com/Tragedy-Liberation-History-Revolution-1945-1957-ebook/dp/B00CIR97UC/ref=sr_1_1
>--The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Communist Revolution 1945–1957
Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook by Patricia Buckley Ebrey
A very easy read with ancient texts from different periods of Chinese history
> Anyone recommend some useful books that can help me
http://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Neoliberalism-David-Harvey/dp/0199283273
http://www.amazon.com/Dealing-China-Insider-Economic-Superpower/dp/1455504211/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1452819640&sr=8-4&keywords=China+economy
http://www.amazon.com/Age-Ambition-Chasing-Fortune-Truth/dp/0374535272/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452819640&sr=8-1&keywords=China+economy
http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-China-Economy-History-Political/dp/0809016516/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1452819640&sr=8-2&keywords=China+economy
As a big history book buff, I've read a pretty good one on this topic.
https://www.amazon.com/Opium-Wars-Addiction-Corruption-Another/dp/1402201494
If anyone else wants to check it out. It's a very illuminating read.
At its heart it was an economic power play. Opium was already introduced to China and was having devastating effects. So government officials worked at trying to ban it. But Opium at this point had become a huge part of the British tea trade with China. It was the most desired good that the British could trade for tea and the Chinese were uninterested in most other British export trade goods. So without opium the British all of a sudden don't have anything to trade for tea on favorable terms. So the British go to war to keep ports open to the opium trade after the Chinese try to outlaw it.
Agree. I'm just not sure the way we're headed it won't happen. But the Thucydides's Trap is real and historically proven. If you haven't read the book by same name by Graham Allison, you should. Harvard Prof level book.
Insatiable thirst for hunny..
If you're genuinely interested, though I think this would be a good place to start. Or maybe jump straight into Dikotter's book on the Cultural Revolution. China seems to be regressing, for sure--Xi's cultivated a cult of personality around himself unmatched by any leader since Mao.
I believe the only substantial course out there written for English speakers learning Tibetan is Manual Of Standard Tibetan: Language And Civilization.
One of the hottest books of 2017 pop poli-sci was Graham Allison's The Thucydides Trap, the Harvard scholar and administrator's historical-parallel-illustrated discussion of whether or not China and the US can avoid a coming war, thus breaking the pattern of erupting military conflicts whenever "a rising power rivals a ruling power—as Athens challenged Sparta in ancient Greece, or as Germany did Britain a century ago." His linked 2015 Atlantic piece addresses the speculation about trade wars that you mentioned.
While flat-out military wars seem like impractical methods of resolving economic conflicts of interest with geopolitical rivals, I worry about some of the commentary re: North Korea (China's role, etc.) that I find extremely incendiary and almost demonizing in that sort of priming-domestic-citizens-for-a-war tone. I think a neutral "trade war"alone is a messy setup, but the Thucydides Trap book raises the additionally war-incentivizing problem of a shift in global economic power balance.
I link to wikipedia because it's on the web and thus easily available. There are hundreds of books documenting the atrocities committed by communists. I would suggest you read some of them, as I have.
IDK the time span for the numbers claimed, but I will assume that the majority of the claims come from this book as it is asserting "Current estimates now put that number at 200 million missing women and girls globally." due to gender selective abortions; no I don't own it, and I am not going to buy it I just chased a claim to it.
RE: Population of China during those times
> "When the Manchus came into China, the population was about 100 million. By the 19th Century, after 200 years of economic growth, the population increased to something around 400 million. But arable land, that figure was only about 30% growth. So that added all the social stress."
RE: Death toll
> The most widely accepted estimates put the death toll of China's nineteenth-century civil war at somewhere between 20 million and 30 million people. The figure is necessarily impressionistic, for there are no reliable censuses to compare from the time, so it is typically based on demographic projections of what the Chinese population should have been in later generations.
> According to one American study published in 1969, by as late as 1913, nearly 50 years after the fall of Nanjing, China's population had yet to recover to its pre-1850 level.
> A more recent study by a team of scholars in China, published in 1999, estimated that the five hardest-hit provinces - Jiangxi, Hubei, Anhui, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu - together suffered a population loss of some 87 million people between 1851 and 1864: 57 million of of them dead from the war, and the rest never born due to depressed birth-rates. Their projection for the full scale of the war in all provinces was 70 million dead, with a total population loss of more than 100 million.
> Those higher numbers have recently gained wider circulation, but they are controversial; critics argue that there is no way to know how many of the vanished people died - from the war, from disease, from starvation - and how many took up lives elsewhere.
> Nevertheless, even the most subjective anecdotal reports from travelers on the lower Yangtze testfied to the deep scars on China's cities and countryside, which were still far from being healed even decades after the Taiping war, and those figures begin to give a sense of unprecedented scale of destruction and social dislocation that consumed China in what is believed to be the deadliest civil war in all of human history.
Pages 358-359, Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom (Stephen R. Platt)
The death toll may not have been 70 million, or even half that, but the population during those times could and certainly did withstand it. There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your "common sense".
The New Yorker wrote about this in 2011:
> We settled into coach on an Air China non-stop flight to Frankfurt, and I opened a Chinese packet of “Outbound Group Advice,” which we’d been urged to read carefully. The specificity of the instructions suggested a history of unpleasant surprises: “Don’t travel with knockoffs of European goods, because customs inspectors will seize them and penalize you.”
The same guy who wrote that piece published a book last year on his experiences in modern China:
Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China.
If you're a US English speaker, the THDL simple phonetic Tibetan transcription is decent as a rough guide.
Nicolas Tournadre's book (he's one of the co-designers of this phonetic system) is probably the best Modern Standard Tibetan primer out there as well.
Link still studies China and is involved in human rights -- his newest book is about the history of the Charter 08 movement (which Link joined as a translator and writer), Liu Xiaobo's imprisonment, and the Nobel Prize. Link also translated the stolen CCP records of the Tiananmen Square Massacres, which is more or less China's equivalent of the Pentagon papers.
The Taiping Civil War (awesome book). Incredibly bloody (tens of millions dead) 19th century Chinese civil war. Lots of interesting stuff going on there - the leader of the Heavenly Kingdom side promoted the religious doctrine that he was the little brother of Jesus and wanted to create a modern industrial state, there was a lot of duplicity and inconsistency on the part of Western onlookers/players, etc. Very fascinating period, to my mind.
I remember reading The Opium Wars in college.
British atrocities made me think of it, but ultimately, I just want to plug the book because I actually enjoyed reading it for my History class.
Sam Howley's The Imjin War is a great look at the invasion of 1592 and Yi Sun-shin. Very well written. (And recently made available as an e-book).
For something more specific but still fascinating, I really like Don Kirk's Korean Dynasty: Hyundai and Chung Ju Yung. It's a real warts-and-all look at one of Korea's biggest conglomerates. Hyundai hated it so much they commissioned someone to write a "friendlier" history of the company as a response.
You should read The Party
It is very clear from this and other sources that the CCP does in fact exist to benefit itself and its members. John Garnaut will provide other interesting sources from his articles and his most recent book.
It is. Also worth noting is the stone-faced figure to Zhao's immediate left in [this famous photo] (http://www.wantchinatimes.com/newsphoto/2012-03-29/450/2012032117010288-103345_copy1.jpg) of the speech — it's Wen Jiabao, the former Premier who was serving as Chief of the Party General Office at the time.
EDIT: Whoops, didn't see the comment directly below mine that said the same thing. To add to that, though, the umbrella photo can be viewed in Perry Link and Andrew Nathan's [The Tiananmen Papers] (http://www.amazon.com/dp/1586481223).
We'll go far :)
I'd recommend these two books that I'm reading:
On China - by Henry Kissinger
Etiquette Guide to China: Know the Rules that Make the Difference!
I learned a ton and the etiquette book had a bunch of useful phrases in the back
An increase in sex-trafficking and bride buying from other Asian countries, and that will only last until they start running out of women as well.
Unnatural Selection is a great book about this.
If you read Mara Hvistendahl's new book, you'll find that wealthier families are more, not less, likely to selectively abort.
The Imjin War: Japan's Sixteenth-Century Invasion of Korea and Attempt to Conquer China https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NB0HG7G/
We shall see, but I get what you’re saying. If you haven’t read it “Age of Ambition” is a really great book on life inside modern China. I highly recommend it. It’s also quite entertaining.
https://www.amazon.com/Age-Ambition-Chasing-Fortune-Truth/dp/0374535272
Read more.
I don't categorize 'em like that as I read 'em, but Dataclysm, Rationality; from AI to Zombies, Everything Bad is Good For You, Country Driving, Freakonomics, and The Mathematics of Love are all 'thinky' nonfiction books I've recommended recently because I've retained new ideas and methods from them. In addition, nearly every essay written by DFW is successfully grist for my mill (even the ones about tennis, a subject I would have to work at caring less about.)
I stuck with nonfiction because even that feels a bit overwhelming. Fiction is too much for me right now; I really enjoyed and recently quoted from The Bell Jar, for instance, but what I got from the book was life-affirming and sensual and I have friends who got vastly divergent or even contrary methods (and I also got some solid advice that I'll take to heart if I ever decide to commit suicide.)
Edit: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest makes me want to watch the movie too, now. The book was not what I expected and was more engaging for all that, but also depressing. Set in an asylum. Read it because of a reference in a recent Neal Stevenson book, and because I'd been meaning to for some time.
For sure! China: A History is a great place to start, and for more recent history (though largely a portrait of the most influential leader China has had in a few centuries), Mao: The Unknown Story is one of the most fascinating history books I've read.
Also relevant I believe, Naval technology reigned supreme and the British, as we all know, held the world's most powerful Navy. Any fortified or held position along any coastline or larger river would be devastated by cannonade providing the pre-siege and subsequent assault by the attacking force. Resulting in massive casualties taken by a standing archer corps which would lead to grave demoralization or even abandonment. Even if you held a corps of archers on the front inland, ranges of the musket and cannons/mortars would easily outweigh the battle potential of archers. Commanders and their men fared much better by embracing the changing tactics in my own opinion.
I believe this is supported by the evidence provided by the British in their endeavors in China during the Opium Wars naught sixty years later. Antiquated Chinese forces, tenacious as they may have been, were crushed by the overwhelming technological superiority and tactics demonstrated by the British themselves. (The Chinese implemented many archers, outdated muskets and fixed cannons for the time in their albeit great coastal defenses.) Casualty ratios would be hundreds, perhaps more, to one in favor of the British.
Sorry if this may be derailing for some. Just thought some extra context would help paint the picture. Source I am currently reading
The Opium WarsEdit: bad original link, sorry. The Opium Wars. Great book if anyone is interested.
Did you read the article? They have four citations.
one
two
three
four
Maybe you can provide an explanation of why these numbers are wrong and tell us where we will find more accurate figures.
Country Driving is pretty good.
America have 9 cities with population of over a million. China on the other hand have over 50 cities with population of over a million. Which means there are a lot of cities. The cities are growing larger too, incorporating the surrounding areas.
Rural areas are more communist than urban areas. People are organized into villages, and the village owns all the land and housing. This means individuals can't just decide to sell their plot of land and move away. People own shares in the village. If the village as a whole makes money (by leasing land to a factory or garbage dump), it distributes the money to everyone in the village. This also means even though young people tend to move away for work, they can always come back to the village and farm as a backup if economy is bad. In a lot of villages, most of the people are over 50 and under 16, because young people want to earn money in the cities.
No, it's completely true and was one of / if not the primary cause of mass starvation. FourNominalCents should not be downvoted. Mao's government gave unachievable production quotas. Officials who didn't hit them were executed. So everyone 'hit' the quotas. Millions starved with stockpiles of food kept by the government. People asking for food were refused, as production data showed they had plenty. The claim the government didn't know is absurd though. This book, Tombstone is probably considered the most thoroughly primary-sourced account of what happened and why. It's extremely long but even the Amazon summary should give you a source.
His book is a [good read] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Party-Secret-Chinas-Communist/dp/0061708763/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407789694&sr=8-1&keywords=party+mcgregor)
There is another book making rounds about similar issue.
Though haven't read it sounds much more scary - "Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?" by Graham Allison
https://www.amazon.com/Destined-War-America-Escape-Thucydidess/dp/0544935276
no fucking nation is benevolent, what you dont understand is that chinese people and our whole history is built upon being conquered internally over and over and over again and still surviving miraculously, and now you admit you have no direct experiences in china, im trying to explain to your own western ignorance of how chinese people think as a group, have you done business internationally? do you know how different it is to approach different subjects and ideas from cultural perspectives? no if you grow up asian youd fucking know exactly why and how authority strictly controls information, im not trying to explicitly tell you youre wrong, im trying to explain that theres a level of blindness that comes from being from only 1 culture, you're own perspective is built on one system and its up to you to discover and make judgments on your own experiences, but coming from someone raised on US history/patriotism/individualism AND chinese culture/values/history, you see disparaging differences in one is to approach basic universal truths, why is one culture superior to the other, no such thing
read this, this is the most comprehensible book by a westerner on china ive ever read
http://www.amazon.com/China-Henry-Kissinger/dp/1594202710
I think the work of Patricia Ebrey is perfect for what you are after. Try these books:
China: A Cultural, Social, and Political History
and
Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook
She has also set up some nice stuff on their website at UW:
http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/
> China, despite existing as a unified country 4,000 years longer than the US, conspicuously does not have such a history of invading and subjugating the inhabitants of far-flung lands.
This is false. The country we now know as China is the product of millennia of aggressive war, sometimes among several mutually hostile Sinic states, sometimes between a dominant Sinic state and an outside, "barbarian" group.
Whether it's the early days of the Shang dynasty, when the territory of modern China was carved up among a large number of cultures whose remains are meaningful only to archaeologists; or the final dynasty, which expanded China's territory to boundaries never reached before or since; China has historically been an imperialist power.
I'm getting my information from:
China: A History: From Neolithic Cultures through the Great Qing Empire (10,000 BCE - 1799 CE) (Harold M. Tanner)
Amazon
books.google
China: Its History and Culture (W. Scott Morton)
Amazon
books.google
Of course, Wikipedia is helpful too. Maps tell a great deal.
Wow you really are full of yourself. Honestly, you're not coming off as very knowledgeable of anything, quite frankly.
Read:
https://www.amazon.com/Destined-War-America-Escape-Thucydidess/dp/0544935276
https://www.amazon.com/Can-Asians-Think-Kishore-Mahbubani/dp/9814276014
https://www.amazon.com/When-China-Rules-World-Western/dp/0143118005
https://www.amazon.com/World-Disarray-American-Foreign-Policy/dp/0399562362
https://www.amazon.com/Lee-Kuan-Yew-Insights-International/dp/0262019124
Have you read this? https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tiananmen-Papers-Liang-Zhang/dp/1586481223/ref=pd_aw_sbs_14_1/259-3107989-5556953?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1586481223&pd_rd_r=2857afd6-6f8b-4049-b2ef-fcdcdba9142f&pd_rd_w=96GOA&pd_rd_wg=Fl4qw&pf_rd_p=5818759f-d536-4eca-aa1c-635efdddd146&pf_rd_r=MZHAJENZG36AD4BR9DZS&psc=1&refRID=MZHAJENZG36AD4BR9DZS
Hitler was economically bound to lose eventually.
Modern doesn't mean good. Go read "Tombstone" and come back to me.
http://www.amazon.com/Tombstone-Great-Chinese-Famine-1958-1962/dp/0374277931
The best textbook for Tibetan language is the Manual of Standard Tibetan by Tournadre. As someone who has spent a lot of time studying Tibetan, I have to say that it is a very difficult language to learn. The sounds, accent, and language use are tough.
The best way to learn is immersion of some sort, either a summer language institute at the University of Virginia or University of Wisconsin, or classes in Dharamsala, India.
There are other textbooks, but the Manual of Standard Tibetan is really the best. It has a cd with audio tracks, too.
Check out /r/Tibet. It's mostly politics, news, and culture, but there are a few of us with Tibetan abilities.
Good luck!
The Imjin War - Sam Howley
LOL
ROFL
ROFLMAO
If you're interested, I'd recommend this book. It is heavy in statistics.
http://www.amazon.com/Tombstone-Great-Chinese-Famine-1958-1962-ebook/dp/B008MWNEXI
So here's some of the textbooks I read (and still own) from my Asian History courses at college. All are worth reading over, but you'll also want teachers to help you, to talk with historians from China, and eventually just to go to China and see a lot of stuff for yourself.
The Cambridge Illustrated History of China, by Patricia Ebrey.
Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook, edited by Patricia Ebrey.
Quotations from Mao Tse-Tung, written by the man himself.
Fiction:
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, by Dai Sijie.
The Outlaws of the Marsh, by Shi Nai'An and Sidney Shapiro.
The Three Body Problem, by Cixin Liu and Ken Liu.
These are a relatively good start to help you get a grounding in China's history. Everyone in this thread has also given some good suggestions. And visit /r/askhistorians; they'll have some better sources you can check out.
> Worried about a military build-up in the Pacific? Imagine how China feels
> By Stuart Rollo (a research associate at the Sydney Democracy Network at the University of Sydney)
> ---
> The matter of Chinese bases in the Pacific will almost certainly arise again, and the major reason will be the US-led strategic encirclement of China, in which Australia plays an important role...
> The reason China would have an interest in establishing a military base on a remote Pacific island, is that they themselves are surrounded by a dense and heavily armed archipelago of American military bases, 250 or so according to US Department of Defence statistics...
> Our own actions show we are only opposed to the militarisation of the region when it is done by the other side.
> The sense of danger that grips us when we are confronted with the possibility of one Chinese base on an island 2,000 kilometres away should give us pause to consider how China's sense of security is affected by a chain of hundreds of American bases stretching longitudinally along the Western Pacific.
> Australian leaders are right to oppose the construction of a Chinese military base in the South Pacific.
> But as long as we enthusiastically support, encourage, and participate in the much larger American military build-up in the region, rather than seeking to moderate and reduce regional tensions through our alliance, we should expect nothing else.
Wow. Just wow. How spectacularly braindead has Sydney University become?
Stuart Rollo is right, in that China feels insecure. But he's wrong in thinking China would abandon its military build-up if America retreated from the region. That is spectacularly insane, and is guaranteed 100% to wipe out democracy in Asia and Australia. Something is rotten in Sydney University.
> http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/about-us-sdn/
> Long-term, the Sydney Democracy Network aims to form a new global network of researchers, activists and policy makers concerned with the fate of democracy in our times.
This belongs on The Onion.
Here's the calibre of "democratic" personnel:
http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/portfolio_page/junjie-liu/
Perry Link, Richard P. Madsen, and Paul G. Pickowicz, eds., Popular China: Unofficial Culture in a
Globalizing Society (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002)
It may be a little outdated, but it gives a great look into modern Chinese cultural trends.
Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook by Patricia Ebrey has great primary sources if you want to learn about Chinese culture that way, and it stretches all the way back to ancient times.
Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld by David Kaplan and Alex Dubro is a great book to read if you want to learn about the Yakuza and how they have effected Japanese political history.
It's specifically this book. It's a good read, for sure.
Thoughts on Fukuyama? Should I look forward to your review of Destined for War by Graham Allison? edit: Kissinger reviewed it, as a reminder that he's still alive. And it got a blurb by Biden too.
This one
I guess that one is Macao?! HAHAHA NOOOOO I am living a lie!
This article is written by an insane person who has proved his insanity by writing an insane book filled with ahistoric jingoism.
> Tu peux jurer ce que tu veux, un tiens vaut mieux que deux tu l'auras, et force est de constater qu'on vous files des dizaines de milliards par an :
J'étais sarcastique.. bon l'ingratitude.. l'argument lâche, tu laisse croire que l’Europe était altruiste envers nous , mais sa faisait parti du marché , vous nous financer , on ouvre nos marché complètement, on libéralise notre économie, on dérégule nos banques on emprunte auprès de vos banque européennes et vous avez notre main d'oeuvre tout en avalant tranquilement sans protester les thérapies de choc de la BCE et du FMI et on nourri la machine industrielle occidentale. Sources: ici , ici
, ici, ici , ici et ici
Il n'y a pas eu d'ingratitude , on a rempli notre part du contrat.
>Nope, c'est du sérieux.
Tu as détourné la conversation pour aller te concentrer sur l'Amérique latine quand j'ai mis plusieurs autres exemples. Bon regardons de plus près cette carte réalisé par...
> It was produced for the activist newsletter ¡Presente! in 2011.
Ah tiens donc.. réalisé par un groupe inconnu...d'inspiration marxiste, avec une page web défaillante et je vais demander a l'informaticien du consulat de retracer leur ip je te parie 60 euros qu'ils sont qu'il sont basé au Venezuela je vais poser les screeshots.. Ensuite quand on regarde leur carte de plus pres on devient dubitatif..
Colombie 2009: Opération contre les FARC approuvé par le gouvernement colombien(lol PRESENTE les définis comme de simples groupes anti-US..)
Honduras(US refuses to call the overthrowing and undermines effort to restore democracy)
Encore faux les USA ont condamné le coup et déclaré le président qui s'est fait renversé comme étant légitime.
Costa rica() Encore une fois cette organisation ment les USA avait signé un accord avec le gouvernement démocratique du Costa Rica et il a aucune trace de ce qu'ils affirment
Haiti; Euh...La France a participé en Haiti et a même aidé les américains sans compter que le président haitien appelait a la guerre civile ouverte et sans preuve
Les autres dates de la guerre froide , on peut extrapoler tout le monde l'a fait. Sa reste que des gouvernement tels qu'en Argentine , Brésil , Nicaragua n'ont jamais rien subi dans les 20 dernières années sa rend ton argument caduque
> Bon Canada: Bref, ils n'ont pas tout accepté, mais ils n'ont jamais été anti-US ni pro-soviétiques.
Pierre Trudeau, US-Canadian policies grew further apart. Trudeau removed nuclear weapons from Canadian soil, formally recognized the People's Republic of China, established a personal friendship with Castro, and decreased the number of Canadian troops stationed at NATO bases in Europe.
Bref aussi tu as ignoré tous les autres pays que j'ai mentionné
>Nan mais si tu avais été là pendant la guerre en Iraq tu saurais que les US ont sanctionné la France à cause de son veto à l'ONU et qu'ils ont retourné toute notre classe politique et éliminé les gaullistes.
Na je me la coulais douce en Pologne.. ensuite tu lances sa et tu me reproche de ne pas mettre de lien qu est-ce qui faut pas entendre...
> Exxon a "juste" l'accès au 2ème champ qui est capable de produire le plus et BP au plus grand champ du pays /s
Exxon a été forcé de vendre une bonne partie de sesparts , sa fait 3 fois que j'écris sa!!! ils ont une part égale avec Petro-China sois 25% et 75% appartient a Shell et au gouvernement irakien Qurna n'est plus sous controle américain.(En passant il s'agit du second plus grand champ)
> et BP au plus grand champ du pays /s maintenant
Et lol BP estaméricain??? non le plus grand champ se nomme Rumala 38% a BP eet 37% a CP(Chine) si t'appelles sa controles... les américains ont été évincés (. ExxonMobil which also bid on servicing this field at a price $4.80 walked away due to price cutting terms by the Iraqi Government leaving BP and CNPC as winners of the contract.)
>Bah oui tout va bien, la collusion entre le fils du Vice President des US et des compagnies gazières dans un pays qui vient d'être renversé, c'est un hasard.
Il n'y a peut pas d'hasard mais je ne vois pas ou est le problème c'est une compagnie privé dirigé par un fervent anti-russe... La vie privé ne représente rien pour les personnes de nos jours.
>Mais oui on a compris, quand c'est les Russes c'est le mal, et quand c'est les US c'est normal.
> Nope, il va falloir que tu m'expliques ce que tous les pays que tu appelles "occidentaux" partageraient et en quoi ça permettrait d'inclure tel pays et pas un autre.
Répondre a une question par une autre question.. franchement /u/Mauvaisconseil..
>La France était déjà en Irak et avait une longue tradition de contacts avec Saddam Hussein.
Il faut vraiment que tu lises mon livre..(s'était le best-seller de 2013)..
Pétrole contre nourriture sans compter qu’après la guerre la part des investissements français ont augmenté en Irak
Last year, French companies represented 9.9% of the foreign investment in Iraq, compared with 4.7% for American companies, the Dunia report says
Je vais scanner mon livre pour te montrer comment apres cette méchante guerre , plusieurs companies francaises , allemandes, norvégiennes on profité de la chute du régime comme par exemple ici et ici
> Arrêter de se soumettre et de se tirer des balles dans le pied en sanctionnant nos voisins pour commencer
Tu as lu l'assocition agreement que l'Ukraine a signé?? tu te plains mais les compagnies russes seront probablement évincé par des compagnies francaises.. carrefour est la plus grosse chaine d'alimentation en Pologne par exemple. Les russes ont essayé de torpidé l’accord.
>Ma prédiction est que les US sont en déclin, que le dollar ne tiendra pas et que tôt ou tard à force d'intervenir partout une grande partie du monde se lèvera contre leur domination.
Fais moi rire , des accords de libre-échange a a gauche et droite la situation économique des USA est loin d’être critique, moi je parie le contraire entente entre les US et la Chine(Je suis sur que c'est déjà le cas d’ailleurs) depuis 1999 Kosovo jusqu’a maintenant toutes les crises ont bénéficié a la Chine.
Étonnant le nombre de personnes membres du parti communistes qui ont étudié aux USA d'ailleurs.. similairement au nombre d’américain de intelligentsia qui ont étudié en Grande-Bretagne au 19e siècle.
>Et j'ai déjà montré que la Russie ne fait que réagir à des agressions et à une ingérence américaine.
La Russie a essayé de torpillé un accord UE-Ukraine , a notre demande on a appelé quelqu’un qui torpillerait son ingérence.
>pas d'ingérence chez les pays qui sont à côté de la Russie.
Sa marche pour les gros France, Allemagne, UK, mais pas pour les petits comme nous voila pourquoi l'influence américaine doit rester en Europe. Il y a eu un immense changement dans notre situation avant otan et Post Otan face a la Russie dans le cas de la Pologne et des pays Baltes.(Plus de politiciens surpris avec des mallettes pleines de roubles)
>Les partis condamnés à l'échec, c'est l'UMP et le PS et l'oligarchie capitaliste et bourgeoise.
L'histoire est contre toi...
Poutine a été adoubé par des oligarques
> https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Capital
On me la tellement injecter en Pologne quand j'étais a l'école que j'ai développé une allergie contre ce livre
>Lol. Article qui date de avant-hier :
http://www.slate.fr/story/94003/kazakhstan-kirghizistan
Les tensions ethniques sont terminés et la politique est calme c'est pas comme si sous leur anciens dictateurs tout irait mieux???
Henry Kissinger: On China is a fantastic book. It gives you a sense of the typical Chinese mindset by quickly going into its history and then applying that to Communist China and beyond. Kissinger draws on his personal experiences and talks with Mao and other key figures.
Bully of Asia: Why China's Dream is the New Threat to World Order: Steven W. Mosher: 9781621576969: Amazon.com: Books
https://www.amazon.com/Bully-Asia-Chinas-Dream-Threat/dp/1621576965/
You might be correct to state that they failed to reach communism if you mean that they never reached a physically-impossible utopia.
But in the sense that they tried to fully eliminate prices and private property, and tried to collectivise the economy (especially the provision of food), then they sure gave it the ol' college try.
You can read about their decades-long attempt in the book "Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962" by Yang Jisheng.
>The great bulk of deaths under Mao's authority were during the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950's/early 1960's. He certainly bore some responsibility for the famines during this period, but adverse weather conditions, poor communication, and plain incompetence were also at play.
"During the Great Leap Forward, Mao and his leadership colleagues took specific decisions that led to mass starvation. They perpetuated a system that encouraged people to tell lies about grain production and discouraged transparency, making starvation worse. When the whole leadership (not just Mao) was confronted with Peng's criticisms, they rounded on the critic and allowed the policy to continue for another two years. That was the moment at which the leadership lurched into criminal irresponsibility. It may not have been murder or genocide but it was an unconscionable decision nonetheless.."
>Also, the figures for Mao Zedong are taken from the absolute top estimates from his greatest detractors.
And even at 45 Million, which are estimates for the Great Famine between 1958 and 1962, he still beats out second place by 2x.
Most of it was due to the government structure, and Mao's/The Party's overall insanity. Tombstone:The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962
Some NY Times Review and excerpts from The Guardian Review:
"What Yang found is worth knowing. One of the most devastated provinces was Henan, in central China. Henan had known famine before; the province was at the centre of the horrific hunger that struck during the second world war in 1942-43, killing some 3 to 4 million people. The policies of the Great Leap led to a new desolation in the province. Reports uncovered by Yang make evident a cycle of starvation and violence: a file from 1959 tells of one farmer who was "harshly beaten" because a small piece of beef was found in his home; he died six days later. A woman who was found cooking grain was "subjected to group struggle" for stealing; bound up and soaked in cold water, she too died shortly afterwards."
The ideology of the party knew the scope of the suffering, but did not do anything. They were ignoring the deaths to try and prove how well China was doing compared to the rest of the world.
"For a while, it was possible to think that the leadership had not understood the full level of the catastrophe in the countryside. The shattering of such illusions came at the Lushan conference of 1959. Peng Dehuai, one of the great marshals of the Chinese civil war against the nationalists, was a strong supporter of the Leap. But the discovery that people from his own home area were starving to death prompted him to write to Mao to ask for the policies to be adapted. Mao was furious, reading the letter out in public and demanding that his colleagues in the leadership line up either behind him or Peng. Almost to a man, they supported Mao, with his security chief Kang Sheng declaring of the letter: "I make bold to suggest that this cannot be handled with lenience." Peng was sent off into political obscurity. While there were minor adjustments to the Leap policies, the fundamental flaws were not addressed, and millions more continued to die until the formal abandonment of the programme in 1962."
Furthermore the Cultural Revolution followed much of the same course, Mao pushed the students to purge the party using violence at his direction.
edit to add 2 lines at the
I found it informative. I believe a similarly informative read, if you don't like Cumming's book, is The Two Koreas by Oberdorfer
http://www.amazon.com/China-History-Neolithic-Cultures-through/dp/1603842020/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382504737&sr=8-1&keywords=tanner+china
I used this book in my chinese history class and I thought it was really interesting/well-written (also relatively cheap compared to a lot of other stuff at the same level)
Fair enough, cheers for the recommendation though. Is this the book you’re referring to? If so I’ll try and give it a read soon.
https://www.amazon.com/Destined-War-America-Escape-Thucydidess-ebook/dp/B01IAS9FZY
Unfortunately, the textbook resources for Tibetan, and the online resources for that matter, are quite horrendous. I have done some work to help develop a better textbook, but it is not yet ready to publish. As it stands, Manual of Standard Tibetan (MST) https://www.amazon.com/Manual-Standard-Tibetan-Language-Civilization/dp/1559391898 is going to be your best bet. If you can speak Mandarin though, there are a lot of free resources online targeted at helping Buddhists to learn Tibetan. The analytical (as used in the field of linguistics) nature of Mandarin is very useful when learning Tibetan.
How about something outside of the usual Western view of the world? In China, there was a civil war caused by Christian rebels that killed as many as 20 million people between 1850-1864.
Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War
Also, http://www.amazon.com/Unnatural-Selection-Choosing-Girls-Consequences/dp/1586488503/
You need to educate yourself beyond wikipedia buddy.
http://www.amazon.com/Maos-Great-Famine-Devastating-Catastrophe/dp/0802777686/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1297572951&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Hungry-Ghosts-Maos-Secret-Famine/dp/0805056688/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1297573524&sr=1-1-spell
Also the anit-intellectual atmosphere in China is pretty well documented so I'm not sure what you're talking about it not being an honest desription
Lastly, you're really going to compare pre-industrial famines to ones in the modern agricultural era? Is it just a coincidence that the famines happened in an unparalleled scale in communist countries compared to the Capitalist ones that somehow managed to avoid them?
Well, maybe you should read books about it? I like The Two Koreas by Oberdorfer. I don't mean to be rude, but just because you might not know anything other than what you read on reddit on see on CNN doesn't mean the rest of us are like that.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIR97UC/
If you're at all interested in recent Chinese history.
Read it from someone who actually lived through it:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008MWNEXI/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Read actual scholarly work on it:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004BDOM24/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
(I have read both books.)