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This clear and nuanced introduction to the Philippines explores the ongoing dilemma of state-society relations, explaining the peculiar nature of a weak state that has managed to survive rebellions, dictatorship, and economic crisis, yet is unable to foster economic development and equality and guarantee long-term political stability.

This study offers a critical perspective on political and economic modernization during a key turning point in world history. From the perspective of village activists across China, this book tells of the farmers who opposed constitutional reform in the early 20th century.

Arguing that cultural reform is a key aspect of political reform, Richard Kraus shows here that China's economic transformation has dramatically liberated the production and consumption of culture. In this original and provocative study, Kraus offers a political analysis of Chinese culture that includes all genres of art.

This history of international drug trafficking in the first half of the 20th century follows the stories of American gangsters, Japanese spies, Chinese warlords, and soldiers of fortune whose lives revolved around opium. The text draws on British, European, American, Japanese and Chinese archives.

Explores China's rapidly evolving polity, economy, and society through the prism of its communication system. This study offers a multifaceted, interdisciplinary analysis of communication in China and its central role in the struggle for control during the country's rise to global power.

Representing a lifetime of research and writing by noted historian Arif Dirlik, the essays collected here explore developments in Chinese socialism and the issues that have occupied historians of the Chinese revolution for the past three decades. Dirlik engages Chinese socialism critically but with sympathy for the aspirations of revolutionaries who found the hope of social, political, and cultural liberation in Communist alternatives to capitalism and the intellectual inspiration to realize their hopes in Marxist theory. The book's historical approach to Marxist theory emphasizes its global relevance while avoiding dogmatic and Eurocentric limitations. These incisive essays range from the origins of socialism in the early twentieth century, through the victory of the Communists in mid-century, to the virtual abandonment by century's end of any pretense to a socialist revolutionary project by the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. All that remains of the revolution in historical hindsight are memories of its failures and misdeeds, but Dirlik retains a critical perspective not just toward the past but also toward the ideological hegemonies of the present. Taken together, his writings reaffirm the centrality of the revolution to modern Chinese history. They also illuminate the fundamental importance of Marxism to grasping the flaws of capitalist modernity, despite the fact that in the end the socialist response was unable to transcend the social and ideological horizons of capitalism.

This powerful and meticulously researched study explores the role of rural industry and entrepreneurship in the Chinese economic miracle. Linda Grove focuses on one weaving district in North China, exploring the ways in which small industrial firms have accumulated capital, organized their firms, developed nationwide marketing networks, and promoted brands over the last century. Cutting across the conventional divide between studies of "history" and "contemporary economy," the author persuasively shows the links between traditional Chinese business practices and modern economic growth. Based on several decades of archival research, surveys, and fieldwork, A Chinese Economic Revolution provides the first English-language exploration of the business history of small Chinese firms.

Offers an analysis of the origins of the Chinese communist revolution in the countryside. This book provides a local perspective on the rise of a revolution that reshaped China and the world. It explores the social cleavages that enabled the revolution to grow and dramatically influenced the structure of conflict within the party itself.

This compelling book provides a rare glimpse into the heart of wartime China. Kathryn Meyer draws us into the perilous world of the Garden of Grand Vision, a ramshackle structure where a floating population of thousands found shelter from the freezing Siberian winter. They had come to the northern city of Harbin to find opportunity or to escape the turmoil of China in civil war. Instead they found despair. As the author vividly describes, corpses littered the halls waiting for the daily offal truck to cart the bodies away, vermin infested the walls, and relief came in the form of addiction. Yet the Garden also supported a vibrant informal economy. Rag pickers and thieves recycled everything from rat pelts to cigarette butts. Prostitutes entertained clients in the building¿s halls and back alleys. These people lived at the very bottom of Chinese society, yet rumors that Chinese spies hid among the residents concerned the Japanese authorities. For this population lived in Manchukuo, the first Japanese conquest in what became the Second World War. Thus, three Japanese police officers were dispatched into the underworld of occupied China to investigate crime and vice in the Harbin slums while their military leaders dragged Japan deeper into the Pacific War. While following these policemen, the reader discovers a remarkable and unexpected view of World War II in East Asia. Instead of recounting battles and military strategy, this book explores the margins of a violent and entrepreneurial society, the struggles of an occupying police force to maintain order, and the underbelly of Japanese espionage. Drawing on the author¿s years of rediscovering the historical trail in Manchuria and research based on top-secret Japanese military documents and Chinese memoirs, this book offers a unique and powerful social and cultural history of a forgotten world.

This book analyzes the rise of civil society and legal contentiousness in China as the author examines how AIDS carriers and pollution victims pursue justice. His case studies highlight the development of civil society as well as the limitations to the "politics of justice" as the system balances between the rule of law and regime stability.