Explore the vast range of titles available.

Held in October 2017, the 19th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress enshrined not just Xi Jinping's grip on power. It also re-coated its ideology with a medley of Socialist and traditionalist buzz words that had been marginalized in the 1980s. During the height of the reform era, these increasingly made way for ideas borrowed from market economies. Predictably enough, the ideological ferment surrounding the 19th Party Congress has since also played out in the realm of education. This article examines in detail the most current history textbooks used in PRC classrooms to construe China's recent past. To that end, included in my exploration will not just be changing PRC attitudes to Chinese modern history, but also PRC instruction of world history. In passing, I will also compare the school material with the latest authoritative Western scholarly studies of the same topics by way of eliciting how PRC official historical narratives of 19th–20th century events diverge from Western ones. A better understanding of those narratives is crucial to predicting how the PRC will behave on the world stage as an emerging global superpower.

This book sets out to explain how Shanghai emerged from relative obscurity in 1842 to become one of the world's best-known finance and industry hubs. As China's largest city, Shanghai today plays a central economic role, much as it did in the 1920s. The author provides a concise diachronic survey of the economic history of modern Shanghai, setting out how the city's urban infrastructure, municipal institutions, consumer culture and industry have shaped, and have been shaped by, this economic power house. The work is aimed at a broad readership of all who are interested in Asian history, and tackles a range of themes including: the city's millionaires, then and now; racial tensions and quotidian liaisons between Europeans and Asians before World War II; and the gambling and prostitution industry. The post-war era is portrayed in comparative discussions on Shanghai under Mao Zedong, and during the reform era. These discussions bring the narrative up to date to cover important events such as the designation of the Pudong precinct as the city's new engine of growth in 1991. The city's illustrious pre-war past is compared with its present ambitions to become Asia's leading financial centre. The book employs insights from studies frameworks of new institutional economics as well as from the development trajectory of other world cities by way of better understanding Shanghai's historic distinctness, its relative weaknesses and contemporary strengths.

Chinese Money in Global Context: Historic Junctures Between 600 BCE and 2012 offers a groundbreaking interpretation of the Chinese monetary system, charting its evolution by examining key moments in history and placing them in international perspective. Expertly navigating primary sources in multiple languages and across three millennia, Niv Horesh explores the trajectory of Chinese currency from the birth of coinage to the current global financial crisis. His narrative highlights the way that Chinese money developed in relation to the currencies of other countries, paying special attention to the origins of paper money; the relationship between the West's ascendancy and its mineral riches; the linkages between pre-modern finance and political economy; and looking ahead to the possible globalization of the RMB, the currency of the People's Republic of China. This analysis casts new light on the legacy of China's financial system both retrospectively and at present-when China's global influence looms large.

As China emerges as a global powerhouse, this timely book examines its economic past and the shaping of its financial institutions. The first comparative study of foreign banking in prewar China, the book surveys the impact of British overseas bank notes on China's economy before the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. Focusing on the two leading British banks in the region, it assesses the favorable and unfavorable effects of the British presence in China, with particular emphasis on Shanghai, and traces instructive links between the changing political climate and banknote circulation volumes. Drawing on recently declassified archival materials, Niv Horesh revises previous assumptions about China's prewar economy, including the extent of foreign banknote circulation and the economic significance of the May Thirtieth Movement of 1925.

The “Singapore model” constitutes only the second explicit attempt by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to learn from a foreign country following Mao Zedong's pledge to contour “China's tomorrow” on the Soviet Union experience during the early 1950s. This paper critically evaluates policy transfers from Singapore to China in the post-Mao era. It re-examines how this Sino-Singaporean regulatory engagement came about historically following Deng Xiaoping's visit to Singapore in 1978, and offers a careful re-reading of the degree to which actual policy borrowing by China could transcend different state ideologies, abstract ideas and subjective attitudes. Particular focus is placed on the effects of CCP cadre training in Singaporean universities and policy mutation within two government-to-government projects, namely the Suzhou Industrial Park and the Tianjin Eco-City. The paper concludes that the “Singapore model,” as applied in post-Mao China, casts institutional reforms as an open-ended process of policy experimentation and adaptation that is fraught with tension and resistance. “新加坡模式”是 1950 年代早期毛泽东誓言以苏联经验塑造 “中国的明天” 后中国共产党第二次明确表明学习的外国对象。本文评价后毛时代中国对新加坡经验的学习和政策的传送。著者重新审视邓小平 1978 年到访新加坡后中国在监管领域上借鉴新加坡经验的历史起源, 而重新诠释新加坡对中国实际的政策传送可否跨越意识形态, 抽象理念和主观态度的差异。本文仔细分析新加坡大学培训对中共党员回国后的影响和中新政府在苏州和天津合作项目中的政策传送和突变。分析结果显示 “新加坡模式” 应用于后毛时代中国反映了中共制度改革上的开放性和实验性, 也凸现改革过程中的张力和阻力。

Drawing on wide-ranging sources, this article offers an integrative analysis of four critical aspects of Shanghai's pre-war economy; it reexamines the city's currency, its banking institutions and capital markets, its pattern of industrialisation, and its legal grounding as a treaty-port. Contrary to much of the conventional wisdom, the article suggests that while Shanghai's reputation for economic stability echoed far and wide during the pre-war era (1842-1937), the city's development pattern was far from replicated further inland.

Over the last three decades, a considerable body of English-language academic work has shed much light on Japan's empire-building project in Greater China during the first half of the twentieth century. At the same time, Japanese-language studies of the country's pre-war financial history have also grown in leaps and bounds. Yet, to date, neither body of literature seems to have fully examined what might appear to the naked eye as one of the critical pre-war junctures, where Japanese financial history converged on imperial policy and Chinese nationalist responses thereto.1 This paper will therefore aim to fill part of the gap by examining how the Yokohama Specie Bank, arguably the backbone of Japanese finance in China Proper, was affected by Chinese anti-foreign boycotts throughout the pre-war era (1842–1937).

This article analyzes Sino-Iranian relations and mutual strategic perceptions, highlighting several types of tension in Sino-Iranian ties alongside areas of deeper cooperation. We examine in particular the policy debates about China between conservatives and reformists within Iran, and we compare their views of China to the views of Iran held by Chinese commentators. To that end, we extensively survey both the official media and scholarly literature in Farsi and in Chinese, since each strand reveals different sentiments and is accorded a different degree of openness.