China

Looking back on the sixtieth anniversary of the surrender of Japan, Rana Mitter finds the political background to the demonstrations in China against Japanese history textbooks are full of complexities.

Rana Mitter recalls the career of a man who once ruled an area larger than France and Germany, but who spent forty years in Chiang Kai-shek’s gaols.

Steve Smith shows that those who control the present are sometimes able to control interpretations of the past.

What led Li Zhengsheng, a Chinese newspaper photographer, to preserve vivid images of the Cultural Revolution, even at enormous personal risk?

Michael Lynch introduces the controversial career of a gargantuan figure in Chinese and modern world history.

Craig Clunas considers what we can learn of the society of Ming China by looking at how paintings were used as gifts.

Leslie Marchant sees the Opium Wars as a philosophical clash between two cultures and two notions of government and society.

Joseph Needham, one of the twentieth century’s most remarkable scholars, was born on December 9th, 1900.

Robert Bickers shows how the history of British and European imperialism in China helps explain the ferocious Boxer War of 1900.

Today best known for its gambling industry, the rich cultural history of Europe’s last colonial toehold in China might be the key to its future.