The TAZARA (Tanzania Zambia Railway Authority), or Freedom Railway, from Dar es Salaam on the Tanzanian coast to the Copperbelt region of Zambia, was instrumental in fostering one of the most ...sweeping development transitions in postcolonial Africa. Built during the height of the Cold War, the railway was intended to redirect the mineral wealth of the interior away from routes through South Africa and Rhodesia. Rebuffed by Western aid agencies, newly independent Tanzania and Zambia accepted help from China to construct what would become one of Africa's most vital transportation corridors. The book follows the railroad from design and construction to its daily use as a vital means for moving villagers and goods. It tells a story of how transnational interests contributed to environmental change, population movements, and the rise of local and regional enterprise.
In the Qing period (1644-1912), China's population tripled, and
the flurry of new development generated unprecedented demand for
timber. Standard environmental histories have often depicted this
as ...an era of reckless deforestation, akin to the resource misuse
that devastated European forests at the same time. This
comprehensive new study shows that the reality was more complex: as
old-growth forests were cut down, new economic arrangements emerged
to develop renewable timber resources.
Historian Meng Zhang traces the trade routes that connected
population centers of the Lower Yangzi Delta to timber supplies on
China's southwestern frontier. She documents innovative property
rights systems and economic incentives that convinced landowners to
invest years in growing trees. Delving into rare archives to
reconstruct business histories, she considers both the formal legal
mechanisms and the informal interactions that helped balance
economic profit with environmental management. Of driving concern
were questions of sustainability: How to maintain a reliable source
of timber across decades and centuries? And how to sustain a
business network across a thousand miles? This carefully
constructed study makes a major contribution to Chinese economic
and environmental history and to world-historical discourses on
resource management, early modern commercialization, and
sustainable development.
Built upon a solid foundation of sources, memoirs, and interviews, this study sheds new light on China's efforts in the Vietnam War. Utilizing secondary works in Chinese, Vietnamese, and Western ...languages, and the author's own familiarity as a former member of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, this examination expands the knowledge of China's relations with the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) during the 1950s and 1960s.
As a communist state bordering Vietnam, China actively facilitated the transformation of Ho Chi Minh's army from a small, loosely organized, poorly equipped guerrilla force in the 1940s into a formidable, well-trained professional army capable of defeating first the French (1946--1954) and then the Americans (1963--1973). Even after the signing of the Geneva Peace Agreement, China continued to aggressively support Vietnam. Between 1955 and 1963, Chinese military aid totaled $106 million and these massive contributions enabled Ho Chi Minh to build up a strong conventional force. After 1964, China increased its aid and provided approximately $20 billion more in military and economic aid to Vietnam.
Western strategists and historians have long speculated about the extent of China's involvement in Vietnam, but it was not until recently that newly available archival materials revealed the true extent of China's influence -- its level of military assistance training, strategic advising, and monetary means during the war. This illuminating study answers questions about China's intention, objective, strategy, and operations of its involvement in the Vietnam Wars.
Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward campaign organized millions of
Chinese peasants into communes in a misguided attempt to rapidly
collectivize agriculture with disastrous effects. Catastrophic
famine ...lingered as the global cholera pandemic of the early 1960s
spread rampantly through the infected waters of southeastern
coastal China. Confronted with a political crisis and the seventh
global cholera pandemic in recorded history, the communist
government committed to social restructuring in order to affirm its
legitimacy and prevent transmission of the disease. Focusing on the
Wenzhou Prefecture in Zhejiang Province, the area most seriously
stricken by cholera at the time, Xiaoping Fang demonstrates how
China's pandemic was far more than a health incident; it became a
significant social and political influence during a dramatic
transition for the People's Republic. China and the Cholera
Pandemic reveals how disease control and prevention, executed
through the government's large-scale, clandestine anticholera
campaign, were integral components of its restructuring
initiatives, aimed at restoring social order. The subsequent rise
of an emergency disciplinary health state furthered these aims
through quarantine and isolation, which profoundly impacted the
social epidemiology of the region, dividing Chinese society and
reinforcing hierarchies according to place, gender, and
socioeconomic status.
This book is a collection of studies of various religious groups in the changing religious markets of China. These ethnographic studies demonstrate many shades of gray in the religious market and ...fluidity across the red, black, and gray markets.
This major new study examines the history of Chinese theologies as they have navigated dynastic change, anti-imperialism, and the heights of Maoist propagandaIn this groundbreaking and authoritative ...study, Chloë Starr explores key writings of Chinese Christian intellectuals, from philosophical dialogues of the late imperial era to sermons and micro blogs of theological educators and pastors in the twenty-first century. Through a series of close textual readings, she sheds new light on the fraught issues of Chinese Christian identity and the evolving question of how Christianity should relate to Chinese society.
Focusing on Chinese-born senior migrants' engagement in transnational lifeways and global mobility processes as they relocate to the U.S. in the latter decades of their lives, Newendorp sheds light ...on seniors' strategies for achieving later-life goals within a context of rapidly aging population demographics and global neoliberal trends that have simultaneously rendered seniors' lifeways more precarious.
In the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), China experienced far greater access to political information than suggested by the blunt measures of control and censorship employed by modern Chinese regimes. ...A tenuous partnership between the court and the dynamic commercial publishing enterprises of late imperial China enabled the publication of gazettes in a wide range of print and manuscript formats. For both domestic and foreign readers these official gazettes offered vital information about the Qing state and its activities, transmitting state news across a vast empire and beyond. And the most essential window onto Qing politics was the Peking Gazette, a genre that circulated globally over the course of the dynasty. This illuminating study presents a comprehensive history of the Peking Gazette and frames it as the cornerstone of a Qing information policy that, paradoxically, prized both transparency and secrecy. Gazettes gave readers a glimpse into the state’s inner workings but also served as a carefully curated form of public relations. Historian Emily Mokros draws from international archives to reconstruct who read the gazette and how they used it to guide their interactions with the Chinese state. Her research into the Peking Gazette’s evolution over more than two centuries is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the relationship between media, information, and state power.
Since the mid-twentieth century China and India have entertained a difficult relationship, erupting into open war in 1962. Shadow States is the first book to unpack Sino-Indian tensions from the ...angle of competitive state-building - through a study of their simultaneous attempts to win the approval and support of the Himalayan people. When China and India tried to expand into the Himalayas in the twentieth century, their lack of strong ties to the region and the absence of an easily enforceable border made their proximity threatening - observing China and India's state-making efforts, local inhabitants were in a position to compare and potentially choose between them. Using rich and original archival research, Bérénice Guyot-Réchard shows how India and China became each other's 'shadow states'. Understanding these recent, competing processes of state formation in the Himalayas is fundamental to understanding the roots of tensions in Sino-Indian relations.
The plight of animals in China has attracted intense interest in
recent times. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, speculation about the
origins of the virus have sparked global curiosity Speculation
...about the origins of COVID-19 has sparked curiosity about how
animals are treated, traded and consumed in China today.
In Animal Welfare in China , Peter Li explores the key
animal welfare challenges facing China now, including animal
agriculture, bear farming, and the trade and consumption of exotic
wildlife, dog meat, and other controversial products. He considers
how Chinese policymakers have approached these issues and speaks
with activists from China's growing animal rights movement.
Li also offers an overview of the history of animal welfare in
China, from ancient times through the enormous changes of the 20th
and 21st centuries. Some practices that are today described as
"traditional", he argues, are in fact quite recent developments,
reflecting the contemporary pursuit of economic growth rather than
long-standing cultural traditions.
Based on years of fieldwork and analysis, Animal Welfare in
China makes a compelling case for a more nuanced and
evidence-based approach to these complex issues.
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