This audacious and illuminating memoir by Richard Baum, a senior China scholar and sometime policy advisor, reflects on forty years of learning about and interacting with the People’s Republic of China, from the height of Maoism during the author’s UC Berkeley student days in the volatile 1960s through globalization. Anecdotes from Baum’s professional life illustrate the alternately peculiar, frustrating, fascinating, and risky activity of China watching — the process by which outsiders gather and decipher official and unofficial information to figure out what’s really going on behind China’s veil of political secrecy and propaganda. Baum writes entertainingly, telling his narrative with witty stories about people, places, and eras. China Watcher will appeal to scholars and followers of international events who lived through the era of profound political and academic change described in the book, as well as to younger, post-Mao generations, who will enjoy its descriptions of the personalities and political forces that shaped the modern field of China studies.

An international team of contributors analyzes the state of European, Japanese and American scholarship on China over the last decade, exploring in depth the main subjects and trends in research being done on contemporary Chinese politics, economy, foreign affairs and security studies.

Fr Laszlo Ladany, SJ, published only one book in his lifetime (The Communist Party of China and Marxism, 1921-1985: A Self-Portrait), but became widely known and respected as the doyen of 'China-watchers' through his editorship of China News Analysis in Hong Kong in 1953-82. On his death in 1990 he left this survey, simply expressed but revealing on every page the depth of his knowledge of the Chinese people and of Chinese and comparative legal history, one of his own earlier special subjects of study. His ultimate concern is to illustrate the antipathy of Mao Tse-tung to law, even in a form renewed according to Marxist doctrine, and to age-old customary Chinese concepts of acceptable behaviour: this created a mental and spiritual void in a whole generation of Chinese with possibly irreversible and certainly unpredictable consequences. The book is a deeply thought-provoking introduction to the study of Chinese history, politics and culture. Two distinguished German sinologists, Professor Jurgen Domes and Dr Marie-Luise Nath, have, between them, edited the work and provided short opening and concluding sections.

China Watcher The Dragon has awakened! Read this scholarly insiders look at China . . . its customs, history, politics, cuisine, love life, literature and art, philosophy, and much more. Witty and informative, this unique book explains aspects of Chinese culture and history often confusing to natives and foreigners alike. All the characters described in this work are real and all the events true. Each chapter offers a vignette of Chinese life and these chapters form, in toto, a kaleidoscope of Chinas past and present. The author includes his translations of some of Chinas greatest poetry.

America’s top China–watcher, the renowned pandit of modern Chinese history, here provides an unrivaled overview of revolutionary China and Chinese–American relations. His reviews and critical commentary scrutinize our always fascinated, often puzzled attitude toward this newly emergent superpower. John Fairbank distinguishes two major motifs in recent Chinese–American connections: the American expectation of highly profitable trade and investment, which so far have not materialized, and the deep–rooted missionary impulse to give the Chinese the best of our culture, which includes our efforts to promote human rights. The possibility of grafting our ideas of individual endeavor and God–given prerogatives onto two thousand years of Confucianism with its emphasis on duty and collective harmony seems remote. In contrast, the outlook for mutually enriching economic dealings is much brighter. Yet Fairbank cautions that we are dealing with a huge and disoriented nation struggling to enter the modern world with its own cultural identity intact, and (at least in the current period) with its Communist Party in power. Confucian tenets still prevail: theory and practice are a unity policies are a form of conduct manifesting one’s character, and attacks on policy equal attacks on the ruling party. These writings concern China in the mind’s eye of America—as it is interpreted though the works of American merchants, diplomats, missionaries, and reporters observing China’s travail of revolution. For generalist, scholar, and sage alike, China Watch offers many insights.