China—Art—Modernity provides a critical introduction to modern and contemporary Chinese art as a whole. It illuminates what is distinctive and significant about the rich range of art created during the tumultuous period of Chinese history from the end of Imperial rule to the present day. The story of Chinese art in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is shown to be deeply intertwined with that of the country’s broader socio-political development, with art serving both as a tool for the creation of a new national culture and as a means for critiquing the forms that culture has taken. The book’s approach is inclusive. In addition to treating art within the Chinese Mainland itself during the Republican and Communist eras, for instance, it also looks at the art of colonial Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Chinese diaspora. Similarly, it gives equal prominence to artists employing tools and idioms of indigenous Chinese origin and those who engage with international styles and contemporary media. In this way it writes China into the global story of modern art as a whole at a moment in intellectual history when Western-centred stories of modern and contemporary culture are finally being recognized as parochial and inadequate. Assuming no previous background knowledge of Chinese history and culture, this concise yet comprehensive and richly-illustrated book will appeal to those who already have an established interest in modern Chinese art and those for whom this is a novel topic. It will be of particular value to students of Chinese art or modern art in general, but it is also for those in the wider reading public with a curiosity about modern China. At a time when that country has become a major actor on the world stage in all sorts of ways, accessible sources of information concerning its modern visual culture are nevertheless surprisingly scarce. As a consequence, a fully nuanced picture of China’s place in the modern world remains elusive. China—Art—Modernity is a timely remedy for that situation. ‘Here is a book that offers a comprehensive account of the dizzying transformations of Chinese art and society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Breaking free of conventional dichotomies between traditional and modern, Chinese and Western that have hobbled earlier studies, Clarke’s highly original book is exactly what I would assign my own students. Anyone eager to understand developments in China within the global history of modern art should read this book.’ —Robert E. Harrist Jr., Columbia University ‘Clarke’s book presents a critically astute mapping of the arts of modern and contemporary China. It highlights the significance of urban and industrial contexts, migration, diasporas and the margins of the mainland, while imaginatively seeking to inscribe its subject into the broader story of modern art. A timely and reliable intervention—and indispensable for the student and non-specialist reader.’ —Shane McCausland, SOAS University of London

This ambitious work is a multimedia, interdisciplinary study of Chinese modernity in the context of globalization from the late nineteenth century to the present. Sheldon Lu draws on Chinese literature, film, art, photography, and video to broadly map the emergence of modern China in relation to the capitalist world-system in the economic, social, and political realms. Central to his study is the investigation of biopower and body politics, namely, the experience of globalization on a personal level. Lu first outlines the trajectory of the body in modern Chinese literature by focusing on the adventures, pleasures, and sufferings of the male (and female) body in the writings of selected authors. He then turns to avant-garde and performance art, tackling the physical self more directly through a consideration of work that takes the body as its very theme, material, and medium. In an exploration of mass visual culture, Lu analyzes artistic reactions to the multiple, uneven effects of globalization and modernization on both the physical landscape of China and the interior psyche of its citizens. This is followed by an inquiry into contemporary Chinese urban space in popular cinema and experimental photography and art. Examples are offered that capture the daily lives of contemporary Chinese as they struggle to make the transition from the vanishing space of the socialist lifestyle to the new capitalist economy of commodities. Lu reexamines the history and implications of China’s belated integration into the capitalist world system before closing with a postscript that traces the genealogy of the term "postsocialism" and points to the real relevance of the idea for the investigation of everyday life in China in the twenty-first century.

Rapid industrialization, urbanization, and marketization have led to startling social changes in reform-era China. Mindful of the many forms of social theory that relate modernity to individualism, this volume addresses social and cultural change through the lens of psychological anthropology.

This ambitious work traces a social history of semicolonialism in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century China. It takes as its central concern the intertwining of two antagonistic forces: elite constructions of modernity shaped globally, and an alternate line of peasant resistance and development. Nantong county and the northern portion of the commercially advanced Yangzi Delta form its focal points. Lying in the hinterland of and connected in myriad ways with the treaty port of Shanghai, which in the late nineteenth century became the center of imperialist activity in China, the northern delta is an ideal locale for examining how the acquisition, transmission, and contestation of power may have changed during the extended moment of semicolonial encounter. The author’s specific project is to unravel the multiple strands of the semicolonial process and thereby the dominant and alternative histories it embodied. In emphasizing semicolonialism as a structural context shaping events, the book opens up a pivotal but silent area in the history of modern China. In confronting the development of capitalism as a historical phenomenon and suggesting that its consequences for land and labor on a global scale need greater theoretical and historical scrutiny, the book forces a new understanding of China’s modernity. The book is in two parts. The first delineates key long-term dynamics in the political, economic, and social history of the area from the late Ming dynasty to the Opium Wars. The second part begins with an examination of the rise of modernist urban power in the context of accelerating growth in the textile and cotton trades, focusing on such topics as economic restructuring under Shanghai’s impetus, new forms of economic and political organization, and contention as well as cooperation within the urban elite. Turning to the countryside, the book then examines the regearing of the rural economy to the needs of urban capital, local and global; outlines the emergence of modern landlordism and other rural “capitalisms”; analyzes class formation in the peasantry associated with changes in labor organization, tenurial arrangements, and the gendered division of labor; and traces the coalescence of a distinctive political discourse through which peasants contested certain development schemes and advanced alternative conceptions of community and nation.

A splendid essay collection focusing on ordinary people in the chaotic post-emperor, pre-Communist period of China's history.

This book is a collection of essays in honour of Professor Wang Gungwu. Professor Wang is not only a great historian on Chinese history in general and the Chinese overseas in particular, but has much wider influence through remarkable domain crossing, namely spatial crossing characterised by geographical straddling between inside and outside of China, temporal crossing from the ancient past to the contemporary, inter-disciplinary crossing from history to the social sciences, and intellectual crossing from the academia to public activism. He has been a long-lasting source of inspiration for understanding some of the most pressing and complex issues in our times, including the nature of China's rise and its implications for the regional and world order. In a nutshell, this book presents Wang as a highly active educator-scholar who has achieved the highest academic standard as well as far-reaching influence over issues that concern all walks of life.By focusing on the theme of Chineseness and China's modernity, this book adds depth to the analysis of China's rise and its implications for the region and the world. It contains a chapter providing the most comprehensive and updated review of Wang's scholarship thus far. Another chapter demonstrates how Wang, based on his deep understanding of Chinese civilisation and history, articulates a distinct view of the world order that differs from either the thesis of 'Thucydides's trap' or the advocacy of mutual accommodation. Interestingly, this book also includes a chapter that highlights Wang's 'Southeast Asian-ness', suggesting that Wang's scholarship cautions against not only western-centric views towards China, but also Sino-centric views towards Southeast Asia. In short, this edited volume is both a reference book for understanding Wang's scholarship and an extension of his scholarship to the analysis of China's growing international influence and its implications for the world order.

The students who came to the United States in the early twentieth century to become modern Chinese by studying at American universities played pivotal roles in Chinese intellectual, economic, and diplomatic life upon their return to China. These former students exemplified key aspects of Chinese "modernity," introducing new social customs, new kinds of interpersonal relationships, new ways of associating in groups, and a new way of life in general. Although there have been books about a few especially well-known persons among them, this is the first book in either English or Chinese to study the group as a whole. The collapse of the traditional examination system and the need to earn a living outside the bureaucracy meant that although this was not the first generation of Chinese to break with traditional ways of thinking, these students were the first generation of Chinese to live differently. Based on student publications, memoirs, and other writings found in this country and in China, the author describes their multifaceted experience of life in a foreign, modern environment, involving student associations, professional activities, racial discrimination, new forms of recreation and cultural expression, and, in the case of women students, the unique challenges they faced as females in two changing societies.