The United States is the global leader in higher education, but this was not always the case and may not remain so. William Kirby examines sources of—and threats to—US higher education supremacy and charts the rise of Chinese competitors. Yet Chinese institutions also face problems, including a state that challenges the commitment to free inquiry.

This book offers a new perspective on the transnational dimensions of China’s educational and economic history by focusing on Sino-German interactions in the field of vocational education. It explores how Chinese perceptions of manual work, vocational skills, and educational practices changed dramatically throughout the first half of the twentieth century as Chinese educators increased their efforts to study and translate German pedagogical writings. Case studies researched in this book illustrate how a Chinese appreciation for German technological and scientific advances and German interests in profiting from a growing Chinese economy are not just recent phenomena but have their roots in the early twentieth century.

Presented in both English and Chinese, this volume covers personal papers, correspondences, memoirs, diaries, photographs, moving images, and other materials held at academic and research institutions across the United States and Canada

This groundbreaking book is the first full-length English-language study to explore the struggles for constitutional democracy and democratic socialism of Zhang Junmai (Carsun Chang, 1887-1969), a major political and intellectual figure in Republican China. Focusing on Zhang's writings, Roger Jeans has provided detailed descriptions and extensive translations of Zhang's key books and essays. He sets the context for these seminal works by describing Zhang's personal situation, the social and intellectual milieu, and the political climate at the time.

During the years spanning the late Qing dynasty and the early Republican era, the status of Chinese women changed in both subtle and decisive ways. As domestic seclusion ceased to be a sign of virtue, new opportunities emerged for a variety of women. Much scholarly attention has been given to the rise of the modern, independent “new women” during this period. However, far less is known about the stories of married nonprofessional women without modern educations and their public activities. In At Home in the World, Xia Shi unearths the history of how these women moved out of their sequestered domestic life; engaged in charitable, philanthropic, and religious activities; and repositioned themselves as effective public actors in urban Chinese society. Investigating the lives of individual women as well as organizations such as the YWCA and the Daoyuan, she shows how her protagonists built on the past rather than repudiating it, drawing on broader networks of family, marriage, and friendship and reconfiguring existing beliefs into essential components of modern Chinese gender roles. The book stresses the collective forms of agency these women exercised in their endeavors, highlighting the significance of charitable and philanthropic work as political, social, and civic engagement. Shi also analyzes how men—alive, dead, or absent—both empowered and constrained women’s public ventures. She offers a new perspective on how the public, private, and domestic realms were being remade and rethought in early twentieth-century China, in particular, how the women navigated these developing spheres. At Home in the World sheds new light on how women exerted their influence beyond the home and expands the field of Chinese women’s history.

This book explores the economic development of the northern Chinese city of Qingdao, which was held by Germany as a colony from 1898 to 1914. It focuses especially on the economic polices of the German colonial government and of the provincial government of the neighbouring Chinese province of Shandong, considering amongst other issues free trade and protection, the impact of the Gold Standard and assistance given to particular companies. The book shows how the Qingdao and Shandong economies fitted into overall East Asian and global trade patterns and how during this period these economies became more fully integrated into the world economy. The book concludes by discussing how although there was a great deal of co-operation between the Qingdao and Shandong governments, there were also growing tensions.