Preliminary Material /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Opening Remarks /John K. Fairbank --Opening Remarks /John E. Schrecker --The Variety of Political Reforms in Chinese History: A Simplified Typology /James T.C. Liu --Comment /Hoyt Tillman --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Definitions of Community by Ch'i Chi-kuang and Lü k'un /Joanna F. Handlin --Three Images of the Cultural Hero in the Thought of Kung Tzu-chen /Judith Whitbeck --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Economic Aspects of Reform /Albert Feuerwerker --Merchant Investment, Commercialization, and Social Change in the Ningpo Area /Susan Mann Jones --Overseas Chinese Entrepreneurs as Reformers: The Case of Chang Pi-shih /Michael R. Godley --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Imperialism, Sovereignty, and Self-Strengthening: A Reassessment of the 1870s /Saundra Sturdevant --Reform and the Tea Industry and Trade in Late Ch'ing China: The Fukien Case /Robert P. Gardella --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Politics, Intellectual Outlook, and Reform: The T'ung-wen kuan Controversy of 1867 /Kwang-Ching Liu --The Image of the Empress Dowager Tz'u-hsi /Sue Fawn Chung --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --The Social Context of Reform /Marianne Bastid --Local Reform and Its Opponents: Feng Kuei-fen's Struggle for Equality in Taxation /Frank A. Lojewski --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --The Intellectual Context of Reform /Hao Chang --The Ideal of Universality in Late Ch'ing Reformism /Young-tsu Wong --National Image: Missionaries and Some Conceptual Ingredients of Late Ch'ing Reform /Suzanne Wilson Barnett --Kung as an Ethos in Late Nineteenth-Century China: The Case of Wang Hsien-ch'ien (1842-1918) /I-fan Ch'eng --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Reflections on an Aspect of Modern China in Transition: T'an Ssu-t'ung (1865-1898) as a Reformer /Luke S.K. Kwong --Some Western Influences on T'an Ssu-t'ung's Thought /Richard H. Shek --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Reform at the Local and Provincial Level /James Polachek --Gentry-Official Conflict in the Restoration Kiangsu Countryside /Jonathan Ocko --The Formation of a Province: Reform of Frontier Administration in Sinkiang /Nailene Chou --Local Reform Currents in Chekiang before 1900 /Mary Backus Rankin --Chihli Academies and Other Schools in the Late Ch'ing: An Institutional Survey /Richard A. Orb --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Women and Reform /Linda P. Shin --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --The New Coastal Reformers /Paul A. Cohen --Wu.T'ing-fang: A Member of a Colonial Elite as Coastal Reformer /Linda P. Shin --Foreign Policy Interests and Activities of the Treaty-Port Chinese Community /Louis T. Sigel --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --The Reform Movement of 1898 and the Ch'ing-i: Reform as Opposition /John E. Schrecker --On the Hundred Days Reform /Huang Chang-chien --Reform Through Study Societies in the Late Ch'ing Period, 1895-1900: The Nan hsueh-hui /Sung Wook Shin --Chang Chih-tung after the "100 Days": 1898-1900 as a Transitional Period for Reform Constituencies /Daniel H. Bays --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Closing Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Notes /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Glossary /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker.

An edited volume consisting of 33 papers presented at Harvard University 's East Asian Research Center's 1975 workshop on reform in China in the nineteenth century. The book is divided into eight parts, each with a general thematic introduction, several essays on more specialized topics, and a summary of the discussion that took place at the conference.

"In the first half of the nineteenth century the Qing Empire faced a crisis. It was broadly perceived both inside and outside of government that the “prosperous age” of the eighteenth century was over. Bureaucratic corruption and malaise, population pressure and food shortages, ecological and infrastructural decay, domestic and frontier rebellion, adverse balances of trade, and, eventually, a previously inconceivable foreign threat from the West seemed to present hopelessly daunting challenges.This study uses the literati reformer Bao Shichen as a prism to understand contemporary perceptions of and proposed solutions to this general crisis. Though Bao only briefly and inconsequentially served in office himself, he was widely recognized as an expert on each of these matters, and his advice was regularly sought by reform-minded administrators. From examination of his thought on bureaucratic and fiscal restructuring, agricultural improvement, the grain tribute administration, the salt monopoly, monetary policy, and foreign relations, Bao emerges as a consistent advocate of the hard-nosed pursuit of material “profit,” in the interests not only of the rural populace but also of the Chinese state and nation, anticipating the arguments of “self-strengthening” reformers later in the century."

A study and critical analysis of the late nineteenth century journalist and reformer, Wang T’ao, and the process of reform in Late Ching China .