Republican China

Introduction

There have been major changes since the mid-20th century in the way in which the history of republican China (1911–1949) is conceptualized by scholars in the West and elsewhere. Up to the 1970s, scholarship was dominated by a somewhat teleological revolutionary paradigm, in which developments in republican China were seen predominantly in terms of their relationship to the 1949 revolution and thus, of their contribution to the total transformation of Chinese society. This teleological approach has more recently been challenged in at least two respects. First, scholars have affirmed that ideas and actions in Nationalist China are worthy of study in their own right, rather than merely in terms of the contribution they did or did not make to China’s Communist revolution. This was partly, though not exclusively, a reflection of the economic and, to some extent, political success of Taiwan and the ethnically Chinese city-states outside the People’s Republic of China, which suggested that the Chinese past could generate paths other than those outlined by Mao Zedong. Second, the degree to which 1949 actually represented a radical break or complete transformation of Chinese society has come increasingly under question. Developments after 1949 have come more and more to be seen as the continuation of a process of state building that was under way, certainly, during the Nationalist regime of 1927–1949 and, to some extent, even before that, back to the warlords or even the late Qing. A further change, and one that reflects the emergence of postmodern views of history way beyond Chinese studies, is to downgrade metanarratives of all types (not just the revolutionary teleology) and to focus more on the local and the contingent. Local studies have therefore been a major trend in republican history since the 1990s. The field covered by this bibliography is vast, and in order to reduce it to manageable size, the author has decided to concentrate mainly (though not exclusively) on topics linked to politics (though in the Chinese case many social, cultural, and economic developments had a strong political element, and they are touched on) and on works that focus centrally on the 1911–1949 period rather than, for example, the whole 20th century.

General Overviews

There are a substantial number of English-language overview texts on modern Chinese history that cover this period. Most are aimed at an undergraduate market, and most tend to focus very much on a chronological account of mainly political history. Two texts by leading scholars represent contributions at the opposite ends of the spectrum of detail: Spence 2013 is a relatively comprehensive treatment of the period, whereas Mitter 2008 offers an extremely concise coverage. Zarrow 2005 and Lary 2007 are high-quality texts of medium length. On a more specialized level, the two volumes of The Cambridge History of China dealing with republican China (Fairbank 1983, Fairbank and Feuerwerker 1986) exemplify the state of understanding of this period of Chinese history as of c. 1980. Chinese scholars tend to emphasize massive, collectively written histories, which are more or less authoritative. Li 2011 and Zhang 2005 are probably the two most important examples, though there are many other texts of different lengths.

Fairbank, John K., ed. The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 12, Republican China, 1912–1949, Part 1. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
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Contains heavyweight articles by leading scholars on several subperiods of republican history mainly up to 1928, as well as overviews, including the foreign presence in China, intellectual and literary trends, and the Chinese bourgeoisie. Clearly becoming outdated, but many of the chapters still give an excellent overview.
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Fairbank, John K., and Albert Feuerwerker, eds. The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 13, Republican China, 1912–1949, Part 2. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
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To some extent, takes the story in Fairbank 1983 up to 1949, with studies of the Nanjing decade, the war, and the rise of the Communist movement. Also contains survey articles on topics including international relations, the agrarian system and peasant movements, local government, and the academic community.
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Lary, Diana. China’s Republic. New Approaches to Asian History. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139167253Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Text on the Republic of China (with a final chapter on Taiwan). Strong on social as well as political issues.
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Li Xin 李新, ed. Zhonghua minguo shi (中华民国史). 12 vols. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2011.
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The standard collective history—mainly political, diplomatic, and military—of the period from Beijing. Mostly written in the 1980s or even earlier. Chronologically organized into different subperiods. Each section has an index of personal names at the end.
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Mitter, Rana. Modern China: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
DOI: 10.1093/actrade/9780199228027.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
What the title says: a very short introduction; but takes account of the latest scholarship and diverges further from the political narrative than most similar works (“Is China’s society/economy/culture modern?”).
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Spence, Jonathan D. The Search for Modern China. 3d ed. New York: Norton, 2013.
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Strong claim to the standard—albeit long—text on modern China, updated extensively in the late 1990s. Starts from 1600 and organized chronologically (an approach that Spence defends). The middle two hundred pages examine the republican period. Emphasizes not only continual change, but also continuities from late imperial China to the People’s Republic of China.
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Zarrow, Peter. China in War and Revolution, 1895–1949. Asia’s Transformations. London and New York: Routledge, 2005.
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Short, high-quality survey of republican history. Covers a wide range of topics, focusing on intellectual and cultural history. Contestation between different groups over the concepts of nation and democracy is a key theme.
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Zhang Xianwen 张宪文, ed. Zhonghua minguo shi (中华民国史). 4 vols. Nanjing, China: Nanjing daxue chubanshe, 2005.
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Zhang, of Nanjing University, is the country’s leading historian of the republic. Basically ordered chronologically, but has extensive chapters on economic and social issues as well as politics. Useful appendixes on government and political organization and personnel and on changes in administrative geography.
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Historiographical Surveys

Whereas General Overviews introduced works that give a factual, or substantive, overview of developments during the republican period, this one focuses on works that develop some of the ideas mentioned in the Introduction. Qin 2011 presents the views of one of China’s leading historians and public intellectuals. The ideas of Paul A. Cohen (Cohen 2003) have been extremely influential in moving the study of modern Chinese history away from an emphasis on Western impact. Dikötter 2008 is a controversial, positive evaluation of the history of the republican period. Wakeman and Edmonds 2000 and Wasserstrom 2003 are important collections of essays embodying more recent trends in the study of republican history, whereas Zeng 1992 serves as a somewhat outdated entry into the Chinese historiography.

Cohen, Paul A. China Unbound: Evolving Perspectives on the Chinese Past. Critical Asia Scholarship. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003.
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Although mainly a historian of late-19th-century China, Cohen, whose ideas were earlier developed in his Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), has been crucial in redirecting historical inquiry away from the impact of the West and toward “China-centered history.”
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Dikötter, Frank. The Age of Openness: China before Mao. Understanding China: New Viewpoints on History and Culture. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008.
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Intentionally controversial attempt to overcome the teleological view of republican China. Argues that China’s political, economic, and intellectual openness in the republican period stood in contrast to both imperial and Communist China and reflected a diverse and successful society.
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Qin Hui 秦晖. “Minguo lishi de butong mianxiang” (民国历史的不同面向). Nanfang zhoumo (南方周末), November 2011.
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This short piece, the first of five published through February 2012, gives a very stimulating analysis of different views of republican history by one of China’s most prominent and interesting (and unorthodox) historians, though some of the statistics he uses on economic history are questionable.
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Wakeman, Frederic, Jr., and Richard Louis Edmonds, eds. Reappraising Republican China. Studies on Contemporary China. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
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Reprint of articles from The China Quarterly 150 (1997), a special issue on republican China, reviewing the fields of state and society, economic history, urban change, government, the military, culture in Shanghai, the Nanjing decade, and foreign relations. Notably, none of the articles focuses specifically on communism.
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Wasserstrom, Jeffrey N., ed. Twentieth-Century China: New Approaches. Rewriting Histories. London and New York: Routledge, 2003.
DOI: 10.4324/9780203455531Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A set of essays, most published previously, that encapsulate what the editor sees as the key trends in our understanding of Chinese history around the turn of the 21st century. Key focuses are challenging the 1949 divide, studying the local as well as the national, and a stress on nonmaterial as well as material influences.
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Zeng Jingzhong 曾景忠. Zhonghua minguo shi yanjiu shulue (中华民国史研究述略). Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1992.
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A series of essays reviewing Chinese scholarship on republican history (as of 1990). Covers both specific subjects, such as warlords, the May Fourth movement, and the second United Front, and broader topics, such as the economy, overseas Chinese, and Sino-Soviet relations.
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Reference Works

There are many reference works that scholars use for the study of republican history. Those most focused on the republican period include biographical dictionaries and chronologies. Boorman 1967–1979 is still the standard biographical dictionary in English, whereas Li 2011b is the most comprehensive published in China. Brown 2014 covers the whole of Chinese history but has many useful articles on the republican period. Guo 1978–1985 and Li 2011a are detailed chronologies published in Taiwan and China, respectively. Pong 2009 is the best general encyclopedic reference to the history of the period.

Boorman, Howard L., ed. Biographical Dictionary of Republican China. 5 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1967–1979.
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The standard English-language biographical dictionary of republican China. Volume 4 includes extensive bibliography of sources. Covers both Nationalist and Communist personnel. Somewhat outdated, but has not been replaced.
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Brown, Kerry, ed. Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography. 3 vols. Great Barrington, MA: Berkshire, 2014.
DOI: 10.1093/acref/9780190214371.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Much broader than just the republican period, but includes substantial (three to four pages or more) biographies of many key republican figures.
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Guo Tingyi 郭廷以. Zhonghua minguo shishi rizhi (中华民国史事日志). 4 vols. Taibei: Zhongyang yanjiu yuan jindai shi yanjiusuo, 1978–1985.
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Detailed chronology of the Republic of China, 1912–1949. Useful reference work, though it would have been much more so if it had an index.
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Li Xin 李新, ed. Zhonghua minguo shi: Dashi ji (中华民国史大事记). 12 vols. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2011a.
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Massive, day-by-day compilation of events in the republican period. From a Western point of view, the lack of source attributions and, even more so, of an index reduces its usefulness, but it is still an important resource.
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Li Xin 李新, ed. Zhonghua minguo shi: Renwu zhuan (中华民国史人物传). 8 vols. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2011b.
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Set of brief (about five pages) biographies of key figures from the republican era. Includes a few non-Chinese figures. Provides sources for key facts.
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Pong, David, ed. Encyclopedia of Modern China. 4 vols. Detroit: Charles Scribner’s, 2009.
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The best and most up-to-date quick reference to key personalities, topics, and issues in modern China.
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Guides to Sources

There is no shortage of sources for the republican period, with a wide variety of archival and published material; that is not to say that the right kind of sources exist for any particular project.

Archives

Unfortunately actually consulting archives in China is becoming increasingly difficult. The Second Historical Archives, in Nanjing (see Shi and Zhao 1987), are by far the most important repository of archival materials. Ye and Esherick 1996 gives (rather outdated) advice on the use of archives and guidance on provincial and lower-level repositories. Kirby, et al. 2000 covers archives as well as other types of source material. As China became more involved in the world, for good or ill, the archives of the countries with which it interacted became valuable sources for the study of Chinese history. The most important probably are those of the major imperialist powers, Britain, Japan, and the United States. These materials are obviously crucial for the study of China’s foreign relations, but are often important sources for internal developments as well. Major parts of these collections are now available, some free, some by subscription, online or on microfilm. The National Archives of Japan’s Japan Center for Asian Historical Records provides excellent access to Japanese records. Foreign Office Files for China, 1919–1980 gives access to a large number of British foreign office documents, and US Department of State 1960 again offers a limited selection of US documents.

Foreign Office Files for China, 1919–1980. Adam Matthew Digital.
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Collaborative effort with the British National Archives. Contains a vast amount of materials on all aspects of British-China relations and many of internal Chinese affairs. The first three parts of six cover the republican period. Mainly, though not exclusively, from the FO371 series. Available by subscription.
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Japan Center for Asian Historical Records.
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This is the English home page, though for the documents one needs Japanese. Contains more than 1.6 million fully downloadable documents from the National Archives of Japan, the Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, and the National Institute for Defense Studies. Freely available and invaluable.
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Kirby, William C., Man-houng Lin, James Chin Shih, and David A. Pietz, eds. State and Economy in Republican China: A Handbook for Scholars. 2 vols. Harvard East Asian Monograph 193. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000.
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Gives extensive description of the holdings of major archives as well as of published collections of documents (pp. 40–54). In addition, provides a guide to research aids and gives suggestions for reading republican documents.
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Shi Xuancen 施宣岑 and Zhao Mingzhong 赵铭忠, eds. Zhongguo dier lishi dang’anguan jianming zhinan (中国第二历史档案馆简明指南). Beijing: Dang’an chubanshe, 1987.
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A guide to the Second Historical Archives, the main repository for republican China. Includes some material from the puppet government. The relationship to the actual archives, which some scholars have found difficult to use, is not as clear as it might be. See also the archives’ website.
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US Department of State. Records of the Department of State Relating to Internal Affairs of China, 1910–1929. Microform. National Archives Microfilm Publication 329. Washington, DC: National Archives, 1960.
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State Department documents from the US National Archives and Records Administration. There are other collections for 1930–1939, 1940–1944, and 1945–1949, and for US-China relations over the same period.
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Ye, Wa, and Joseph W. Esherick. Chinese Archives: An Introductory Guide. China Research Monograph 45. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1996.
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Covers provincial- and national-level archives and more than five hundred subprovincial-level archives. Varies from (in most cases) just basic details to a more comprehensive list of holdings and experiences of Western scholars in using the archives (in the 1990s).
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Others

Large amounts of published material survive from the period, in the form of books and, especially, periodicals. Fairbank and Liu 1950 is an early critical guide to some of this literature, whereas Skinner, et al. 1973 provides much more extensive coverage. Shenbao suoyin, 1919–1949 is an index to the most important Chinese-language newspaper. More recently, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s, a major attempt took place within China to collect unofficial and oral historical materials, from the central to the county level and below, and these were published in the Wenshi ziliao (文史资料) series. This series includes much material not available elsewhere and exhibits all the advantages and disadvantages of the genre of oral history. Li 1992 is a guide to the series, though increasingly such guides will be superseded by full-text electronic databases.

Fairbank, John King, and Kwang-ching Liu, eds. Modern China: A Bibliographical Guide to Chinese Works, 1898–1937. Harvard-Yencheng Institute Studies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950.
DOI: 10.4159/harvard.9780674866102Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Although dating from the midpoint of the 20th century, this is still a useful guide to Chinese writings on the republican period, from the republican period.
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Li Yongpu 李永璞. Quanguo geji zhengxie Wenshi ziliao pianmu suoyin, 1960–1990 (全国各级政协文史资料篇目索引, 1960–1990). 5 vols. Zhongguo jin xiandaishi shiliao jieshao yu yanjiu congshu. Beijing: Zhongguo wenshi chubanshe, 1992.
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Five-volume guide to the Wenshi ziliao (文史资料) series, up to 1990 (since which time many items have been published), covering politics, economy, society, and biography and providing rich, though not always reliable, sources for research on republican China. Much of the series can be found electronically at a few institutions, such as the University of Oxford. See also the university’s user guide to accessing Chinese studies materials, available online.
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Shenbao suoyin, 1919–1949 (申报索引, 1919–1949). 30 vols. Shanghai: Shanghai shudian chubanshe, 2008.
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Index to the major Chinese-language newspaper published in Shanghai. Invaluable for using the microfilm or the published reproduction, though will be superseded by the searchable electronic version, completed soon afterward; see Digitized Copies of Newspapers.
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Skinner, G. William, Winston Hsieh, and Shigeaki Tomita, eds. Modern Chinese Society: An Analytical Bibliography. 3 vols. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1973.
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With thirty-one thousand items in Western languages, Chinese, and Japanese, this is an indispensable guide to secondary materials published on Chinese society, economics, and politics up to 1972. Extensive coverage of current affairs journals, which provide many sources for studying republican history.
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Collections of Sources and Documents

Accessing many of the sources listed in the works cited under Guides to Sources requires spending substantial amounts of time in Chinese or other archives or libraries. For some topics—centrally the rise of the Communist Party—there are shortcuts in the form (hard copy or electronic) of published collections of documents. Visual sources are also an increasingly important resource for historians.

Digitized Copies of Newspapers

Since 2010 the major English- and Chinese-language newspapers in China (North China Herald and Shen Bao, respectively) have both become available electronically in searchable digital databases, though the high cost will limit the number of libraries able to subscribe.

North China Herald.
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Full searchable database linked to images of the original newspaper. Will be of immense benefit for research on modern China. Available by subscription.
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Shen Bao (申报) Digital Archive.
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Fully searchable database of the most important Chinese-language newspaper in Shanghai, published from 1872 to 1949. Will be of inestimable value for research. Available by subscription. Distributed in the West by Eastview Information Services.
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Chinese Sources

The compilation of collected source materials has always been a major facet of Chinese historiography, and there are a vast number of such collections in Chinese, offering access to sources at both the central and the local levels (Kirby, et al. 2000, cited under Archives, has a very partial list, spanning fifteen pages). Only a small sample of the most significant can be listed here. The Second Historical Archives, in Nanjing, is the most important repository of central government documents, and Zhongguo dier lishi dang’anguan 2010 is an index to the largest and most valuable collection they published. Zhang and Song 2009 is a massive collection, mainly of reprinted sources. Very important collections have also been published in Taiwan, and Geming wenxian and Zhonghua minguo shishi jiyao are examples; both of these include published as well as archival materials. There are also some collections of English translations: Brandt, et al. 2005 was the pioneer collection of English translations of Chinese documents on the rise of the Communist Party. Saich 1996 is a very large (it would be impossible to be comprehensive) collection of documents on the same topic. Schram 1992– is a more or less comprehensive collection of Mao Zedong’s writings.

Brandt, Conrad, Benjamin Schwartz, and John K. Fairbank, eds. A Documentary History of Chinese Communism. China: History, Philosophy, Economics 2. London: Routledge, 2005.
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Originally published in 1952 (London: Allen and Unwin). A classic collection of documents by three leading US China scholars on the history of Chinese Communism up to 1949. Partly superseded by Saich 1996 and Schram 1992–, it nevertheless remains a useful first reference.
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Geming wenxian (革命文献). 112 vols. Taibei: Dangshi weiyuanhui, 1953–1989.
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Massive compilation of documents from collections in Taiwan on the history of China’s (republican) revolution. Covers both major events, including the Xi’an Incident and the Nanjing Massacre, and topics such as education and economic construction. Many items reprinted from journals or government reports.
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Saich, Tony, ed. The Rise to Power of the Chinese Communist Party: Documents and Analysis. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996.
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Extensive collection of translated documents on the history of the Communist Party up to 1949. Contains most of the major documents as well as numerous letters, local reports, and so on. An invaluable resource, with commentary by Saich.
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Schram, Stuart R., ed. Mao’s Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings, 1912–1949. 7 vols. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1992–.
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A large, multivolume (seven volumes and counting) compilation of those of Mao’s writings before 1949 that were available at the time of publication. Includes writings that were probably, but not certainly, by Mao (and that were omitted from the main Chinese collection). Extensive explanatory notes. For the Mao specialist.
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Zhang Yan 张研 and Song Yanjing 孙燕京, eds. Minguo shiliao congkan (民国史料丛刊). 1,124 vols. Zhengzhou, China: Daxiang chubanshe, 2009.
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Massive collection of reprinted source materials, mostly of works published during the republic. Multivolume sections on politics, law, economy, education, society, culture, and so on.
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Zhongguo dier lishi dang’anguan 中国第二历史档案馆. Zhonghua minguo shi dang’an ziliao huibian zongmu suoyin (中华民国史档案资料汇编总目索引). 2 vols. Nanjing, China: Fenghuang chubanshe, 2010.
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Comprehensive table of contents of Zhonghua minguo shi dang’an ziliao huibian (中华民国史档案资料汇编), 5 series (Nanjing, China: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1979–1999), the major collection published by the Second Historical Archives, containing documents and letters covering the whole of the republican period up to 1949. Topically divided into politics, culture, economy, foreign relations, military, education, and so on.
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Zhonghua minguo shishi jiyao (中华民国史事纪要). Taibei: Zhonghua minguo shiliao yanjiu zhongxin, 1971–.
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Huge collection of documents, organized chronologically (often two volumes per year). One of many such books that would be much more useful with an index.
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Published Collections of Materials Originating outside China

Some published collections are also available that originate in countries other than China. The Japanese have been as active as the Chinese in producing large series of historical materials, and, on the frequent occasions when Japanese and Chinese history have overlapped, these are important sources for the study of Chinese history as well; Gendai shi shiryō is one of the most relevant series. Jarman 2001 is a limited but extensive published set of British documents, while Foreign Relations of the United States is a now-online repository of published versions of diplomatic documents from the US State Department.

Foreign Relations of the United States. US Department of State.
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Online version of printed collections of documents from the US Department of State. Full text searchable and freely accessible. Some volumes (mainly in the 1940s) deal specifically with China, in others China is included in volumes on the “Far East.”
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Gendai shi shiryō (現代史資料). Tokyo: Misuzu shobō, 1962–1973.
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Massive collection of often-classified materials on modern Japanese history (1921–1945). Particularly important for Chinese history are Volumes 7 and 11 (Manchurian Incident), 31–33 (South Manchurian Railway), 21–22 (Taiwan), and 1–10 and 12–13 (Sino-Japanese War).
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Jarman, Robert L., ed. China Political Reports, 1911–1960. 11 vols. Slough, UK: Archive Editions, 2001.
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Eleven volumes of both published and confidential documents on Chinese politics from the British foreign office, centrally the annual reports by British diplomatic representatives.
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Visual Sources

Photographic images are an important resource for the study of republican China, perhaps particularly for social history, but there are also photographs of key political personalities and events. Henriot and Yeh 2013 provides an examination of how they can contribute to the study of modern Chinese history. Many of the collections are published in China, often, unfortunately, with poor quality reproduction; Feng 1996– is the largest of these. Two websites in Europe are examples of innovative ways to make available and present visual images: Christian Henriot’s site Virtual Shanghai: Shanghai Urban Space in Time and Visualising China: China 1850–1950; An Interactive Resource.

Feng Keli 冯克力, ed. Lao zhaopian (老照片). 96 vols. Jinan, China: Shandong huabao chubanshe, 1996–.
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Massive collection of historical photographs, covering a very wide range of topics. Unfortunately, particularly in the earlier volumes, the quality of reproduction leaves something to be desired. Photographs often linked to short biographical or autobiographical articles.
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Henriot, Christian, ed. Virtual Shanghai: Shanghai Urban Space in Time.
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Large number of old photographs and maps of Shanghai. Also includes documents and essays.
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Henriot, Christian, and Wen-hsin Yeh, eds. Visualising China, 1845–1965: Moving and Still Images in Historical Narratives. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2013.
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Not itself a repository of visual sources, but a collection of essays that examines the question “how can historians use visual documents as sources for research and analysis” (p. viii) in modern Chinese history. Attempts to go beyond the idea of the “colonial gaze” in European photographs. Also deals with women and home in images, advertising and propaganda posters, and movies and cinema.
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Visualising China: China 1850–1950: An Interactive Resource.
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Site of the “Historical Photographs of China” project at Bristol University, as well as of other collections. Includes more than eight thousand images of China in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Most, though not all, originate in British collections.
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Journals

There are several journals devoted to the study of modern China in general, for many of which republican China is a focus. Among English-language periodicals, Modern China and Twentieth-Century China have the best coverage of the period, and Modern Asian Studies also publishes important work. Jindaishi yanjiu and Jindai Zhongguo are the leading publications in China, and the Journal of Modern Chinese History and Frontiers of History in China make available in English some of the work published in China. Until 2011, Chikaki ni Arite carried much of the interesting work in Japan. In early-21st-century China and Japan, however, mainstream historical journals are more likely to include papers on modern Chinese history. The same is increasingly true in the West.

Chikaki ni Arite (近きに在りて). 1981–2011.
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With an official English title of “Being Nearby—Discussions on Modern China,” this journal was a forum for the newer generation of Japanese China scholars. It has ceased publication on the grounds that its initial aims have been fulfilled.
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Frontiers of History in China. 2006–.
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Covers all periods of Chinese history, but there are many articles on the republican period.
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Jindaishi yanjiu (近代史研究). 1979–.
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Flagship of the Institute of Modern History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in Beijing, this is the top venue for the publication of work on republican China by Chinese scholars. Tables of contents are available online.
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Jindai Zhongguo (近代中国). 1991–.
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Published on a somewhat irregular basis since 1991, in Shanghai. Contains important work both in original Chinese and translated from Western languages.
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Journal of Modern Chinese History. 2007–.
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Published by Routledge for the Institute of Modern History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, this English-language journal gives access largely to Chinese scholarship on modern Chinese history. Also contains short English-language reviews (not excessively critical) of major monographs published in China.
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Modern Asian Studies. 1967–.
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Published by Cambridge University Press, this top-ranking journal is best known for work on Indian history, but 19th- and 20th-century China is a secondary focus.
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Modern China. 1975–.
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This has long been the leading journal for publication on republican China. Particularly in its earlier years, this journal had the reputation of showcasing the work of more radical scholars. In the early 21st century a larger proportion of articles have been on post-1949 China.
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Twentieth-Century China. 1983–.
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Formerly Republican China (1983–2004), this publication has developed into a full-fledged academic journal and a very valuable site for work on republican China.
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Long-Term Trends

The topical subsections here deal with social and political trends that span the whole of the republican period, whereas the next section addresses more specific events and periods. The role of Chinese nationalism and the building of a strong state can be seen to have been key trends throughout and beyond the republican period. Changes in other areas of life, such as political thought, the economy, and society, continued throughout the period, influenced, but not completely determined, by political developments. Finally, there were major continuities in the ways that Chinese governments and diplomats attempted to protect China’s interests vis-à-vis foreign powers.

Chinese Nationalism

The rise of nationalism, from the late 19th century, has been perhaps the central story in modern Chinese history. The dominant paradigm in the West has portrayed China as moving from culturalism, in which the loyalties of the elite were to civilization (Confucianism), even at the expense of the nation, to “nationalism,” in which the elite were prepared to discard traditional culture in order to save the nation. Levenson 1967 is the most influential exposition of this view, which originates with the Chinese political philosopher Liang Qichao, whereas Harrison 2001 embodies a more recent and more cautious treatment. Duara 1995 and Duara 2009 represent contributions from the most important scholar operating from a cultural studies standpoint. Fitzgerald 1996 is an analysis of the emergence of national and class consciousness in the 1920s that has been very influential both in the West and in China. Unger 1996 brings together important essays on nationalism, including contributions by Duara and Fitzgerald. Van de Ven 2003 looks at the important military dimension of nationalism, for instance, taking the Nationalists’ military capabilities more seriously.

Duara, Prasenjit. Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226167237.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Emphasizes tensions between the territorial conception of nation and other visions, based on class, religion, or race; focuses on changing and partial identities, not cohesive totalities. Even in China, countervailing trends threaten the centralized nation-state.
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Duara, Prasenjit. The Global and Regional in China’s Nation-Formation. Critical Asian Scholarship. London and New York: Routledge, 2009.
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Examines issues of imperialism and Chinese nationalism in a global and regional (especially Sino-Japanese) perspective, from a cultural, or constructionist, viewpoint. Strongly influenced by world systems theory. Introduces the concept of hegemonic modernity—modernity not as an objective condition, but as a conception of time as linear and progressive.
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Fitzgerald, John. Awakening China: Politics, Culture, and Class in the Nationalist Revolution. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996.
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Prize-winning work that uses the concept of awakening to probe the emergence of national and class consciousness in China, mainly during the 1920s, moving from spontaneous awakening to awakening manufactured by political parties.
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Harrison, Henrietta. China. Inventing the Nation. London: Arnold, 2001.
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The best introduction to recent thinking on the development of Chinese nationalism. Questions the culturalism paradigm for premodern China. Following Benedict Anderson’s idea of nations as “imagined communities,” explores the construction of the Chinese nation as well as the conflict between Chinese nationalism and imperialism.
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Levenson, Joseph R. Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and the Mind of Modern China. 2d ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.
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Liang Qichao 梁启超 was China’s foremost political thinker in the early 20th century. His distinction between tianxia (天下) (the world) and guo[jia] (国[家]) (nation), and the related concepts of culturalism and nationalism (pp. 108–120), have long been crucial to our understanding of modern Chinese nationalism.
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Unger, Jonathan, ed. Chinese Nationalism. Contemporary China Papers. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996.
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Important collection of essays on Chinese nationalism. James Townsend critiques the culturalism-to-nationalism thesis, whereas Prasenjit Duara tries to separate nationalism from the nation-state, and John Fitzgerald looks at the state’s use of nationalism over the years. Lucien Pye and Wang Gung-wu deal with tensions between nationalism and modernization.
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van de Ven, Hans. War and Nationalism in China, 1925–1945. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003.
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Argues that our flawed perception of Nationalist military incompetence stems from Joseph Stilwell’s Orientalist view and excessive belief in military offense. Focuses on domestic mobilization against Japan and contends that the military and military spirit were important in modern China, whereas Chiang Kai-shek’s military thought reflected Chinese tradition and the geopolitical situation.
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State Building

As suggested in the Introduction, scholars are increasingly coming to see a continuing process of state building as covering much of the early 20th century. The establishment of a strong state in 1949 did not come out of a vacuum. Most studies have focused on the state-building activities of the Nationalist regime during the Nanjing decade and the war, as does Tien 1972 and, more recently, Strauss 1998 and Kirby 2000. Some have seen the process as extending back into the warlord period or beyond, with Duara 1988 introducing the idea of “state involution.”

Duara, Prasenjit. Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900–1942. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988.
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Discusses the state’s institution-building activities in rural North China in the early 20th century. These were closely linked with nation building. Emphasizes the role of the warlords, but argues that much of the state-building activity was “involutionary,” in that increasing amounts of resources generated decreasing outcomes.
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Kirby, William C. “Engineering China: Birth of the Developmental State, 1928–1937.” In Becoming Chinese: Passages to Modernity and Beyond. Edited by Wen-hsin Yeh, 137–160. Studies on China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520219236.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A very influential short paper locating the origins of many features of the post-1949 state in the Nanjing period. Focuses on planning and engineering. Uses Nanjing city planning, electricity construction, collaboration with the League of Nations, and the education of engineers as examples.
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Strauss, Julia C. Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: State Building in Republican China, 1927–1940. Studies on Contemporary China. Oxford: Clarendon, 1998.
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Stresses the importance of the republican period, especially 1927–1940, for establishing the institutional foundations of the later Chinese state. Case studies of the Examination Yuan, Salt Inspectorate, and Ministries of Finance and Foreign Affairs. The success of institutions depended on their degree of insulation from a hostile political environment.
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Tien, Hung-mao. Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, 1927–1937. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1972.
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The most accessible general analysis of the Guomindang state in the Nanjing decade. Identifies key trends as militarization, the increase in importance of factions that were clients of Chiang, and a move toward fascism. Control over the provinces was only possible through compromise, and little progress was made with socioeconomic reform.
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Political Thought

Western scholars in particular have been concerned to find elements of democracy, liberalism, and freedom in Chinese political thought during the republican period. These are seen as a counterpoint to the rise to dominance of Marxism and the closure of minds in China under Mao Zedong. Levenson 1958–1965 is a stimulating and still influential overview of the dilemmas facing Chinese intellectuals in modern China. Fung 2000 and Fung 2010 both deal with non-Marxist thought in republican China. Furth 1976 focuses more on the conservative alternatives to revolutionary ideas, Lynch, et al. 2011, on the radical tradition. The success of Chinese societies in Southeast Asia also led to a broader interest in Confucian ideas about running society, and Metzger 2005 is an extended investigation of these issues. Chinese concerns have tended to be a bit different, and Wang 2014 is a translation of the first volume of a highly influential four-volume history of modern Chinese thought written in China. Likewise, Xu 2000 contains many articles by leading Chinese historians dealing with different aspects of that history.

Fung, Edmund S. K. In Search of Chinese Democracy: Civil Opposition in Nationalist China, 1929–1949. Cambridge Modern China. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511471018Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Traces the history of Chinese thinking on democracy and human rights through the republican period and the Sinification of democratic ideas. Although Chinese thinkers were always concerned with the need for a strong state to save the nation, Fung denies an irreconcilable contradiction between enlightenment and national salvation.
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Fung, Edmund S. K. The Intellectual Foundations of Chinese Modernity: Cultural and Political Thought in the Republican Era. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511730139Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Fung’s focus on modernity echoes debates within China as well as in the West. Liberal, conservative, and socialist thought all responded to the crisis of China’s modernization. The links and interactions between the three types of thought were complex and overlapping.
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Furth, Charlotte, ed. The Limits of Change: Essays on Conservative Alternatives in Republican China. Papers presented at a conference held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on intellectuals and the problem of conservatism in republican China, 1972. Harvard East Asian Series 84. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976.
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Pioneering collection of essays on conservative thought in republican China, which has attracted much less attention than radical or revolutionary thought. Covers, among others, Liu Shipei 刘师培, Zhang Binglin 章炳麟, Liang Shuming 梁漱溟, Tao Xisheng 陶希聖, and Zhou Zuoren 周作人. Argues that, particularly in China, conservatism was mainly a cultural and intellectual conservatism.
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Levenson, Joseph R. Confucian China and Its Modern Fate. 3 vols. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958–1965.
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Stimulating—even dizzying—intellectual tour de force on late imperial and modern Chinese intellectual history. Three volumes deal with intellectual continuity, monarchical decay, and historical significance. Has been superseded in many details, but is still influential.
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Lynch, Catherine, Robert B. Marks, and Paul G. Pickowicz, eds. Radicalism, Revolution, and Reform in Modern China: Essays in Honor of Maurice Meisner. AsiaWorld. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2011.
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Collection of articles on China’s radical tradition. Discusses early-20th-century radical thinkers and the results of the implementation of their ideas. Calls for a renewed interest in Chinese radical thought as a corrective to the pervasive perception of the “rise of China.”
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Metzger, Thomas A. A Cloud across the Pacific: Essays on the Clash between Chinese and Western Political Theories Today. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2005.
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Long, complex, and sophisticated analysis from a generally conservative viewpoint. Many essays examine leading Chinese (Tang Junyi 唐君毅, Hu Guoheng 胡國亨, Ambrose King 金耀基, and Yang Guoshu 杨国枢) and Western (John Dunn, Friedrich Hayek, and John Rawls) thinkers. Strong interest in modern Confucian humanism.
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Wang Hui 汪晖. China from Empire to Nation-State. Translated by Michael Gibbs Hill. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014.
DOI: 10.4159/harvard.9780674736306Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Translation of first volume of Wang’s Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi (现代中国思想的兴起), (4 vols., Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2004). Wang is one of China’s foremost public intellectuals and intellectual historians, and is widely associated with the “new left.” The book examines questions such as the meanings of “China” and “modern” in relation to modern Chinese identity.
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Xu Jilin 许纪霖, ed. Ershi shiji Zhongguo sixiang shilun (二十世纪中国思想史论). 2 vols. Shanghai: Dongfang chuban zhongxin, 2000.
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Very important collection of articles on 20th-century Chinese thought by leading Chinese intellectuals. Sections on May Fourth, major concepts, key debates, intellectual trends, liberalism, cultural conservatism, and radicalism.
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Economic Trends

The economy is covered in much more detail in a separate article on Economy, 1895–1937. This section just lists the key English-language surveys. Feuerwerker 1995 and Rawski 1989 are the two best starting points for understanding the republican economy, and Liu and Yeh 1965 offers the strongest quantitative analysis of the economy as a whole.

Feuerwerker, Albert. The Chinese Economy, 1870–1949. Michigan Monographs in Chinese Studies 71. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1995.
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Although the essay on Republican China was first published in 1977, Feuerwerker’s work remains as good and balanced a survey of the period as exists.
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Liu, Ta-chung, and Kung-chia Yeh. The Economy of the Chinese Mainland: National Income and Economic Development, 1933–1959. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965.
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The most thorough quantitative study of China’s economy before the war. Based on the work of earlier Chinese scholars and especially the extensive survey of industry in 1933.
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Rawski, Thomas G. Economic Growth in Prewar China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.
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Argues not only that industry experienced substantial growth before the war, but also that the agricultural sector and the farm living standards also grew measurably, even in per capita terms.
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Social Transformations

Perhaps paradoxically, given that more than 80 percent of China’s people lived in rural areas, there has been more work published in English on urban than on rural society during the republican period. Partly, this no doubt reflects that the cities changed more and that there were fewer (though still substantial) regional differences in urban society. Shanghai has been a particular focus of study, representing the advance of the “modern” in China, as shown in Bergère 2009 and Lee 1999. Strand 1989 examines Beijing, whereas Esherick 2000 contains essays on a wide range of cities. Bianco 2001 is one of the few general rural studies, though even in this work the emphasis is on the political (peasant movements and uprisings) rather than social change. Gender issues were also more central to the Chinese revolution than elsewhere, and there have been several important studies. Leutner and Spakowski 2005 specifically looks at the republican period. Finally, Cochran and Hsieh 1983 presents a “one day in” perspective.

Bergère, Marie-Claire. Shanghai: China’s Gateway to Modernity. Translated by Janet Lloyd. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009.
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English translation of Histoire de Shanghai, originally published in 2002 (Paris: Fayard). A major work by a leading French scholar on Shanghai, strongest for the late 19th century and republican period. Shanghai played a key role in the definition of Chinese modernity, partly, but not wholly, because of the foreign presence.
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Bianco, Lucien. Peasants without the Party: Grass-Roots Movements in Twentieth-Century China. Asia and the Pacific. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2001.
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Study of 20th-century peasants and peasant movements by leading French scholar. Argues that tax was a more important cause of peasant unrest than were class issues, such as rent. Most disturbances were reactive rather than actively revolutionary.
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Cochran, Sherman, and Andrew C. K. Hsieh, trans. and eds. One Day in China: May 21, 1936. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983.
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An attempt to capture a snapshot of the lives of ordinary people on one day. Mao Dun, the editor of the original collection, went on to become minister of culture in the People’s Republic of China. Strong presence of politics throughout the collection, in terms of reaction to authority, opposition to the Japanese, and intellectual disdain for popular religion.
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Esherick, Joseph W., ed. Remaking the Chinese City: Modernity and National Identity, 1900–1950. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2000.
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Collection of essays discussing many Chinese cities in the context of modernity. Urban reforms were the most successful aspects of China’s modernization. Covers the large cities of East China, which were often under foreign influence, as well as railway, tourist, industrial, and frontier cities. Similar reforms were instituted in most cities.
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Lee, Leo Ou-fan. Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930–1945. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1999.
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Pioneering work on the emergence of modern urban culture, particularly in Shanghai. Part 1 examines the urban cultural context, including print culture, cinema, and literary journals. Part 2 focuses on a group of modern writers, including Shi Zhecun 施蛰存, Liu Na’ou 劉吶鷗, and Eileen Chang 张爱玲. An epilogue compares Hong Kong and Shanghai.
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Leutner, Mechthild, and Nicola Spakowski, eds. Women in China: The Republican Period in Historical Perspective. Papers presented at “Women in Republican China,” held at the Free University of Berlin in October 2002. Berliner China-Studien 44. Münster, Germany: Lit Verlag, 2005.
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Major collection of scholarship on women in republican China. Contains sections on theory and methodology, women and the state, political women, little traditions, women in society, and the economy and education.
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Strand, David. Rickshaw Beijing: City People and Politics in the 1920s. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.
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A pioneering work in the field of Chinese urban history and still one of the best studies. Identifies a lively, though fragile, public sphere in which many different social groups were able to express their interests. Civil society began increasingly to deteriorate in the late 1920s, with the rise of the Nationalist state.
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Foreign Relations

Although Kirby 2000 argues that China’s international relations under the republican government were a success story, nevertheless defensive measures against imperialism (first British and then, increasingly, Japanese) were a major concern for most of the period. Iriye 1965 and Coble 1991 look at different aspects of Sino-Japanese relations before the war. Relations with other major powers are examined in Fung 1991 (Great Britain), Kirby 1984 (Germany), Leong 1976 and Garver 1988 (the Soviet Union), and Cohen 2010 (the United States). Edmund S. K Fung and Sow-Theng Leong focus on diplomatic history, whereas the other authors have taken a broader, “international history” approach, including cultural, social, and economic factors.

Coble, Parks M. Facing Japan: Chinese Politics and Japanese Imperialism, 1931–1937. Harvard East Asian Monograph 135. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1991.
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Leading study of the role of Sino-Japanese relations in the 1930s in Chinese politics. Analyzes tensions between accommodation and resistance. The Japanese threat created national unity, but Chiang’s focus on defeating the Communists meant that he could not harness popular nationalism. Japan’s focus on anti-Communism strengthened the appeal of the Communists.
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Cohen, Warren I. America’s Response to China: A History of Sino-American Relations. 5th ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.
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From the American rather than Chinese point of view, and covering a much longer period, this is nevertheless the standard work on US-Chinese relations.
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Fung, Edmund S. K. The Diplomacy of Imperial Retreat: Britain’s South China Policy, 1924–1931. East Asian Historical Monographs. Hong Kong, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
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One of a series of important works by a leading historian of Sino-British diplomatic relations. Sees the 1920s as a turning point in the decline of British imperialism. Great Britain’s interests in China were not core to its economic well-being, enabling it to make a strategic retreat from informal imperialism.
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Garver, John W. Chinese-Soviet Relations, 1937–1945: The Diplomacy of Chinese Nationalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
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Study of relations between Joseph Stalin, Mao, and Chiang in the late 1930s and 1940s. Makes extensive use of English and Chinese archives, interviews, and oral histories. Argues that for all three leaders, nationalist considerations were paramount.
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Iriye, Akira. After Imperialism: The Search for a New Order in the Far East, 1921–1931. Harvard East Asian Series. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965.
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Not solely about China, but highly influential work about the successive (unsuccessful) attempts by the Soviet Union, Japan, and China to develop a new order in East Asia, and in particular a modus vivendi between China and Japan in the aftermath of the Washington Conference of 1921–1922. Focuses on the system rather than individual nations.
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Kirby, William C. Germany and Republican China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1984.
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Classic study of one of China’s most important relationships. From 1921 the two countries interacted on a basis of equality, posing a challenge to other powers. German military assistance and arms sales were key to the relationship, which ended with German support for Japan and China’s declaration of war, in 1941.
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Kirby, William C. “The Internationalization of China: Foreign Relations at Home and Abroad in the Republican Era.” In Reappraising Republican China. Edited by Frederic Wakeman Jr. and Richard Louis Edmonds, 179–204. Studies on Contemporary China. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
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The best short introduction to the period. Argues for China’s diplomatic success in preserving as Chinese most of the Qing Empire and in recovering legal and economic rights within Chinese territory. Extends far beyond foreign relations to take in cultural, military, and political aspects of internationalization.
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Leong, Sow-Theng. Sino-Soviet Diplomatic Relations, 1917–1926. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1976.
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Aims to balance the many studies of the Soviet political influence in China with a diplomatic history of relations between China and the Soviet Union as two powers. Contends that Soviet policy was not revolutionary, but driven by national interest. China’s foreign policy pragmatically sought to maximize the country’s interests.
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Specific Periods, Events, and People

This section covers specific periods, events, and people in republican history. The republican era was chaotic and eventful. The first decade or so was dominated by the aftermath of the 1911 Revolution in China, which established the republic; by the rise of the warlords and the militarization of Chinese society; and by popular movements of nationalism and social change that arose from the New Culture movement and the 4 May 1919 demonstrations against Japan’s gains in the Treaty of Versailles. The 1920s and 1930s saw the emergence of two competing visions for China’s future, that of the Nationalist Party, which was the most important at the time, and that of the Communist Party; these two visions were represented by two leaders: Mao Zedong 毛泽东 and Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) 蒋介石. The last two decades were dominated by the Japanese invasion, starting in Manchuria, in 1931, and spreading to most of the country, beginning in 1937. The Sino-Japanese War enabled the Communist Party to emerge victorious in its struggle with the Nationalists, building up a strong position during the war and then achieving total victory through a brief civil war at the end of the 1940s.

The 1911 Revolution and its Aftermath

The previous understanding of the 1911 revolution, which was focused on Sun Yat-sen (Sun Zhongshan 孙中山 / Sun Yixian孫逸仙 / Sun Wen 孙文), has long since disappeared from Western scholarship, though it remains the dominant and, to some extent, the only narrative in China. Bergère 1998 is the best treatment of Sun. More recently, the emphasis has shifted toward a range of players in the process, most notably the New Army of Yuan Shikai and the increasingly assertive provincial gentry. Pioneering contributions to this approach include Esherick 1976, on the gentry in central China; Fung 1980, on the New Army; and the various chapters that make up Wright 1971. Wang 2011 is an introduction to early-21st-century Chinese work, and Dirlik and Prazniak 2011 offers an interpretative overview on the centenary. Esherick 2013 presents a series of articles focusing on politics and democracy in the context of 1911.

Bergère, Marie-Claire. Sun Yat-sen. Translated by Janet Lloyd. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998.
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English translation of Sun Yat-sen, originally published in 1994 (Paris: Fayard). Tries to strike a balance between politically motivated Chinese historiography and Western debunking of the Sun myth. Sun was a muddled politician and a confused thinker, but at the same time was an excellent communicator with great versatility and ability to cross cultural boundaries, who embodied China in its transition to modernity.
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Dirlik, Arif, and Roxann Prazniak. “The 1911 Revolution: An End and a Beginning.” China Information 25.3 (2011): 213–231.
DOI: 10.1177/0920203X11418247Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Reflections on the centenary of the revolution, emphasizing not only its revolutionary aspects, but also that the revolution has still not been completed. Dirlik is one of the most important and stimulating intellectual historians of the republican period. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Esherick, Joseph W. Reform and Revolution in China: The 1911 Revolution in Hunan and Hubei. Michigan Studies on China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.
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Pioneering study of the 1911 revolution, at the provincial level. Central focus on the growth of gentry power both before and after 1911. Provincial and local elites were strengthened by the revolution.
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Esherick, Joseph W., ed. Special Issue: 1911 and Chinese-Style Democracy. Twentieth Century China 38.3 (October 2013): 210–212.
DOI: 10.1179/1521538513Z.00000000027Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Series of articles on politics and democracy around the 1911 revolution. Includes articles by Joshua Hill on elections and John Fitzgerald on Guangdong county magistrates.
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Fung, Edmund S. K. The Military Dimension of the Chinese Revolution: The New Army and Its Role in the Revolution of 1911. Vancouver, Canada: University of British Columbia Press, 1980.
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Study of the role of the New Army in the events of 1911. Emphasizes its close integration into civilian and mainstream gentry politics.
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Wang, Guo. “The ‘Revolution’ of 1911 Revisited: A Review of Contemporary Studies in China.” China Information 25.3 (2011): 257–274.
DOI: 10.1177/0920203X11422762Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
There have been many works published in China on the 1911 revolution, particularly around the time of its centenary. This article reviews the issues raised in some of the more important ones. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Wright, Mary Clabaugh, ed. China in Revolution: The First Phase, 1900–1913. Papers presented at a research conference at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, August 1965. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1971.
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Influential collection of essays embodying the move away from a focus on Sun Yat-sen. The title nevertheless is redolent of the revolutionary/teleological view of modern Chinese history. Includes articles on the political, sociological, and military aspects of the revolution as well as on its limitations.
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The Warlords

While Dikötter 2008 (cited under Historiographical Surveys) attempts to rescue the warlords from their usual bad press, most interpretations of their role still stress the negative side of their role. Pye 1971 and Nathan 1998 are more theoretical attempts to elucidate the nature of warlord politics. McCord 1993 focuses on the factors leading to the militarization of Chinese society in the 1910s. Several of the best works, in particular Sheridan 1966, Gillin 1967, and McCormack 1977, are biographies of the major northern warlords. Lary 1974 covers the most important group of southern warlords. McCord 2014 is one of the most recent works on the topic and focuses on central China.

Gillin, Donald G. Warlord: Yen Hsi-shan in Shansi Province, 1911–1949. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967.
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Biography of a North China warlord who, more than others, promoted industrialization in his domain. Yan Xishan (Yen Hsi-shan) 阎锡山 remained, however, a conservative, and his program was the last gasp of the Tongzhi Restoration policies of the 1860s. Yan’s lack of a social base in the peasantry constrained his resistance to the Japanese invasion.
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Lary, Diana. Region and Nation: The Kwangsi Clique in Chinese Politics, 1925–1937. Cambridge Studies in Chinese History, Literature and Institutions. London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974.
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Study of the Guangxi warlords in the Southwest, who were to become particularly important after the partial reunification of the country in 1927 and who remained prominent up to 1949.
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McCord, Edward A. The Power of the Gun: The Emergence of Modern Chinese Warlordism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
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Study of the origins of warlordism in the 1910s. Focuses on Hubei and Hunan. Warlordism was not inevitable and should not simply be traced back to the mid-19th century. Rather, it resulted from the inability of political factions to manage their differences and from their too easy resort to violence.
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McCord, Edward A. Military Force and Elite Power in the Formation of Modern China. New York: Routledge, 2014.
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Major recent study of warlord phenomenon, focusing on central China (Hubei and Hunan). Argues for the pervasiveness of war as a theme in the emergence of modern China.
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McCormack, Gavan. Chang Tso-lin in Northeast China, 1911–1928: China, Japan, and the Manchurian Idea. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1977.
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Zhang Zuolin (Chang Tso-lin) 张作霖 was the dominant warlord in Manchuria until his murder in 1928. This is an excellent portrait.
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Nathan, Andrew J. Peking Politics, 1918–1923: Factionalism and the Failure of Constitutionalism. Michigan Monographs in Chinese Studies. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1998.
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Study of the politics of the warlord period by a political scientist. His model of factionalism (leader-centered, dyadically structured, clientalism-based structures) has also been used to examine post-1949 Chinese politics. Factional politics operated within a broad ideological consensus.
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Pye, Lucien W. Warlord Politics: Conflict and Coalition in the Modernization of Republican China. Praeger Library of Chinese Affairs. New York: Praeger, 1971.
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General study of the warlord period by a political theorist. Stresses “realities of power” rather than ideologies. Argues that warlords were, on the whole, rational and pragmatic men operating in a situation of tension between the restoration of a monolithic political structure and a more open style of politics.
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Sheridan, James E. Chinese Warlord: The Career of Feng Yü-hsiang. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1966.
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One of the classic studies of a warlord. Although still using militarist methods, Feng Yuxiang (Feng Yü-hsiang) 冯玉祥 had social reformist aims, influenced by both Confucianism and Christianity. He adopted a personal and paternalist style of rule, flirted with communism but never advocated social revolution, and became increasingly an anachronism.
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The May Fourth and New Culture Movements

Judgments of the May Fourth movement, in particular its New Culture aspect, remain controversial for reasons way beyond history, because the liberal values promoted in the movement are counterposed not only to the patriarchal values of traditional China (the predominant perspective at the time), but also to the authoritarian system of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Thus, Mitter 2004 sees 20th-century Chinese history largely through the lens of responses to those values, whereas from within China, Xu 2009 offers interesting and influential ideas challenging to the orthodoxy, and Wang 2013 examines the relationship between culture and politics. Chow 1967 has been the classic work on the movement, and Lin 1979 and Schwarcz 1986 have been controversial interpretations focusing, respectively, on the complete rejection of Chinese tradition and on the movement as a Chinese version of the European enlightenment. Wang 2010 translates Chinese articles that explore early-21st-century views of the movement in the PRC. Chow, et al. 2008 attempts to question the centrality of the May Fourth narrative to modern Chinese history.

Chow, Tse-tsung. The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1967.
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The classic study of the movement, by a participant, albeit a minor one. Covers nationalism and the 4 May 1919 demonstrations as well as the broader New Culture movement. Concludes that it was basically an intellectual movement of awakening aimed at preserving the nation. Individual emancipation was a means of saving the nation.
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Chow, Kai-Wing, Tze-ki Hon, Hung-yok Ip, and Don C. Price, eds. Beyond the May Fourth Paradigm: In Search of Chinese Modernity. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2008.
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Argues that the May Fourth movement’s role has been exaggerated in our understanding of China’s turn from tradition to modernity. Part of a general trend away from macronational narratives, the essays focus on earlier stirrings of modernity as well as on historical figures excluded from the May Fourth narrative.
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Lin, Yü-sheng. The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness: Radical Antitraditionalism in the May Fourth Era. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979.
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A stimulating, though controversial, interpretation of the movement. Argues that the Confucian view of society as a totality and of the importance of conscious ideas informed the totalistic rejection of Chinese tradition by the May Fourth thinkers. Totalistic iconoclasm was to make way for total acceptance of Western philosophies.
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Mitter, Rana. A Bitter Revolution: China’s Struggle with the Modern World. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
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A cultural and social history of modern China, arguing that the May Fourth ideas run like a thread through modern Chinese politics. Focuses on the idea that traditional culture prevented China from creating a modern state and addressing issues such as the oppression of women and callous treatment of the poor.
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Schwarcz, Vera. The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
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Stimulating analysis of the aftermath of the May Fourth movement as a Chinese version of the European enlightenment. Traces the careers of some participants and analyzes the tension between national salvation (jiuguo, 救国) and enlightenment (qimeng, 启蒙). Consciously interacts with later history and contemporary affairs.
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Wang, Q. Edward, ed. Special Issue: The May Fourth Movement: Ninety Years After. Chinese Studies in History 43.4 (2010).
DOI: 10.2753/CSH0009-4633430400Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Special issue of Chinese Studies in History containing translated early-21st-century Chinese studies of the May Fourth movement. Articles available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Wang Hui 汪晖. “The Transformation of Culture and Politics: War, Revolution and the ‘Thought Warfare’ of the 1910s.” Twentieth Century China 38.1 (January 2013): 5–33.
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Important study of the relationship between culture and politics in the eyes of Chinese intellectuals responding to the First World War. Concentrates on the journal Dongfang zazhi 东方杂志 (Eastern miscellany). Wang develops his ideas more fully in his Wenhua yu zhengzhi de bianzou: Yizhan he Zhongguo de “sixiang zhan” (文化与政治的变奏:一战和中国的“思想史”) (Shanghai: Renmin chubanshe, 2014).
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Xu Jilin 许纪霖. “Historical Memories of May Fourth: Patriotism, but of What Kind?.” China Heritage Quarterly 17 (March 2009).
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English translation of “‘Wusi’ de lishi jiyi: Shenme yang de aiguozhuyi?” (五四”的历史记忆:什么样的爱国主义), originally published in 2009, in Dushu (读书) 5: 3–14. Xu is one of the most respected and thoughtful of China’s intellectual historians as well as being a noted public intellectual.
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Early History of the Communist Party

A focus on what was, in the early 1920s, a group of a few dozen students can be criticized as reflecting the teleological view of republican history. Nevertheless, later events have meant that there is a substantial literature on the Communist Party before its ascent to power. Van de Ven 1991 covers the very earliest period, at the beginning of the 1920s. Schwartz 1967 remains the classic intellectual history of the rise and Sinification of communism, and Meisner 1967 emphasizes one of the two founders, also from an intellectual point of view. Chesneaux 1968 takes a more social, and Smith 2002, a more political point of view in examining relations with the workers in the 1920s, whereas Polachek 1983 looks at the Communists’ appeal to the peasants from a “moral economy” perspective.

Chesneaux, Jean. The Chinese Labor Movement, 1919–1927. Translated by H. M. Wright. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1968.
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English translation of Le mouvement ouvrier chinois de 1919 à 1927, originally published in 1962 (Paris: Mouton). The first part surveys the situation of the Chinese working class in 1919, the next two, the labor movement up to 1924 and 1924–1927, respectively. A classic of modern Chinese history, though some have criticized it for prioritizing class over other allegiances.
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Meisner, Maurice. Li Ta-chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism. Harvard East Asian Series. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967.
DOI: 10.4159/harvard.9780674180819Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Intellectual study of Li Dazhao (Li Ta-chao) 李大钊, one of the two founders of the Chinese Communist Party. Concentrates on theory rather than politics and on the adaptation of Marxist theory to Chinese reality. Traces the origins of Maoist voluntarism and nationalism to Li’s thought.
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Polachek, James M. “The Moral Economy of the Kiangsi Soviet, 1928–1934.” Journal of Asian Studies 42.4 (1983): 805–829.
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One of the most thorough attempts to apply the concept of moral economy to the Chinese revolution. Concludes that there was not one but several competing crisis-averting arrangements in prerevolutionary Jiangxi. The many different arrangements also complicated any attempt by revolutionaries to mobilize peasants to protect the moral economy. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Schwartz, Benjamin I. Chinese Communism and the Rise of Mao. 2d ed. New York: Harper and Row, 1967.
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This study by one of the leading intellectual historians of China remains a classic treatment of issues such as the Sinification of Marxism and the switch from the workers to the peasants.
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Smith, S. A. Like Cattle and Horses: Nationalism and Labor in Shanghai, 1895–1927. Comparative and International Working-Class History. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002.
DOI: 10.1215/9780822380863Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Major study of the labor movement in the 1920s. Concludes that the Communist Party was only successful in mobilizing the workers when it linked nationalism to class politics; this is reminiscent of Johnson 1962 (cited under the Rise of the Communist Movement in the Sino-Japanese War) work on the peasants.
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van de Ven, Hans J. From Friend to Comrade: The Founding of the Chinese Communist Party, 1920–1927. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
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Examination of the Communist Party’s development from a group of friends to a mass political party. Marxism-Leninism was a mode of communication and a device for legitimation as well as a political and economic theory. Emphasizes the role of Chinese students and intellectuals over that of the Russians and the Comintern.
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The Nationalists and the Nanjing Decade

Partly because of the teleological view of republican history, the dominant perception of the history of the Nationalist Party (Guomindang) before 1949 has been one of failure (in contrast to its stunning success in Taiwan after 1949). Any failure resulted in part from the massive challenge of the Japanese invasion, but from 1927 to 1937 the Nationalist government at least partly controlled a substantial portion of China, and its record in this period is more open to debate. Eastman 1990 represents a generally negative view, whereas Sih 1970, although to some extent a politically motivated work of apologetics, nevertheless presents evidence for a more positive evaluation. Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo Minguo shi yanjiushi 2006 offers a range of views (mainly, but not only, Chinese) on China in the 1930s, whereas Yang 2007 addresses a wide range of issues, mostly focused on personalities, relating to the Nanjing government. As shown in Wakeman 2000, the relationship between the Guomindang and fascism has been controversial both in China and in the West. Ferlanti 2010 looks at the famous New Life movement, and Coble 1986 is an important examination of the relationship between the Nationalist government and the capitalist class.

Coble, Parks M., Jr. The Shanghai Capitalists and the Nationalist Government, 1927–1937. 2d ed. Harvard East Asian Monograph 94. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1986.
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Very important book on the Shanghai capitalists. Rejects the thesis that there was an alliance between the Nanjing government and the capitalists. Rather than promoting development, the Nationalist state was essentially an autonomous force based on the military, ruling in its own interests.
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Eastman, Lloyd E. The Abortive Revolution: China under Nationalist Rule, 1927–1937. Harvard East Asian Monograph 153. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1990.
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A still highly influential work on the Nanjing decade. Quotes Chiang, in 1932, on the “failure” of the revolution and examines the causes of that failure. Emphasizes corruption and repression, even before 1937. Three chapters deal with political thought (fascism and the Blue Shirts, competing models of government, and social traits and political behavior, respectively).
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Ferlanti, Federica. “The New Life Movement in Jiangxi Province, 1934–1938.” Modern Asian Studies 44.5 (2010): 961–1000.
DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X0999028XSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Study of the most prominent political movement in the Nanjing period. Analyzes the role of anti-Communism, Christianity, and state Confucianism in the movement, which was a significant part of state building in the 1930s and beyond. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Sih, Paul K. T., ed. The Strenuous Decade: China’s Nation-Building Efforts, 1927–1937. Asia in the Modern World 9. Jamaica, NY: St. John’s University Press, 1970.
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Although this may seem a politically inspired work, it contains several good survey chapters, including ones on international relations, political development in the Nanjing decade, currency modernization (by the former head of the Bank of China), agriculture (by John Lossing Buck and Tsung-han Shen), industrial development, railway construction, and education.
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Wakeman, Frederic, Jr. “A Revisionist View of the Nanjing Decade: Confucian Fascism.” In Reappraising Republican China. Edited by Frederic Wakeman Jr. and Richard Louis Edmonds, 141–178. Studies on Contemporary China. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
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A study of fascist elements in the Nanjing decade, in the form of the (previously secret) Lixingshe 力行社, formed among graduates of Whampoa Military Academy, and its more open affiliates, the Fuxingshe 复兴社 and the Blue Shirts. These organizations involved elements of European fascism and Chinese Neo-Confucianism.
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Yang Tianshi 杨天石. Jiang Jieshi yu Nanjing guomin zhengfu (蒋介石与南京国民政府). Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2007.
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A collection of essays by one of China’s leading historians of republican China and especially of Jiang Jieshi (Chiang). Includes many short articles on specific events and people plus longer analyses of Jiang’s policy toward Japan before 1937, Hu Hanmin 胡汉民, and Kong Xiangxi 孔祥熙.
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Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo Minguo shi yanjiushi 中国社会科学院近代史研究所民国史研究室. Yijiusanling niandai de Zhongguo (一九三0年代的中国). 2 vols. Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2006.
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One of a series of publications (there are also volumes for the 1910s, 1920s, and 1940s). Product of a Chinese Academy of Social Sciences international conference. Some chapters are by international scholars, but most are by Chinese. Covers the major aspects of the period and represents some of the more recent Chinese scholarship.
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Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek

Chinese history, in the 20th century, was dominated by two opposing figures: Mao, at the head of the Communist Party, and, to a lesser extent, Chiang Kai-shek, as his opposite, heading the Nationalist Party. There is a very large literature on Mao, without coming to a clear conclusion, whereas Chiang remains seriously understudied. On Mao, Cheek 2010 offers an accessible guide to scholarly analyses of different aspects of Mao’s life and thought. Chang and Halliday 2005 is by far the most high-profile biography of Mao, though readers are recommended to read Benton and Lin 2010 as well. But, many believe that Short 2000 is still the best accessible biography. An important recent contribution that uses Russian archives is Pantsov and Levine 2012. Benton 2008 is a large collection of academic articles, mostly by scholars in the West, about Mao and his role. The availability of Chiang’s diaries, beginning in the early 21st century, has been a boon to his biographers, as shown in Taylor 2009, in the West, and Yang 2008, in China.

Benton, Gregor, ed. Mao Zedong and the Chinese Revolution. 4 vols. Routledge Library of Modern China. London and New York: Routledge, 2008.
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Four-volume compilation, largely of previously published articles and chapters on Mao and China, dealing with Mao’s political career pre-1949 and 1949–1976, Mao and Marxism, and (mainly posthumous) assessments of Mao. Calls for complexity, ambiguity, and multidimensionality in our views of Mao.
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Benton, Gregor, and Lin Chun, eds. Was Mao Really a Monster? The Academic Response to Chang and Halliday’s Mao: The Unknown Story. London and New York: Routledge, 2010.
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Collection of (mostly unfavorable) academic reviews of Chang and Halliday 2005. Reviews of Chang and Halliday’s work by China academics were generally less positive than those by nonacademic public intellectuals in other fields.
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Chang, Jung, and Jon Halliday. Mao: The Unknown Story. London: Jonathan Cape, 2005.
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Extremely controversial biography of Mao. Uses interview and archival (especially Russian) materials unavailable to, or unused by, other scholars. However, the scholarly practice is slipshod, and the interpretation, one-dimensional. Nevertheless, cannot be ignored, though readers should also consult Benton and Lin 2010.
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Cheek, Timothy, ed. A Critical Introduction to Mao. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511781476Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Written for the intelligent nonspecialist, these essays by leading Mao scholars include contributions by Joseph W. Esherick, on China’s 20th-century revolutions; Brantly Womack and Hans J. van de Ven, on Mao’s republican-period career; Delia Davin, on Mao and gender; and Xiao Yanzhong, on mostly early-21st-century Mao studies in China.
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Pantsov, Alexander V., and Steven I. Levine. Mao: The Real Story. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012.
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Based on Pantsov’s biography of Mao in Russian. Makes very extensive use of Russian archives, while avoiding the tendentiousness of Chang and Halliday 2005.
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Short, Philip. Mao: A Life. New York: Holt, 2000.
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Although written by a journalist, not an academic, Short’s biography is a balanced treatment of Mao that takes into account sources published up to the late 1990s and is a useful counterpoint to Chang and Halliday 2005.
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Taylor, Jay. The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.
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Important biography of Chiang, making extensive use of his diaries. Some feel that the use of the diaries biases the account too much in favor of Chiang. Three parts cover the period on the mainland up to 1949, the fourth, Chiang’s regime in Taiwan after 1949.
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Yang Tianshi 杨天石. Zhaoxun zhenshi de Jiang Jieshi: Jiang Jieshi riji jiedu (找寻真实的蒋介石:蒋介石日记解读). 2 vols. Taiyuan, China: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 2008.
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Searching for the real Jiang Jieshi, on the basis of an explication of the contents of his diaries. These volumes have been influential in the reevaluation of Chiang in the PRC.
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Manchukuo and Japan’s Stake in China

The dominant issue in Chinese history in the 1930s and early 1940s was the conflict with Japan. The occupation of Manchuria, in 1931, represented a steep decline in the Sino–Japanese relationship. It introduced a different, indirect type of colonialism, in which the colonizer pretended to establish a sovereign state (Duara 2003), though this did not stop Manchukuo’s becoming a major focus for burgeoning Chinese nationalism (Mitter 2000). Jie 2008 is a leading treatment from within China. There is also a substantial and high-quality literature written from the Japanese side that engages with problematics in Japanese history and uses mainly, or even exclusively Japanese-language sources, without supporting Japan’s actions. Duus, et al. 1989 and Duus, et al. 1996 are two excellent collections of essays. Matsusaka 2001 and Young 1998 deal with Manchuria up to and from the early 1930s, respectively.

Duara, Prasenjit. Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern. State and Society in East Asia. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003.
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Examines the contradictions between Japanese imperialism and Manchukuo’s formal existence as a nation-state; sophisticated methods of state building could be backed only by a weak territorial identity, having to focus on subnational and transnational identities.
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Duus, Peter, Ramon H. Myers, and Mark R. Peattie, eds. The Japanese Informal Empire in China, 1895–1937. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.
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First-rate collection of essays on trade and investment in China, culture and community, and Japanese experts and subimperialism. A commentary by Albert Feuerwerker discusses what differences there might be if the essays had been written by China-focused historians.
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Duus, Peter, Ramon H. Myers, and Mark R. Peattie, eds. The Japanese Wartime Empire, 1931–1945. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.
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High-quality collection of essays. Part 2 deals with the empire in Northeast Asia, both Manchukuo and, to a lesser extent, China.
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Jie Xueshi 解学诗. Wei Manzhouguo shi xinbian (伪满洲国史新编). Rev. ed. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2008.
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Jie has been the leading scholar on the history of Manchukuo. The book is organized into four basically chorological sections.
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Matsusaka, Yoshihisa Tak. The Making of Japanese Manchuria, 1904–1932. Harvard East Asian Monograph 196. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001.
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Explores Japanese development policies in Manchuria up to 1932. Argues that the early 1930s did not involve a radical break in trend and that many of the later features of both military and economic policy can be traced to the earlier period.
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Mitter, Rana. The Manchurian Myth: Nationalism, Resistance, and Collaboration in Modern China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520221116.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Discusses the realities of the occupation during Manchukuo’s early years, focusing on collaborators, exiles, and resistance fighters. A myth of Chinese resistance to Japan was important in the formation of modern Chinese nationalism, providing both another enemy against which the nation could define itself and a positive model of resistance.
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Young, Louise. Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism. Twentieth-Century Japan 8. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
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Study of the Japanese presence in Manchuria, beginning in 1931, dealing with the military (the Manchurian Incident), economic (colonial development, 1932–1941), and settlement (farm colonization program, 1932–1945) aspects.
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The Sino-Japanese War

The Japanese invasion of China marked the beginning of World War II in Asia (some might date it from the occupation of Manchuria, in 1931). The brutality of, and devastation wrought by, the Japanese attack would provide a crucial backdrop for the victory of the Communist Party and also hang like a cloud over Sino–Japanese relations up to the early 21st century, with perhaps understandably most Chinese works’ focusing on Japanese aggression and atrocities, in particular the Nanjing Massacre of 1937 (see, e.g., Zhang 2005–2010). To some extent, the whole period of the Sino-Japanese and Chinese Civil Wars is, with the exception of works on the rural activities of the Communists, an understudied area. Mitter 2013 is the standard one-volume history of the war. Peattie, et al. 2011 offers a military history, whereas Hsiung and Levine 1992 covers the broader response to the war in China from many angles. Lary and MacKinnon 2001 focuses on the damage done to the Chinese population and MacKinnon, et al. 2007 on local and regional studies. Mitter and Moore 2011 covers a range of issues, with some focus on historiography and memory. As with all occupied countries, the issue of collaboration with the occupiers is a difficult one, and Brook 2005 provides an illuminating analysis.

Brook, Timothy. Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.
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Resistance has been the major theme of studies of China in the war, but there, as elsewhere, collaboration was an important reality. Even more common was an ambiguous stance between resistance and collaboration. Brook tries to avoid moral or nationalistic judgments of complex individual responses to the war.
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Hsiung, James C., and Stephen I. Levine, eds. China’s Bitter Victory: The War with Japan, 1937–1945. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1992.
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Relatively comprehensive set of articles on the Sino-Japanese War, including military, political, foreign policy, economic, and even cultural aspects. Focuses on how China responded to the war.
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Lary, Diana, and Stephen MacKinnon, eds. The Scars of War: The Impact of Warfare on Modern China. Contemporary Chinese Studies. Vancouver, Canada: University of British Columbia Press, 2001.
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Emphasizes the centrality of war and violence in 20th-century Chinese history, but stresses the impact on the civilian population rather than the military events. Four central chapters deal with the Sino-Japanese War, one studies prewar warlordism and atrocities, and two deal with the aftermath in the PRC and Taiwan.
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MacKinnon, Stephen R., Diana Lary, and Ezra F. Vogel, eds. China at War: Regions of China, 1937–1945. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007.
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Set of detailed local studies that reflect the trend in republican history toward an emphasis on the local. But the war brought immense suffering to almost all Chinese people, wherever they were.
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Mitter, Rana. China’s War with Japan, 1937–1945: The Struggle for Survival. London: Allen Lane, 2013.
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The standard history of the war in English. Covers military, diplomatic, political, and social aspects. Argues that Chiang Kai-shek “played an appallingly bad hand much better than might have been expected” (p. 377).
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Mitter, Rana, and Aaron William Moore, eds. Special Issue: China in World War II, 1937–1945: Experience, Memory, and Legacy. Modern Asian Studies 45.2 (2011).
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Series of scholarly articles on memories and legacies of the war. Outcome of a major research project at Oxford University. Includes papers on classifying citizens, fiscal collapse, propaganda, and state building as well as on the historiography of atrocity, language communities, the treatment of veterans, and collective memories of the war. Articles available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Peattie, Mark, Edward Drea, and Hans van de Ven, eds. The Battle for China: Essays on the History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011.
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Much more focused on military history than MacKinnon, et al. 2007 or Hsiung and Levine 1992. Includes both overview articles and detailed analyses of particular armies and war theaters. Questions the “trope of failure” in studies of China in the war. Very useful bibliographical surveys at the end. Companion volumes have been published in Chinese (most edited by Yang Tianshi 杨天石) and Japanese.
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Zhang Xianwen 张宪文, ed. Nanjing da tusha shiliao ji (南京大屠杀史料集). 76 vols. Nanjing, China: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 2005–2010.
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Massive collection of Chinese, Western, and Japanese sources edited in Nanjing, covering all aspects of the Nanjing Massacre.
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The Rise of the Communist Movement in the Sino-Japanese War

The explanation for the Communists’ victory over the Nationalists, in 1949, has been one of the “big” questions in Chinese history. The Cold War interpretation, that it was based on terror or Soviet intervention, or both, is, in the early 21st century, largely discredited, despite the attempt in Chang and Halliday 2005 (cited under Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek) to resuscitate it. Johnson 1962 started the search for a more nuanced understanding, arguing first, that the issue was basically decided during the anti-Japanese war (which is widely, though by no means universally, accepted), and second, that the Communists’ success was due to their nationalist appeal to the peasantry (which remains controversial). In response, Selden 1995 put forward a more social explanation. Bianco 1971 is a brilliant overview that, to some extent, reconciles the two positions. Since the 1980s, scholars have increasingly discarded the master narratives and have focused on the local development of the revolution (“All politics is local,” observed the former US Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill); Chen 1986 is a pioneering example of this approach, to which Hartford and Goldstein 1989 and Saich and van de Ven 1995 also contributed a range of studies. Thaxton 1997 emphasizes the influence of pre-Communist forms of protest. There is much work in China on the topic, most of it from within the Communist Party orthodoxy. One important historian who has stepped out of that orthodoxy with influential work has been Gao Hua, and Gao 2000 is one of his seminal texts.

Bianco, Lucien. Origins of the Chinese Revolution, 1915–1949. Translated by Muriel Bell. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1971.
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English translation of Les origines de la révolution chinoise, 1915–1949, originally published in 1967 (Paris: Gallimard). Brilliant overview by a top French scholar. Accepts part of the “peasant nationalism” view but emphasizes that, although the “national problem” was the immediate catalyst for the Communist Party’s success, the underlying social problem was a necessary condition. Also stresses the importance of military factors.
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Chen, Yung-fa. Making Revolution: The Communist Movement in Eastern and Central China, 1937–1945. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
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Pioneering local study that avoided single-factor answers to the question of how the Communists won the Chinese Civil War and that focused on contingency and the building of political alliances and institutions at the local level. Uses highly specific inner-party sources and foregrounds the Communist Party’s success in penetrating the villages.
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Gao Hua 高华. Hong taiyang shi zenyang shengqi de: Yan’an zhengfeng de lailongqumai (紅太陽是怎樣升起的:延安阵风得来龙去脉). Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2000.
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Gao, who died in 2011, was widely respected, at least outside official circles. This book, which is banned in the PRC, offers a penetrating account of Communist Party history at Yan’an, particularly the Rectification movement of 1942, as a stage in the emergence of Mao as unchallenged leader.
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Hartford, Kathleen, and Steven M. Goldstein, eds. Single Sparks: China’s Rural Revolutions. Studies of the East Asian Institute. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1989.
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A series of essays, mostly on developments at the local level. Reflects the postmodern tendency to deny any teleology toward the victory of the revolution and to look at instead contingent events specific to different localities.
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Johnson, Chalmers A. Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary China, 1937–1945. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962.
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Argues that the Communists won by tailoring their appeal to rising peasant nationalism created by the Japanese invasion (though Johnson fails to identify a mechanism). Few, in the early 21st century, accept this as the sole explanation, but this book moved the debate to a higher level and does provide part of the answer.
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Saich, Tony, and Hans J. van de Ven, eds. New Perspectives on the Chinese Communist Revolution. Papers presented at a conference at the Sinological Institute, Leiden University, and the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, 8–12 January 1990. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1995.
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Important collection representing the then new scholarship on the early history of the Communist Party. A focus on local developments and contingency. Influential chapter by Chen Yung-fa on the significance of opium to the Communists in Yan’an.
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Selden, Mark. China in Revolution: The Yenan Way Revisited. Socialism and Social Movements. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1995.
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Update of The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), a work exploring social factors driving the Chinese revolution (rather than nationalism, as posited by Johnson 1962) and the impact of the revolutionary process on the people. A concluding autocritique lays more emphasis on repressive tendencies, but Selden still finds that social factors were crucial.
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Thaxton, Ralph A., Jr. Salt of the Earth: The Political Origins of Peasant Protest and Communist Revolution in China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
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Major study of peasant protest, based on interviews in a particular locality. Concludes that, in this area, Communist Party mobilization was dependent on preexisting patterns of protest against state oppression. Ironically, the Communist Party was successful by supporting the market against the state.
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The Civil War and the Triumph of the Communist Party

Without the benefit of hindsight, it is much less clear that the Communists were already in a winning position by 1945, and there was much fighting and politicking to do over the next four years. Pepper 1999 is the standard treatment of the broader canvas of the Chinese Civil War (1945–1949), whereas Westad 2003 returns to a more military explanation for the Communist victory. Esherick 1995 is a thoughtful interpretive overview of the entire revolutionary process from a radical scholar.

Esherick, Joseph W. “Ten Theses on the Chinese Revolution.” In Special Issue: Symposium: Rethinking the Chinese Revolution; Paradigmatic Issues in Chinese Studies, Part 4. Edited by Philip C. C. Huang. Modern China 21.1 (1995): 45–76.
DOI: 10.1177/009770049502100103Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An excellent introduction to more recent views of the Chinese revolution by a scholar previously known for his radical views (and always as an excellent historian). Concludes that the revolution involved not liberation, but the “replacement of one form of domination with another” (p. 48). Available online by subscription.
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Pepper, Suzanne. Civil War in China: The Political Struggle, 1945–1949. 2d ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999.
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Classic study of the Chinese Civil War, searching for the reasons for the Communist victory. Part 1 deals with the Nationalists’ weaknesses, particularly in the cities; Part 2, with the Communist Party’s strengths and policies, particularly in the rural areas. Land reform was important, but only in conditions of local security.
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Westad, Odd Arne. Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946–1950. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003.
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Covers the military and political history of the Chinese Civil War, using then newly available Chinese and Soviet archival materials. The key argument is that the outcome had not been decided, as many believed, by 1945, and that the struggle could have gone either way.
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Works of Reportage and Fiction

This article, like Oxford Bibliographies in general, focuses mainly on academic studies. But, sometimes contemporary works of reportage or even fiction can provide insights that are difficult to capture from academic works. In this section a few English-language works that have been particularly illuminating of China’s situation, 1911–1949, are listed. To a criticism that these place too much emphasis on revolutionary trends, the author can only reply that, that is the nature of this literature. Pa 1978 is a fictional account of the family revolution that gives a fascinating insight into the perceptions of young people at the time, whereas Isaacs 1961 is an eyewitness account of the Nationalist–Communist split of the late 1920s. Belden 1970, Peck 2008, and Snow 1994 are all journalistic accounts of China’s situation in the late 1930s and 1940s, focusing on the weaknesses of the Nationalists and the rise of the Communist Party. Hinton 1966 is a classic eyewitness/participant account of the land revolution in a Chinese village.

Belden, Jack. China Shakes the World. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970.
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Reportage from the Nationalist and Communists sides during the Chinese Civil War. Belden’s coverage of rural and gender issues in the Communist areas gives a good picture of what the Communist Party wanted to do and wanted to be seen to be doing.
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Hinton, William. Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village. New York: Vintage, 1966.
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A fascinating observer/participant account of the land revolution in late-1940s North China. A marvelous cast of characters from the village crosses the pages. Hinton was known as a supporter of the revolution, and this book has to be read in that context.
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Isaacs, Harold R. The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution. 2d ed. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1961.
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Classic account of the falling out between the Communists and Nationalists in the late 1920s. Written from a Trotskyist viewpoint that makes Joseph Stalin the villain.
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Pa Chin (Ba Jin 巴金). The Family. Translated by Sidney Shapiro. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1978.
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Originally published in 1933, as Jia (家) (Shanghai: Kaiming Shudian, 1933) (and many subsequent editions). Probably the most influential (though not necessarily the best) 20th-century Chinese novel. Encapsulates the emotions that made up the Chinese family revolution in the aftermath of the May Fourth movement.
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Peck, Graham. Two Kinds of Time. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008.
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Originally published in 1950. Eyewitness account of China in the 1940s, with coverage of both Nationalist and Communist areas. Shows author’s disillusion with the Nationalists. Plea to accord the Chinese revolution the importance it deserves in world history.
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Snow, Edgar. Red Star over China. New York: Grove, 1994.
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Originally published in 1937. The most famous of all the books of reportage, partly because Mao Zedong used the occasion to give Snow his account of his early life.
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