In China in the World, Ban Wang traces the evolution of modern China from the late nineteenth century to the present. With a focus on tensions and connections between national formation and international outlooks, Wang shows how ancient visions persist even as China has adopted and revised the Western nation-state form. The concept of tianxia, meaning "all under heaven," has constantly been updated into modern outlooks that value unity, equality, and reciprocity as key to overcoming interstate conflict, social fragmentation, and ethnic divides. Instead of geopolitical dominance, China's worldviews stem as much from the age-old desire for world unity as from absorbing the Western ideas of the Enlightenment, humanism, and socialism. Examining political writings, literature, and film, Wang presents a narrative of the country's pursuits of decolonization, national independence, notions of national form, socialist internationalism, alternative development, and solidarity with Third World nations. Rather than national exceptionalism, Chinese worldviews aspire to a shared, integrated, and equal world.
Ban Wang is William Haas Professor of Chinese Studies at Stanford University, editor of Chinese Visions of World Order: Tianxia, Culture, and World Politics, also published by Duke University Press, and author of Illuminations from the Past: Trauma, Memory, and History in Modern China.
Series Editor's Foreword vii Acknowledgments xi Introduction: Empire, Nation, and World Vision 1 1. Morality and Global Vision in Kang Youwei's World Community 19 2. Nationalism, Moral Reform, and Tianxia in Liang Qichao 40 3. World Literature in the Mountains 59 4. Art, Politics, and Internationalism in Korean War Films 80 5. National Unity, Ethnicity, and Socialist Utopia in Five Golden Flowers 101 6. The Third World, Alternative Development, and Global Maoism 123 7. The Cold War, Depoliticization, and China in the American Classroom 148 8. Using the Past to Understand the Present 170 Notes 187 Bibliography 201 Index 211
"What is China? How can the Chinese experience be brought to bear on world modernities? In China in the World, Ban Wang compellingly explores the rise and development of modern China in ever-changing cross-cultural contexts. It is an overarching engagement with the issues of self-perception, cultural representation, and transnational communication through the mediums of literature, cinema, and political treatise." - David Der-wei Wang, Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Literature and Comparative Literature, Harvard University "China in the World is an exceptional work in Chinese Studies. Ban Wang shifts focus to China's place in the world and its imagination, presentation, and ideas for itself and the world. Wang's wide vision, deep reading, and consistent conversation between history and reality shape the texture of this brilliant book." - Wang Hui, author of (China's Twentieth Century: Revolution, Retreat, and the Road to Equality) "China in the World is an elegantly efficient volume. . . . I enjoyed reading the clearly articulated arguments and histories presented in China in the World, and I look forward to following the conversations it inspires." - Julia Keblinska (Modern Chinese Culture and Literature)
