What do you think?
Rate this book
The Making of the Modern Chinese State: 1600–1950
The Making of the Modern Chinese 1600–1950 offers an historical analysis of the formation of the modern Chinese state from the seventeenth century to the mid-twentieth centuries, providing refreshing and provocative interpretations on almost every major issue regarding the rise of modern China. This book explores the question of why today’s China is unlike any other nation-state in size and structure. It inquires into the reasons behind the striking continuity in China's territorial and ethnic compositions over the past centuries, and explicates the genesis and tenacity of the Chinese state as a highly centralized and unified regime that has been able to survive into the twenty-first century. Its analysis centres on three key variables, namely geopolitical strategy, fiscal constitution, and identity building, and it demonstrates how they worked together to shape the outcome of state transformation in modern China. Enhanced by a selection of informative tables and illustrations, The Making of the Modern Chinese 1600–1950 is ideal for undergraduates and graduates studying East Asian history, Chinese history, empires in Asia, and state formation.
336 pages, Paperback
Published August 27, 2019
3 people are currently reading
41 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 5, 2025
3.5 stars. Not for readers with no prior knowledge of the subject. This book is academic and attempts to be revisionist (i.e. the author was trying to challenge some commonly-accepted historical interpretations). Aside from explaining how the Chinese state was formed (i.e. the actual history of the matter), the author also attempts to provide a theoretical foundation to understand this process of Chinese state transformation.
It's ironic that Li argues that we must look beyond the Euro-centric model of state-development to understand the Chinese experience when his theoretical arguments are deeply embedded in precisely this Euro-centric paradigm; indeed, most of his arguments only make sense when understood in relation to European examples and Euro-focused theoretical frameworks. For example, Li's points about the Qing not being an expansionist empire, or the whole notion that state-making in China is remarkable for not proceeding in a linear fashion from empire to nation-state are explicitly premised on Western theoretical presumptions.
Indeed, irony of ironies, Li begins by writing: "To answer why the Chinese state is unusually big and strong or whether or not it is historically legitimate, we should first of all avoid quick judgement based on any theoretical presumptions derived from the experience of European countries" but then concludes with: "More fundamental than all these for the state to rebuild its vitality and legitimacy is the consent of the people, which can only be cultivated through the development of civil organizations for citizens to articulate themselves and, more importantly, through the opening of the policy-making process to the supervision and participation of the informed public." Sounds like a European-derived theoretical presumption to me!
That aside, I think Li largely succeeded with his primary undertaking (i.e. the history) while getting fairly bogged down with some fundamentally superfluous and questionable digressions amidst the secondary one (i.e. the theoretical stuff).
On the history, Li does a great job of directing our attention to some lesser-considered factors which - taken together - go a long way towards explaining why Chinese history unfolded the way it did. The three variables Li focuses on are sound: geopolitical setting, fiscal constitution and identity-building. If you're going to choose three variables to account for why the history of a given state unfolded the way it did you could certainly do worse (though I would argue ideology is distinct from "identity-building" and plays a massive role too). Li's focus on taxation in particular really directed my attention to some aspects of the development of the Chinese state (or any state) which I am now convinced I probably hadn't considered enough. So I'd say this book was worth the price of admission! Additionally, Li makes a number of arguments which I think are thought-provoking and which stand on their own regardless of what you might think of some of Li's more theoretical offerings which we will get to in a moment. Those arguments are:
1. As a matter of fact, the Qing Dynasty spent a fairly small portion of its existence engaged in wars of expansion. Further, Li contends, the Qing's conquest of Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet was fundamentally security-focused, and thus pre-emptive and even "defensive" in nature. At no point was the Qing interested in perpetual expansion or expansion for the sake of enrichment.
2. For most of its existence, the Qing Dynasty was easily able to collect enough in land-taxes to support its military and to keep the tax rate low. The lack of nearby threats resulted in a fiscal status quo and a lack of serious innovation in finance, governance or the military until that equilibrium was upset in the 19th century.
3. The abolition of Confucian exams in 1905, coupled with the rise of the new schools which produced "gentry merchants" who took part in the new chambers of commerce and consultative assemblies, weakened the state's connection to elites. Attempts to recentralize things like railways further alienated provincial Han officials, leading to a fragile situation which ultimately facilitated the collapse of the dynasty. Thus, Li argues: "The abrupt demise of the Qing in 1911 reflected more the failure of the Manchu elites in monopolizing their control of the central government than the efforts in rebuilding the infrastructure of the state during the prior decade".
4. The late Qing Dynasty was in some respects quite successful at turning things around, Li goes so far as to describe the decade prior to the Sino-Japanese war in 1894 as a "golden age" of fiscal solvency (though clearly that didnt save it).
5. Li portrays the future Republican government as one regional contender for power among many, who ultimately were successful in taking power because their base in Guangdong was rich enough to enable more tax collection than their competitors, and to thus field a bigger army.
6. Similarly, it was the ability/opportunity of the communists to form a base area in Manchuria after the end of the Sino-Japanese war which proved essential to their later victory over the Nationalists, as it provided them with a secure, industrially rich area and large tax base which could fuel their war effort.
All interesting stuff. Where Li loses me is in his attempts to engage with scholarly debates on state-making and his efforts to theorize his narrative. For example, Li provides this summary of the state-building process in China: "the Qing state's unpreparedness for the advent of domestic and foreign crises in the nineteenth century, however, gave rise to a new form of power relations, dubbed "regionalized centralism," which in turn paved the way for the emergence of "centralized regionalism" in the early Republican years, "semi-centralism" of the Nationalist state and "total centralism" of the Communist state." Two things here: 1. Surely there was a more straightforward way to express that (though I suspect the goal here to popularize a theoretical framework). 2. As descriptors, sure, at times power was more or less centralized, but it's not clear to me after reading Li's narrative that this was either causal or so different from the experiences of many other countries.
On this last point, another issue I have with Li is the degree to which he believes both the Qing Dynasty and the modern Chinese state are fundamentally distinct from other empires and nation states. Li goes so far as to contend that the Qing Dynasty was not a "typical expansionist empire" (for the reason outlined in point 1 above) but rather should be thought of as an "early modern territorial state" because it had stable frontiers. Li also marvels that such a big and strong country as China could more or less entirely inherit its borders from a big multi-ethnic imperial progenitor, and that this sets it apart from other countries in important ways. The counterpoint Li favours is the Ottoman Empire, which is interesting but probably superfluous. (I would offer that Russia and Japan, and even Vietnam and Thailand probably all offer interesting challenges to Li's argument of Chinese exceptionalism in various respects).
In the final analysis, Li does not really fundamentally disprove or challenge any of the predominate narratives about the collapse of the Qing, the failure of the Nationalists or the victory of the Communists, he also does not offer much in the way of theoretical innovations, but he does direct our attention to some less commonly considered aspects of the history of Chinese state formation. Worth it for any serious students of Chinese history.
It's ironic that Li argues that we must look beyond the Euro-centric model of state-development to understand the Chinese experience when his theoretical arguments are deeply embedded in precisely this Euro-centric paradigm; indeed, most of his arguments only make sense when understood in relation to European examples and Euro-focused theoretical frameworks. For example, Li's points about the Qing not being an expansionist empire, or the whole notion that state-making in China is remarkable for not proceeding in a linear fashion from empire to nation-state are explicitly premised on Western theoretical presumptions.
Indeed, irony of ironies, Li begins by writing: "To answer why the Chinese state is unusually big and strong or whether or not it is historically legitimate, we should first of all avoid quick judgement based on any theoretical presumptions derived from the experience of European countries" but then concludes with: "More fundamental than all these for the state to rebuild its vitality and legitimacy is the consent of the people, which can only be cultivated through the development of civil organizations for citizens to articulate themselves and, more importantly, through the opening of the policy-making process to the supervision and participation of the informed public." Sounds like a European-derived theoretical presumption to me!
That aside, I think Li largely succeeded with his primary undertaking (i.e. the history) while getting fairly bogged down with some fundamentally superfluous and questionable digressions amidst the secondary one (i.e. the theoretical stuff).
On the history, Li does a great job of directing our attention to some lesser-considered factors which - taken together - go a long way towards explaining why Chinese history unfolded the way it did. The three variables Li focuses on are sound: geopolitical setting, fiscal constitution and identity-building. If you're going to choose three variables to account for why the history of a given state unfolded the way it did you could certainly do worse (though I would argue ideology is distinct from "identity-building" and plays a massive role too). Li's focus on taxation in particular really directed my attention to some aspects of the development of the Chinese state (or any state) which I am now convinced I probably hadn't considered enough. So I'd say this book was worth the price of admission! Additionally, Li makes a number of arguments which I think are thought-provoking and which stand on their own regardless of what you might think of some of Li's more theoretical offerings which we will get to in a moment. Those arguments are:
1. As a matter of fact, the Qing Dynasty spent a fairly small portion of its existence engaged in wars of expansion. Further, Li contends, the Qing's conquest of Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet was fundamentally security-focused, and thus pre-emptive and even "defensive" in nature. At no point was the Qing interested in perpetual expansion or expansion for the sake of enrichment.
2. For most of its existence, the Qing Dynasty was easily able to collect enough in land-taxes to support its military and to keep the tax rate low. The lack of nearby threats resulted in a fiscal status quo and a lack of serious innovation in finance, governance or the military until that equilibrium was upset in the 19th century.
3. The abolition of Confucian exams in 1905, coupled with the rise of the new schools which produced "gentry merchants" who took part in the new chambers of commerce and consultative assemblies, weakened the state's connection to elites. Attempts to recentralize things like railways further alienated provincial Han officials, leading to a fragile situation which ultimately facilitated the collapse of the dynasty. Thus, Li argues: "The abrupt demise of the Qing in 1911 reflected more the failure of the Manchu elites in monopolizing their control of the central government than the efforts in rebuilding the infrastructure of the state during the prior decade".
4. The late Qing Dynasty was in some respects quite successful at turning things around, Li goes so far as to describe the decade prior to the Sino-Japanese war in 1894 as a "golden age" of fiscal solvency (though clearly that didnt save it).
5. Li portrays the future Republican government as one regional contender for power among many, who ultimately were successful in taking power because their base in Guangdong was rich enough to enable more tax collection than their competitors, and to thus field a bigger army.
6. Similarly, it was the ability/opportunity of the communists to form a base area in Manchuria after the end of the Sino-Japanese war which proved essential to their later victory over the Nationalists, as it provided them with a secure, industrially rich area and large tax base which could fuel their war effort.
All interesting stuff. Where Li loses me is in his attempts to engage with scholarly debates on state-making and his efforts to theorize his narrative. For example, Li provides this summary of the state-building process in China: "the Qing state's unpreparedness for the advent of domestic and foreign crises in the nineteenth century, however, gave rise to a new form of power relations, dubbed "regionalized centralism," which in turn paved the way for the emergence of "centralized regionalism" in the early Republican years, "semi-centralism" of the Nationalist state and "total centralism" of the Communist state." Two things here: 1. Surely there was a more straightforward way to express that (though I suspect the goal here to popularize a theoretical framework). 2. As descriptors, sure, at times power was more or less centralized, but it's not clear to me after reading Li's narrative that this was either causal or so different from the experiences of many other countries.
On this last point, another issue I have with Li is the degree to which he believes both the Qing Dynasty and the modern Chinese state are fundamentally distinct from other empires and nation states. Li goes so far as to contend that the Qing Dynasty was not a "typical expansionist empire" (for the reason outlined in point 1 above) but rather should be thought of as an "early modern territorial state" because it had stable frontiers. Li also marvels that such a big and strong country as China could more or less entirely inherit its borders from a big multi-ethnic imperial progenitor, and that this sets it apart from other countries in important ways. The counterpoint Li favours is the Ottoman Empire, which is interesting but probably superfluous. (I would offer that Russia and Japan, and even Vietnam and Thailand probably all offer interesting challenges to Li's argument of Chinese exceptionalism in various respects).
In the final analysis, Li does not really fundamentally disprove or challenge any of the predominate narratives about the collapse of the Qing, the failure of the Nationalists or the victory of the Communists, he also does not offer much in the way of theoretical innovations, but he does direct our attention to some less commonly considered aspects of the history of Chinese state formation. Worth it for any serious students of Chinese history.
May 2, 2022
7，以二手资料为主，但是把以往研究总结归纳的很好，比较突出的是从财政角度来看很多的问题。以二手资料带来的问题是，值得讨论的小论点太多了，比如汪精卫和毛泽东的部分，以毛泽东为例，引用全会精神来肯定毛，哪个小弟敢不肯定自己的大哥呢？还有就是资料过分为自己的观点服务。结论部分也值得批评，作者认为：“中国的现代国家转型，最好被理解为一个尚未完成的、终端开放的历史过程。”那么毛泽东时代的疯狂、邓小平的屠杀、习近平开倒车也该理解为现代化的进程吗？作者还称：“中国的改良、立宪、革命党、kmt、ccp都曾一度倾心于欧美日苏等各种建国模式，但中国体量太大，历史惯性太强，使那些移植自国外的任何理念和模式，最终不得不让位于根植于中国自身传统和资源的内在动力和逻辑。”前半句根本是教科书的翻版，以往的都不行，只有ccp的独立自主救了中国；后半句反而成为欧美中心的支持，不恰恰是因为中国过分酱缸，才不可能自行现代化么？让位于中国自身？那么世界会毁灭，在这个层面上，酱缸可能只能靠殖民三百年。
原文p167-168
大部分沿海各省的督抚以及一些满人大臣也都支持李鸿章的观点。但是在1874年末和1875年初的这场辩论中，最终胜出的还是塞防的倡导者。他们的获胜，有多方面的原因。首先，不管李鸿章如何洞悉中国进入了一个在地缘政治和敌手装备方面全然不同的时代，也不管李鸿章如何强调实现海防和海军现代化的重要性（事后发展证明，这的确是决定19世纪晚期中国命运的关键因素），用一笔数目不大的赔款就和平解决了日本入侵台湾问题，这远未让清朝的上层精英从中警醒，意识到海防的重要性和李鸿章所说到的中国正面临“数千年来未有之变局”的真正含义。对于大多数统治精英来说，麻烦已经结束，日本这样的“蕞尔小国”，远非真实而急迫的威胁；海防从长远来说对中国的生存确实十分重要，但远不像塞防问题那样迫在眉睫，因为此时新疆广大区域已陷入敌手。其次，清廷和大部分统治精英在理解中国的地缘政治利益和战略时，依然停留在历史的语境里，认为中国是内陆国家，新疆之所以重要，不仅因为它拱卫蒙古和京师，还因为它是祖辈留下的遗产，对维护当朝统治者的正当性至关重要。最后，清政府挺过了1850年代和1860年代的内忧外患，各省恢复安定，与列强重新修好，财政状况也大为改善。所有这些因素加上一起，促成清廷决定 以塞防为优先，因而有1875-1878年左宗棠传奇性的出兵西征和收复新疆。
小结：这个决定19世纪晚期中国命运的关键因素的说法和看清楚了数千年未有之大变局是一致的。
原文p167-168
大部分沿海各省的督抚以及一些满人大臣也都支持李鸿章的观点。但是在1874年末和1875年初的这场辩论中，最终胜出的还是塞防的倡导者。他们的获胜，有多方面的原因。首先，不管李鸿章如何洞悉中国进入了一个在地缘政治和敌手装备方面全然不同的时代，也不管李鸿章如何强调实现海防和海军现代化的重要性（事后发展证明，这的确是决定19世纪晚期中国命运的关键因素），用一笔数目不大的赔款就和平解决了日本入侵台湾问题，这远未让清朝的上层精英从中警醒，意识到海防的重要性和李鸿章所说到的中国正面临“数千年来未有之变局”的真正含义。对于大多数统治精英来说，麻烦已经结束，日本这样的“蕞尔小国”，远非真实而急迫的威胁；海防从长远来说对中国的生存确实十分重要，但远不像塞防问题那样迫在眉睫，因为此时新疆广大区域已陷入敌手。其次，清廷和大部分统治精英在理解中国的地缘政治利益和战略时，依然停留在历史的语境里，认为中国是内陆国家，新疆之所以重要，不仅因为它拱卫蒙古和京师，还因为它是祖辈留下的遗产，对维护当朝统治者的正当性至关重要。最后，清政府挺过了1850年代和1860年代的内忧外患，各省恢复安定，与列强重新修好，财政状况也大为改善。所有这些因素加上一起，促成清廷决定 以塞防为优先，因而有1875-1878年左宗棠传奇性的出兵西征和收复新疆。
小结：这个决定19世纪晚期中国命运的关键因素的说法和看清楚了数千年未有之大变局是一致的。
May 28, 2022
I believe the author attempted to reconcile the differences between traditional Chinese scholars' ideas and the new Qing history in the Qing section. However, I do not believe it is necessary to view the Qing as a territory state rather than an empire. The author made numerous comparisons between the Qing and Ottoman empires in an attempt to differentiate them; this is also superfluous. Every regime on the planet has its own distinct features. I believe it is logical to think of the Qing and Ottoman empires as empires. The shift from empire to nation-states would also improve our understanding of the political modernisation process. With the exception of outer Mongolia, certain regions of Qing aspired to establish their own nation-states, but most failed.
January 21, 2023
Although the author uses mostly secondary sources,but he successfully shows the evolution of modern China.However,it is not "rebuild the Qing dynasty study"cuz most of his point if views has been proposed by predecessors.
November 24, 2022
A unified and organized narrative of the history of Chinese state development from early Qing to CCP's new China. It shows why China had to end up in a strong, centralized, and autocratic state. I like the special attention Li paid to fiscal issues, which was mostly overlooked in similar books. While his understanding of Qing's fiscal system has some mistakes and sometimes contradicts himself, to me, this book does provide some new knowledge on the fiscal innovation of KMT and CCP states in the republic period.
But there is an important FLAW: Li apparently shows his personal favor for political, economic, and even ideological centralization. And he mixed his normative view with the positive logic of historical evolution.
But there is an important FLAW: Li apparently shows his personal favor for political, economic, and even ideological centralization. And he mixed his normative view with the positive logic of historical evolution.
May 24, 2023
该书以地缘、财政、认同三要素分析现代中国的形成，算是李怀印重写中国近代史的一种尝试。但能明显感觉到作者最擅长的还是老本行——土地和财政，至于对地缘和认同的分析论证，多失之于浅。且该书颇有立场先行之嫌，所引用的史料和前人研究多为自己观点服务，对争议性问题和歧异性史料有意忽略。如此一来，读者所能看到的，也只是作者所定义的现代中国形成过程。
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews