A Brief History of China: Dynasty, Revolution and Transformation: From the Middle Kingdom to the People's Republic

by Jonathan Clements

A comprehensive, yet entertaining look at China's history through a modern lens.

For millennia, China was the largest and richest nation on earth. Two centuries ago, however, its economy sank into a depression from which it had not fully recovered--until now. China's modern resurgence as the world's largest nation in terms of population and its second-largest economy--where 800 million people have been lifted out of poverty in the space of a few decades--is the greatest untold story of the 21st century.

A Brief History of China tells of the development of a rich and complex civilization where the use of paper, writing, money and gunpowder were widespread in ancient times and where silk, ceramics, tea, metal implements and other products were produced and exported around the globe. It examines the special conditions that allowed a single culture to unify an entire continent spanning 10 billion square kilometers under the rule of a single man--and the unbelievably rich artistic, literary and architectural heritage that Chinese culture has bequeathed to the world. Equally fascinating is the story of China's decline in the 19th and early 20th century--as Europeans and Americans took center stage--and its modern resurgence as an economic powerhouse in recent years.

In his retelling of a Chinese history stretching back 5,000 years, author and China-expert Jonathan Clements focuses on the human stories which led to the powerful transformations in Chinese society--from the unification of China under its first emperor, Qinshi Huangdi, and the writings of the great Chinese philosophers Confucius and Laozi, to the Mongol invasion under Genghis Khan and the consolidation of Communist rule under Mao Zedong. Clements even brings readers through to the present day, outlining China's economic renaissance under Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping.

What really separates this book from its counterparts is the focus on women, and modern themes such as diversity and climate change. Chinese history is typically told through the stories of its most famous men, but Clements' telling gives women equal time and research--which introduces readers of this book to equally important, but less commonly-known facts and historical figures.

Often seen in the West in black or white terms--as either a savage dystopia or a fantastical paradise--China is revealed in the book as an exceptional yet troubled nation that nevertheless warrants its self-description as the Middle Kingdom.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, China, Asia, Audiobook, Ancient History, Research

352 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 12, 2019

About the author

Jonathan Clements is an author, translator, biographer and scriptwriter. His non-fiction works include biographies of Confucius, Marco Polo, Mao Zedong, Koxinga and Qin Shihuangdi. He also writes for NEO magazine and is the co-author of encyclopedias of anime and Japanese television dramas.

Reviews

[Spencer Emmett · Rating 2 out of 5]

For beginners to Chinese history I would recommend Jaivin's "The Shortest History of China" over this book. It gives a better broad overview, narrative of the successive dynasties, and focuses on just brief anecdotes about the major historical figures. Like all the Tuttle Brief History of Asia series this book is "brief" considering it covers 5000 years of history in 350 pages but is also quite detailed and often overwhelming. I also found the anecdotes at the beginning of each chapter more confusing than interesting since they typically focus on minor events or figures that often don't even resurface later on in the chapter.

[Georgie]

Clement's 'Brief History of China' is definitely just what it claims to be: An incredibly fast-paced skim through China's history in its entirety, and it attempts to cover important events, figures, weather, economics, politics, art, literature, music, legends and religion all in one book. As someone who is still somewhat new to Chinese history, this provided me with a good overview as well as a list of things I want to do further research into. However, as a reference book, I'd recommend something more like Buckley-Ebrey's 'The Cambridge Illustrated History of China' over this, as Clement's book summarises everything way too shortly for anyone to get a more detailed understanding of any of the eras. Additionally, there were some random pictures in the middle of chapters that had nothing to do with the topics on hand, and there were a couple of unprofessional mistakes in the text itself. I would recommend this book to anyone and looking to gain only a rough overview of China, and afterwards further investing some more time and money in some more specialised books on certain areas of Chinese history that interest them.

[Gulka B · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading the first four chapters of the book, is like scrolling through the TMZ headlines. Kardashian divorce, Harry and Meghan backstabbing of Royal family and such. The only difference is that the names are Zhou, Shang, Tang, or Han and the ultimate prize is the fame. It is usual court yard drama Conspiring with your ministers to poison the emperor, only to be overthrown a few years later by your own son, or promising an imperial bride to one of neighboring enemies, but ending up falling in love with her and beating your brains out on whether to keep the peace, or the love. But as it happens in dramas and in this case in real life, the choice was the latter.

What i mean is, the book is filled with such trivial drama, and has few enlightening history.
Taoism, confucianism which shape what we know as Chinese are merely mentioned in a passage or two.
Information on Buddhism is slightly more reveAled than the former two, but still vague.
i found it utterly disappointing that the author did not give proper attention to Taoism, Confucianism, the building of the Great wall, the famous Silk Road in the book. Thus i had to abandon it for good.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very readable account of China's history, changing regimes and people.

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very readable and engaging. I have read several books about Chinese history and there are always new things to learn. This book did not disappoint. Recommended if you also like the more bizarre episodes in history.

[Sue · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just a very okay book. As someone slightly interested in China, I don't feel like I learned much of anything. Even taking into account that this is a *brief* history intended as an introduction, I felt it was a very Western look at China. The narrative voice wasn't even particularly captivating.

Note for audiobook listeners: the narrator is atrocious. He cannot pronounce any of the Chinese which creates a genuine problem if you want to look up any one name or event to learn more.

[Alex O'Connor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super readable and interesting basic history!

[Karson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked this up in a thrift shop bc I had never actually had a proper exposure to pre-modern Chinese history. It's fine for a broad sweep of Chinese history I suppose, but I got very strong Gell-Mann amnesia cognitive dissonance whenever it touched on topics I'm more familiar with, particularly the linguistics of the Sinitic languages (the author has a very Mandarin-centric perspective and repeatedly refers to the pronunciations of other Chinese languages like Cantonese or Shanghainese as "garbled" versions of the Mandarin), the social credit system (where the book just directly reproduces the dunked maximalist myth about it; see https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/...), and, perhaps most problematically, Taiwan.
The (mis)treatment of Taiwan was surprising and disappointing given the way the book discusses other "sensitive" issues such as Tibet, for example noting how Chinese historiography of Tibet has tended to simply begin with Tibet becoming part of the Chinese empire, and avoid anything that happened before that. Hong Kong's handover from the British to the PRC is also presented as essentially the passing of a royal treasure between two pairs of imperial hands, wishes of the local populace be damned. On Taiwan, the author gives the story of Koxinga (one of those "garbled" pronunciations of the Mandarin Guoxingye, we are told) and mentions that the Qing initially took Taiwan just as a way to stamp out his rebellion, but says nothing about the indigenous people or the Han Chinese who had already settled there by that point. It ultimately dispatches the question of Taiwan's status "in political limbo" by presenting the island as "a prosperous Chinese province somehow disconnected from the rest of China," as if even to a historian who is the author of such a tome, it's an utter mystery how — and WHY! — Taiwan could possibly still not have been "reunified" at this late date.
So, I have to somewhat discount everything else in the book on topics that I'm less familiar with already.
I did appreciate the consistent inclusion of how climatic conditions contributed to the prosperity and tribulations of various dynasties (assuming, of course, that it's accurate). This seems like a very plausible distal cause of much of history that only relatively recent historical scholarship informed by climatic history would be well-positioned to integrate with other sources of information, and obviously quite relevant to thinking about today's world where climatic conditions are increasingly impinging on global events.

[Sonny Percival · Rating 3 out of 5]

A century of disappointment can also be found when reading this book. Sorry Clements, I probably owe you an "Its not you, its me" because this wasn't entirely a good matchup. I am guilty of skipping to the halfway mark upon discovering that the first half would only reach the start of Ming in 1368.

The sections I was most interested in, the last 300 years or so but especially the last century up to now, in my opinion are covered a bit vaguely. The level of commentary on China's political and economic turbulence, decline and now rise, is akin to chatting over dinner with your friend who studies in Beijing - insightful but slightly ethereal. And the musings become more opaque and unfortunately Western-centric as it goes to the modern day. I don't envy the task.

I accept that Clements' objective to produce a distinctly 'brief' catalogue of Chinese history is met, but the efficiency of the ideas communicated sometimes lacked discipline. Still enjoyed it and learnt a bit nevertheless.

[Mei Hidori · Rating 2 out of 5]

This guy literally wrote about pasta together with a 3rd century poet that wrote about pasta while talking about the early religions in china, then dove straight into a completely different topic IN THE SAME PARAGRAPH where he was talking about pasta.

A lot of his paragraph stucture are very messy, the new paragraph is often irrelavant to the previous paragraph, and sometimes two sentences IN THE SAME PARAGRAPH do not even relate to each other at all. In addition to that, he takes so long to get to the point, and when you do get there, there is little to no significant information.

Despite that, admittedly, there are good overviews on how it is in the ealry years of China and the changes in the dynasties throughout the timelime, that is if you can get past his messy stucturing.

Overall, I think you can get better information and experience reading through a random article you found on the internet.

[A Z · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brief overview of the very rich history of China. Trying to condense down so much history into 300 pages simply won't work without leaving out a ton of important events. This book tried instead to go with a more human approach by presenting specific characters from each of the time periods, which was a nice way to go about it. The total history coverage is superficial, but that is expected given the short format.

At the end there is a great selection of further reading for each of the covered time periods which was greatly appreciated, and perhaps is the best start for those interested in more details about a particular part of China's history.

The amount of spelling errors and missing words was distracting at times, so if there is a second edition it would be nice to get it properly proofread.

[Kuu · Rating 4 out of 5]

This certainly was brief. I feel like some aspects of Chinese history could have been dealt with in at least a little more detail, but considering that this book had to span millennia in roughly 300 pages I think it did a good job. The further reading at the end of it gave me a good starting point to look further, with more specialised reading recommendations for certain periods, so while I would've liked a somewhat more in depth introduction that's mainly on me, because right from the start the book tells you it will be brief, and the author warns of his (justified) shortcomings already in the preface.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is exactly as the title describes - a quick jaunt through Chinese history from the Middle Kingdom to the People's Republic. I thought I would just skim through, but it was engaging enough to closely read from beginning to end. Warning: I don't think the copy was proof-read at all. There are misspellings, grammar and syntax errors on almost every page. This usually distracts and/or reduces credibility in most books. In this book about Chinese history, it became somewhat charming, like reading assembly instructions on a product made in China.

[Rosalind Kwan · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s an enjoyable audiobook, but it’s definitely hard to pack so much of Chinese history in such a short text. Most of the chapters didn’t flow very smoothly as a result. They ended abruptly.

The highlight of the book for me was the bibliography, which comes a list of books that I want to check out later. Other than that, you are much better off checking out something like Ken Hammond’s “From Yao to Mao: 5000 Years of Chinese History”, which deals with Chinese political history in a comprehensive and logical manner.

[eugenie]

This was really interesting and important, as China is undoubtedly going to be an influence on our lives, and knowing one's history is knowing them. However, as this was my first non-fiction book not read for school and i listened to it on audio, i did find my attention slip away a lot and am pretty sure i didn't retain that much. Still have more knowledge about China than before, though, so the ultimate goal was reached...

[Yeemay · Rating 4 out of 5]

A completely engrossing read, full of compelling detail but also willing to make sweeping judgements and pertinent observations backed up by pertinent detail. The period of late twentieth century to present day was particularly exciting as was the future forecasts. I hadn’t appreciated just how venal other states were while the republic of China was fragmenting, how self serving and greedy... A fascinating and comprehensive assessment of one of the world’s superpowers.

[Carrik McNerlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

What it says on the tin - a lightning fast 300ish page summary of 5000 years of history, movers and shakers of the times and the shift of power through the dynasties. This book isn't afraid to draw on broad sources, either, often pointing to things in the geological record and known weather patterns at the times described to suggest reasons for things happening (ie. a drought over one or several years pushing neighboring groups into conflict in search of enough food)

[Radhika · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beginner friendly initiation to Chinese history. Each chapter starts with an episode about an event or personality that defines the chapter. I would recommend this if it's your first book about China's history. Further reading chapter provides a good roadmap depending on what part of Chinese history you may find interesting and want to get a deeper understanding.

[Tejas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I know it's called a "brief" history of China, but some parts seemed unnecessary, therefore taking away from pivotal historical details.

Broader historical details that seemed more interesting (Yellow Emperor, Confucianism) weren't given enough detail for my liking, and seemed to take a backseat to information that was a bit more niche

[Gerald H · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well-written book. However, it covers the larger landscape well but leaves social, cultural, and personal issues unexplored. I finished without any real understanding of what makes the Chinese a distinctive people and culture./

[Sunjay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was looking for an overview of Chinese history to help put other media into context, and this did that! It's from a very white British perspective and not written by a specialist, but with that caveat it gave me what I was looking for

[Bryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exactly what I was hoping for. If you're looking for a brief but comprehensive history of China, then I recommend this book to you. It serves its purpose effectively and if there is a specific part of Chinese history that you learn about from here, then you can dive deeper elsewhere.

[Alexander J · Rating 3 out of 5]

These brief histories are usually pretty good, no exceptions here. I’d love to have a version of this extended to 40 hours. In particular, the early history and the history of the grand canal interest me.

[Mike Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

11 hours of content. Maybe too thick for a beginner. For a bit more intermediate reader this is a great work for putting all the dynasties/major events into a chronological order.
Limited preaching, most if it about gender

[Jota · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clement's Brief History of China is an informative, wide-ranging, funny, and brief tour of Chinese civilization, from Peking Man to the 21st century, with nods to everyone in between (Confucius, Lao Xi, Mao, etc.)
As other reviewers have noted, a fair chunk of the book is mingled with courtyard drama, adding noise to the overall narrative and prolonging a reasonably long read (over 300 pages).
Past that, it delivers what it promises: a holistic view of Chinese history for the beginner.

[™ · Rating 3 out of 5]

didn't enjoy this one as much as the author's history of Japan because the pacing felt off - I think because just So Much Happened in China that it ended up feeling disjointed? there were too many places it felt like it moved too fast or I wanted more detail, and others where it dragged a bit

[Chloe J W · Rating 3 out of 5]

Start with chapter 11 — the final chapter — and work your way backwards. The book is so rushed it makes it very difficult to keep up and feel like you are learning much of substance UNTIL the very last chapter that is.

[Pavel Hofmann · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was the first audiobook I listened to, and honestly, it was mediocre. There was excessive repetition, with the same information repeated over and over. It offered nothing new that I didn't already know or could find on Wikipedia.

[Kristófer Guðmundsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spoiler: Keisaraveldið hrynur og kommar taka yfir.

Mjög góð áminning um hvað nátthamfarir hafa haft mikil áhrif á mannkynssöguna, og munu halda áfram að gera það.

[Mrs Reddy Katzy · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 Stars for Audible - read much too fast barely had time for information to sink in and register, good quick reference book probably better read than listened to !