National Polity and Local Power

Despite efforts to attain a more balanced approach, Western historians have largely interpreted China's modern period in terms of China's "e;response to the West."e; To a surprising extent, this bias has prevailed even among Chinese historians, for whom the reaction to imperialism has remained a dominant concept. This book, by a scholar who is neither Chinese nor Western,goes far to set the balance right. Min Tu-ki, Korea's leading Sinologist, shows how China's own internal agenda has conditioned Chinese political life during the transition to modernity. Min sets the stage with two chapters about Chinese scciety under Ch'ing rule, one on a Korean visitor's reaction to eighteeenth-century China, the other on the social condition of the lower gentry. Each casts new light on the Chinese elite and their relation to state power. The chapters that follow-particularly the discussion of "e;political feudalism"e;-examine the conceptual resources available within the Chinese tradition for coming to terms with modernity. Min's internalist approach provides both a creative new vision of the encounter between two civilizations and a distinguished introduction to Korean Sinology.