2024 CHUS Academic Excellence Book Award
Dr. Chen Jian’s monograph — Zhou Enlai: A Life (Harvard University Press, 2024).
This 800-page biography offers a nuanced and compelling portrait of Zhou Enlai, a pivotal figure in modern Chinese history, the PRC’s first premier, and a world-renowned diplomat. Drawing from an impressive array of sources spanning China, the USA, Russia, and India, Chen crafts a comprehensive narrative of Zhou’s life, tracing his journey from his early years to his final days. By examining the paradoxes of Zhou’s character within the complex historical contexts he navigated, the author delivers a balanced and insightful assessment of this extraordinary statesman. Meticulously structured and expertly written, the book employs a longue-durée perspective to illuminate China’s dramatic transformation from the late Qing dynasty to the Mao era. A must-read for those interested in modern China, diplomacy, and international relations, this work stands as a definitive account of Zhou’s enduring legacy.
Honorable Mention: Dr. Hanchao Lu’s monograph — The Shanghai Tai Chi: The Art of Being Ruled in Mao’s China (Cambridge University Press, 2023).
Skillfully drawing from an extensive array of primary sources, Shanghai Taichi offers a rich and engaging narrative of the material world of the bourgeois under a politically adverse environment during the early decades of the PRC. It explores the intellectual contributions of the educated elites from the “old world,” the youth’s engagement with taboo literature, and the rise of women as a workforce, highlighting how women interpreted and enacted their visions of “liberation.” The work challenges the conventional demarcation of Mao’s China and the reform era by portraying the country’s economic rise over the past four decades not as a departure from Mao’s China but rather a drastic continuation of human behavior. The book seamlessly balances rigorous historiographical analysis with accessible and engaging prose, the book serves as a valuable resource for understanding the history of Shanghai, the People’s Republic of China, and the social history of communism.
2023 CHUS Academic Excellence Book Award
- Dr. Xiaobing Li’s China’s New Navy: The Evolution of PLAN from the People’s Revolution to a 21st Century Cold War (The Navy Institute Press, July 2023) can be seen as a pioneering scholarship in English on the historical development of the Chinese navy, therefore, its major contribution to the military history in general is far reaching. Loaded with valuable historical sources (especially newly available Chinese records and sources), individual interviews, personal stories, and convincing argument, China’s New Navy explicitly details the important turning points of Chinese naval history in combat experience, ideological transformation, new reform and strategy, and military technological modernization.
Li’s lucrative study of the growth and expansion of the Chinese modern Navy has provided a insightful perspective for scholars and policymakers alike to investigate naval operations and strategic planning among allies and opponents. Additionally, the authors’ in-depth exploration of the military confrontation in the Taiwan Strait over the past few decades reflects the political prospects and military concerns on both sides of the strait.
2. Dr. Xin Zhang’s The Global in the Local: A Century of War, Commerce, and Technology in China(Harvard University Press, April 2023) is an ambitious work which skillfully remakes a new history by examining the impact of “macro” history of a much-studied Opium War through the “micro” window of a local port, Zhengjiang, along the Yangzi River open to foreign trade by treaty.
The shrewd research methodology of the book deserves special attention. A well-written masterpiece, the book adopts a cross-sectional research approach bestowing a reinterpretation of an interplayed history where “the power of globalization is deeply intertwined with, and often shaped by, local specifics.” This unique research method has provided a valuable new direction for scholars of Chinese history to follow. As the title of the book suggests, the inquiries build upon a convincing dialogue between the study of the early globalization with the focus on the aftermath of the Opium War at transnational level, and the responses of local community to negotiate a process of transregional transformation. Through the local window of Zhengjiang, Zhang retells a different history of science, economy, as well as imperialistic experiences.
Honorable Mention: the monographs by Dr. Zhongping Chen and Dr. Di Luo.
Prof. Zhongping Chen’s Transpacific Reform and Revolution: The Chinese in North America, 1898―1918 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, July 2023) focuses on the “network” activities carried out by major reformists, especially Kang Youwei and Sun Yat-sen, among other activists, in North America to win oversea support and raise funds for their revolutionary reform movements during the last years of the Qing Dynasty. The research makes good use of various historical records, communications, and collections from a few merchant associations in Chinatown, including informational Canadian sources.
Prof. Di Luo’s Beyond Citizenship: Literacy and Personhood in Everyday China, 1900–1945 (Brill Academic Publishers, September 2022) offers a clear picture of the state-sponsored literacy movement during the first half of the 20th century. The case studies are well-presented to illustrate the purposes, programs, as well as the government efforts and intellectual participation in the early state building process in the new republic of China.