Download or read book Fighting Famine in North China written by Lillian M. Li and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monumental work provides a new perspective on the historical significance of famines in China over the past three hundred years. It examines the relationship between the interventionist state policies of the eighteenth-century Qing emperors (“the golden age of famine relief”), the environmental and political crises of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (when China was called “the Land of Famine”), and the ambitions of the Mao era (which tragically led to the greatest famine in human history). In addition to a wide array of documentary sources, the book employs quantitative analysis to measure the economic impact of natural crises, state policies, and markets. In this way, the theories of Qing statesmen that have received much attention in recent scholarship are linked to actual practices and outcomes. Using the Zhili-Hebei region as its focus, the book also reveals the unusual role played by the institutions and policies designed to ensure food security for the capital, Beijing.
Download or read book The Ecology of War in China written by Micah S. Muscolino and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the interplay between war and the environment in Henan Province, a hotly contested frontline territory that endured massive environmental destruction and human disruption during the conflict between China and Japan that raged during World War II. In a desperate attempt to block Japan's military advance, Chinese Nationalist armies under Chiang Kai-shek broke the Yellow River's dikes in Henan in June 1938, resulting in devastating floods that persisted until after the war's end. Greater catastrophe struck Henan in 1942-1943, when famine took some two million lives and displaced millions more. Focusing on these war-induced disasters and their aftermath, this book conceptualizes the ecology of war in terms of energy flows through and between militaries, societies, and environments. Ultimately, Micah Muscolino argues that efforts to procure and exploit nature's energy in various forms shaped the choices of generals, the fates of communities, and the trajectory of environmental change in North China.
Download or read book Calamity and Reform in China written by Dali L. Yang and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book-length treatment of the political causes and consequences of the Great Leap Famine (1959-61), one of the worst tragedies in human history.
Download or read book Famine Relief in Warlord China written by Pierre Fuller and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-03-01 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Famine Relief in Warlord China is a reexamination of disaster responses during the greatest ecological crisis of the pre-Nationalist Chinese republic. In 1920–1921, drought and ensuing famine devastated more than 300 counties in five northern provinces, leading to some 500,000 deaths. Long credited to international intervention, the relief effort, Pierre Fuller shows, actually began from within Chinese social circles. Indigenous action from the household to the national level, modeled after Qing-era relief protocol, sustained the lives of millions of the destitute in Beijing, in the surrounding districts of Zhili (Hebei) Province, and along the migrant and refugee trail in Manchuria, all before joint foreign–Chinese international relief groups became a force of any significance. Using district gazetteers, stele inscriptions, and the era’s vibrant Chinese press, Fuller reveals how a hybrid civic sphere of military authorities working with the public mobilized aid and coordinated migrant movement within stricken communities and across military domains. Ultimately, the book’s spotlight on disaster governance in northern China in 1920 offers new insights into the social landscape just before the region’s descent, over the next decade, into incessant warfare, political struggle, and finally the normalization of disaster itself.
Download or read book Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union written by Felix Wemheuer and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-24 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the twentieth century, 80 percent of all famine victims worldwide died in China and the Soviet Union. In this rigorous and thoughtful study, Felix Wemheuer analyzes the historical and political roots of these socialist-era famines, in which overambitious industrial programs endorsed by Stalin and Mao Zedong created greater disasters than those suffered under prerevolutionary regimes. Focusing on famine as a political tool, Wemheuer systematically exposes how conflicts about food among peasants, urban populations, and the socialist state resulted in the starvation death of millions. A major contribution to Chinese and Soviet history, this provocative analysis examines the long-term effects of the great famines on the relationship between the state and its citizens and argues that the lessons governments learned from the catastrophes enabled them to overcome famine in their later decades of rule.
Download or read book Tears from Iron written by Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2008-04-02 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This multi-layered history of a horrific famine that took place in late-nineteenth-century China focuses on cultural responses to trauma. The massive drought/famine that killed at least ten million people in north China during the late 1870s remains one of China's most severe disasters and provides a vivid window through which to study the social side of a nation's tragedy. Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley's original approach explores an array of new source materials, including songs, poems, stele inscriptions, folklore, and oral accounts of the famine from Shanxi Province, its epicenter. She juxtaposes these narratives with central government, treaty-port, and foreign debates over the meaning of the events and shows how the famine, which occurred during a period of deepening national crisis, elicited widely divergent reactions from different levels of Chinese society.
Download or read book Gourmets in the Land of Famine written by Seung-Joon Lee and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-05 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of the politics of rice in Canton, this book sheds new light on the local history of the city and illuminates how China's struggles with food shortages in the early twentieth century unfolded and the ways in which they were affected by the rise of nationalism and the fluctuation of global commerce. Author Seung-joon Lee profiles Canton as an exemplary site of provisioning, a critical gateway for foreign rice importation and distribution through the Pearl River Delta, which found its prized import, and thus its food security, threatened by the rise of Chinese nationalism. Lee argues that the modern Chinese state's attempts to promote domestically-produced "national rice" and to tax rice imported through the transnational trade networks were doomed to failure, as a focus on rice production ignored the influential factor of rice quality. Indeed, China's domestic rice promotion program resulted in an unprecedented famine in Canton in 1936. This book contends that the ways in which the Guomindang government dealt with the issue of food security, and rice in particular, is best understood in the context of its preoccupation with science, technology, and progressivism, a departure from the conventional explanations that cite governmental incompetence.
Download or read book The Great North Korean Famine written by Andrew S. Natsios and published by United States Institute of Peace Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An administrator of the US Agency for International Development with first-hand experience of conditions and events, Natsios provides a provocative analysis of the 1995-99 disaster. He focuses on its political elements--both the North Korean policies that exacerbated the problems and the politics that prevented governments and NGOs from acting quickly.
Download or read book A Social History of Maoist China written by Felix Wemheuer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-28 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new social history of Maoist China provides an accessible view of the complex and tumultuous period when China came under Communist rule.
Download or read book Famine in North Korea written by Stephan Haggard and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In their carefully researched book, Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland present the most comprehensive account of the famine to date, examining not only the origins and aftermath of the crisis but also the regime's response to outside aid and the effect of its current policies on the country's economic future. Their study begins by considering the root causes of the famine, weighing the effects of the decline in the availability of food against its poor distribution. Then it takes a close look at the aid effort, addressing the difficulty of monitoring assistance within the country, and concludes with an analysis of current economic reforms and strategies of engagement."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book The Coming Collapse of China written by Gordon G. Chang and published by Random House. This book was released on 2001-07-31 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China is hot. The world sees a glorious future for this sleeping giant, three times larger than the United States, predicting it will blossom into the world's biggest economy by 2010. According to Chang, however, a Chinese-American lawyer and China specialist, the People's Republic is a paper dragon. Peer beneath the veneer of modernization since Mao's death, and the symptoms of decay are everywhere: Deflation grips the economy, state-owned enterprises are failing, banks are hopelessly insolvent, foreign investment continues to decline, and Communist party corruption eats away at the fabric of society. Beijing's cautious reforms have left the country stuck midway between communism and capitalism, Chang writes. With its impending World Trade Organization membership, for the first time China will be forced to open itself to foreign competition, which will shake the country to its foundations. Economic failure will be followed by government collapse. Covering subjects from party politics to the Falun Gong to the government's insupportable position on Taiwan, Chang presents a thorough and very chilling overview of China's present and not-so-distant future.
Download or read book When the Iron Bird Flies written by Jianglin Li and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-18 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An untold story that reshapes our understanding of Chinese and Tibetan history From 1956 to 1962, devastating military conflicts took place in China's southwestern and northwestern regions. Official record at the time scarcely made mention of the campaign, and in the years since only lukewarm acknowledgment of the violence has surfaced. When the Iron Bird Flies, by Jianglin Li, breaks this decades long silence to reveal for the first time a comprehensive and explosive picture of the six years that would prove definitive in modern Tibetan and Chinese history. The CCP referred to the campaign as "suppressing the Tibetan rebellion." It would lead to the 14th Dalai Lama's exile in India, as well as the Tibetan diaspora in 1959, though the battles lasted three additional years after these events. Featuring key figures in modern Chinese history, the battles waged in this period covered a vast geographical region. This book offers a portrait of chaos, deception, heroism, and massive loss. Beyond the significant death toll across the Tibetan regions, the war also destroyed most Tibetan monasteries in a concerted effort to eradicate local religion and scholarship. Despite being considered a military success, to this day, the operations in the agricultural regions remain unknown. As large numbers of Tibetans have self-immolated in recent years to protest Chinese occupation, Li shows that the largest number of cases occurred in the sites most heavily affected by this hidden war. She argues persuasively that the events described in this book will shed more light on our current moment, and will help us understand the unrelenting struggle of the Tibetan people for their freedom.
Download or read book The Hungry Steppe written by Sarah Cameron and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hungry Steppe examines one of the most heinous crimes of the Stalinist regime, the Kazakh famine of 1930–33. More than 1.5 million people perished in this famine, a quarter of Kazakhstan's population, and the crisis transformed a territory the size of continental Europe. Yet the story of this famine has remained mostly hidden from view. Drawing upon state and Communist party documents, as well as oral history and memoir accounts in Russian and in Kazakh, Sarah Cameron reveals this brutal story and its devastating consequences for Kazakh society. Through the most violent of means the Kazakh famine created Soviet Kazakhstan, a stable territory with clearly delineated boundaries that was an integral part of the Soviet economic system; and it forged a new Kazakh national identity. But this state-driven modernization project was uneven. Ultimately, Cameron finds, neither Kazakhstan nor Kazakhs themselves were integrated into the Soviet system in precisely the ways that Moscow had originally hoped. The experience of the famine scarred the republic for the remainder of the Soviet era and shaped its transformation into an independent nation in 1991. Cameron uses her history of the Kazakh famine to overturn several assumptions about violence, modernization, and nation-making under Stalin, highlighting, in particular, the creation of a new Kazakh national identity, and how environmental factors shaped Soviet development. Ultimately, The Hungry Steppe depicts the Soviet regime and its disastrous policies in a new and unusual light.
Download or read book China s Influence and American Interests written by Larry Diamond and published by Hoover Press. This book was released on 2019-08-01 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While Americans are generally aware of China's ambitions as a global economic and military superpower, few understand just how deeply and assertively that country has already sought to influence American society. As the authors of this volume write, it is time for a wake-up call. In documenting the extent of Beijing's expanding influence operations inside the United States, they aim to raise awareness of China's efforts to penetrate and sway a range of American institutions: state and local governments, academic institutions, think tanks, media, and businesses. And they highlight other aspects of the propagandistic “discourse war” waged by the Chinese government and Communist Party leaders that are less expected and more alarming, such as their view of Chinese Americans as members of a worldwide Chinese diaspora that owes undefined allegiance to the so-called Motherland.Featuring ideas and policy proposals from leading China specialists, China's Influence and American Interests argues that a successful future relationship requires a rebalancing toward greater transparency, reciprocity, and fairness. Throughout, the authors also strongly state the importance of avoiding casting aspersions on Chinese and on Chinese Americans, who constitute a vital portion of American society. But if the United States is to fare well in this increasingly adversarial relationship with China, Americans must have a far better sense of that country's ambitions and methods than they do now.
Download or read book Heaven in Conflict written by Anthony E. Clark and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2014-12-01 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most violent episodes of China’s Boxer Uprising was the Taiyuan Massacre of 1900, in which rebels killed foreign missionaries and thousands of Chinese Christians. This first sustained scholarly account of the uprising to focus on Shanxi Province illuminates the religious and cultural beliefs on both sides of the conflict and shows how they came to clash. Although Franciscans were the first Catholics to settle in China, their stories have rarely been explored in accounts of Chinese Christianity. Anthony Clark remedies that exclusion and highlights the roles of Franciscan nuns and their counterparts among the Boxers—the Red Lantern girls—to argue that women’s involvement was integral on both sides of the conflict. Drawing on rich archival records and intertwining religious history with political, cultural, and environmental factors, Clark provides a fresh perspective on a pivotal encounter between China and the West.
Download or read book Hungry Ghosts written by C J Barker and published by Book Guild Publishing. This book was released on 2024-03-28 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The lives of Vic Woods and Ruth Wolfe, working-class teenagers from Liverpool and London, are profoundly disrupted by the arrival of World War II. Ruth’s journey leads her to aerial photographic interpretation, though her aspirations for advancement are denied, while Vic’s wartime experiences with bomber command haunt him long after the war is over. Their post-war marriage and tumultuous relationship with their son, James, make for a gripping narrative of trauma, conflict and, ultimately, love. Set against the backdrop of World War II and the social upheaval of the late 1960s, Hungry Ghosts transports readers into the drama of two pivotal eras in history, exploring the intergenerational impact of war, particularly on the intricate relationships between fathers and sons. Hungry Ghosts is not just a war story; it’s a timeless exploration of family bonds and the indelible scars left by war.
Download or read book Nourish the People written by Pierre-Etienne Will and published by U OF M CENTER FOR CHINESE STUDIES. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 635 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Qing state, driven by Confucian precepts of good government and urgent practical needs, committed vast resources to its granaries. Nourish the People traces the basic practices of this system, analyzes the organizational bases of its successes and failures, and examines variant practices in different regions. The volume concludes with an assessment of the granary system’s social and economic impact and historical comparison with the food supply policies of other states.
