The Wobbling Pivot

The state and, by extension, state–society relations have been focal points in the study of Chinese history. From the Qing imperial state, with its minimalist bureaucracy, fabled meritocratic examination system, and complex administration of an expansive multi-ethnic and multilingual empire, to the centralised party-state of the People’s Republic of China that continues to exist today, much historical analysis has sought to understand attempts to maintain the stability of a unified China and the quest for unification during times of turmoil and division. In this context, the question whether and when in the course of the past two centuries Chinese state and society became modern, what shape that modernity took, whether it was Western or somehow particularly Chinese, has long occupied historians working on China. It has also been at the heart of the historiographical quest to fit the large piece that is China into the jigsaw-puzzle of global history. Understanding the country and its historical trajectory has, moreover, increasingly become part of the attempt to make sense of contemporary China and its changing international role

Bureaucracy · China · Context (archaeology · Empire · Historiography · Legitimacy · Modernity · Modernization theory · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sinology · Sociology · State (computer science · Chinese history and philosophy · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law