Out of China: How the Chinese Ended the Era of Western Domination

"Most people don’t know much about it and, in view of the importance of China today, it’s a matter of some urgency that we learn about it. I think Out of China is a very ambitious and grandiose study of imperialism and anti-imperialism, and of the new nationalism in 20th century China. The narrative is very animated. At the same time, it’s very scholarly and well researched. It uses archival material from China as well as Britain and the US. The whole impression one gets is of clarity and depth of knowledge on the part of the author. “For me, the book helped me to understand modern China a lot better” The basic overarching theme is why China wanted rid of imperialist outsiders. I must confess to learning a lot about what happened in the 19th century, with the Opium Wars , and China and the Western powers, especially Britain, fighting over the question of commercial rights in China. These treaties that were drawn up between China on the one hand—and Britain, France, and Russia, and the US on the other—opened up a group of Chinese ports to the foreigners and, at the same time, legalised opium traffic. Shanghai, for example, became a British enclave. These treaties established a strong Western influence in China and helped to stir up Chinese nationalist sentiments, as far as I’ve seen from the book. But I was also intrigued to see that some aspects of European life were retained by the Chinese, such as the Boy Scouts movement, which they rendered more ‘Chinese.’ For me, the book helped me to understand modern China a lot better. It’s such an important country. And we have so many Chinese postgraduates coming to Europe and the United States to study with us. They obviously recognise the importance of English as the global language, but we should also have enough people who are learning Chinese."