Readings

S01: Introduction: Chinese Dreams

April 1

Primary sources

• Sun Yatsen: Three People’s Principles and the Future of the Chinese People (1906) (Atwill & Atwill, 2021, pp. 138–141)
• Chiang Kai-shek: Growth and Development of the Chinese Nation (Chiang & Jaffe, 2013, pp. 29–43)
• Xi Jinping: Achieving Rejuvenation Is the Dream of the Chinese People

Secondary sources

• Imagined Communities: Introduction (Anderson, 2006, pp. 1–7)
• Myths and Lessons of Modern Chinese History (Kirby & Crow, 2014)

S02: From Empire to Nation-State

April 3

Primary sources

• Kang Youwei: The Grand Commonality (de Bary & Lufrano, 2001, pp. 270–273)
• Liang Qichao: Renewing the People (de Bary & Lufrano, 2001, pp. 288–293)
• Tan Sitong: The Study of Humanity (de Bary & Lufrano, 2001, pp. 280–284)

Secondary sources

• Reconsidering 1911: Lessons of a sudden revolution (J. W. Esherick, 2012)
• How Qing Became China (J. Esherick, 2006)

S03: New Cultures

April 8

Primary sources

• Lu Xun: A Mad Man’s Diary
• Chen Duxiu: The True Meaning of Life (de Bary & Lufrano, 2001, pp. 366–368)
• Hu Shi: Pragmatism (de Bary & Lufrano, 2001, pp. 368–369)

Secondary sources

• Revolution: Awakening China (Cheek, 2016, pp. 69–107)

S04: Red Star Rising

April 10

Primary sources

• He Zhen: What Women Should Know About Communism (de Bary & Lufrano, 2001, pp. 389–392)
• Li Dazhao: The Victory of Bolshevism (de Bary & Lufrano, 2001, pp. 404–406)
• Liu Shaoqi: How to be a Good Communist (de Bary & Lufrano, 2001, pp. 427–432)

Secondary sources

• Origins, Alliance, and Failure (Saich, 2021, pp. 38–76)

S05: Gender Revolution

April 15

Note

Trigger warnings: The film Lust, Caution contains a sequence of sexual violence from 1:32:31 to 1:34:33. There are two additional scenes of explicit sexuality from 1:41:04 to 1:43:12 and 1:52:50 to 1:55:32. You may skip these sections or the entire film if it causes too much distress.

Primary sources

• Lust, Caution (Lee, 2007)

Secondary sources

• Optional: Regulatory Regimes, 1928-1937 (Hershatter, 2018, pp. 129–163)

S06: One State, One Party, One Leader

April 17

Primary sources

• Luo Longji: “What Kind of Political System Do We Want?” (de Bary & Lufrano, 2001, pp. 331–334)
• Jiang Tingfu: “Revolution and Absolutism” (de Bary & Lufrano, 2001, pp. 334–336)
• Chiang Kai-shek: “Essentials of the New Life Movement” (de Bary & Lufrano, 2001, pp. 340–344)

Secondary sources

• Rejuvenation: Organizing China (1936–1956) (Cheek, 2016, pp. 112–158)

S07: Land Reform

April 22

Primary sources

• Draft Agrarian Law (1947)
• Land reform simulation game: Cast of characters
• Mao Zedong: Report on an Investigation of the Hunan Peasant Movement (de Bary & Lufrano, 2001, pp. 406–411)

Secondary sources

• Fanshen, Preface, Chapter 27-31 (Hinton, 1967, pp. 259–296)

S08: War and Nationalism

April 24

Primary sources

• The Last Emperor (Bertolucci, 1987)

Secondary sources

• Optional: Introduction: War, Memory, and Nationalism in China (Mitter, 2020, pp. 1–26)

S09: Leaning to One Side

April 29

Note

This session will be held in the Rauner Library.

Primary sources

• Selection from Ellis Briggs papers
  • United States Policy in China
  • Wilma Fairbank: The Cultural Relations Programs
• Mao Zedong: On New Democracy (de Bary & Lufrano, 2001, pp. 418–423)
• Mao Zedong: Leaning to One Side (de Bary & Lufrano, 2001, pp. 452–454)
• “Minutes of Conversation, Mao Zedong and Ambassador Yudin”, July 22, 1958

Secondary sources

• Chapter 2: “The Myth of America’s Lost Chance in China”, and Chapter 3: “Mao’s Continuous Revolution and the Rise and Demise of the Sino-soviet Alliance, 1949-1963” (J. Chen, 2001, pp. 37–84)

S10: Permanent Revolution

May 1

Note

This session will be held in the Hood Museum.

Primary sources

• To Live (Zhang, 1994)

Secondary sources

• Optional: Introduction: Modalities of State Building and Institution Building: Bureaucracies, Campaigns, and Performance (Strauss, 2020, pp. 1–33)

S11: Socialist Nationalities

May 6

Primary sources

• Fei Xiaotong: Ethnic Identification in China (Fei, 1992)
• The Tenth Panchen Lama: Looking Back at History (Barnett et al., 2020, pp. 266–270)

Secondary sources

• The Consent of the Categorized (Mullaney, 2011, pp. 92–119)
• Changing Approaches to Ethnic Governance (Sun, 2020, pp. 50–75)

S12: Wind from the East

May 8

Primary sources

• Yu Luoke: On Family Background (Yu, 2001)
• “At the Center of the Storm” and “Red Guards Had No Sex” (Yang, 2013, pp. 115–145)

Secondary sources

• Enemies from the Past: Bureaucracy, Class, and Mao’s Continuous Revolution (Wu, 2014, pp. 17–53)

S13: Sent-Down Generation

May 13

Primary sources

Selection from the Dartmouth Sent-down Youth Collection:

• This is the Greatest Unjust Case
• Let the Mind Break Free From the Cage and Take a Step With the Courage of Conviction
• A Telegram to the General Office of the State Council

Secondary sources

• An Enigmatic Upheaval (Walder, 2019, pp. 1–22)
• Images, Memories, and Lives of Sent-down Youth in Yunnan (Zheng, 2014)

S14: Farewell to Revolution

May 15

Primary sources

• Wei Jingsheng: Fifth Modernization: Democracy (1978) (de Bary & Lufrano, 2001, pp. 497–500)
• Deng Xiaoping: Uphold the Four Basic Principles (1979) (de Bary & Lufrano, 2001, pp. 492–493)

Secondary sources

• Reviving Reform: Correcting the Revolutionary Errors (1976-1955) (Cheek, 2016, pp. 216–258)
• Studying Chinese Politics: Farewell to Revolution? (Perry, 2007)

S15: Tiananmen Protests

May 20

Note

This session will be held in the Rauner Library.

Primary sources

• Transcript of May 18 Meeting Between Premier Li Peng and Students (1989) (Atwill & Atwill, 2021, pp. 361–365)
• That Holy Word (Liu, 1994)

Secondary sources

• Chapter 6: “Backed into Corners” and Chapter 8: “Protests: Alternative Paths” (Brown, 2021, pp. 63–81, 89–97)
• Introduction: A Decision to Kill (Su, 2023)

S16: Authoritarian Resilience

May 22

Primary sources

• Deng Xiaoping: Build socialism with Chinese characteristics (de Bary & Lufrano, 2001, pp. 509–510)
• Document 9: Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere (Central Committee of the Communist Party of China’s General Office, 2013)

Secondary sources

• Resilience and Collapse in China and the Soviet Union (Bernstein, 2013)
• How Resilient is the CCP? (Ang, 2022)

S17: Contentious Authoritarianism

May 27

Primary sources

• A Touch of Sin (Jia, 2013)

Secondary sources

• Social protest and contentious authoritarianism in China: Introduction (X. Chen, 2012, pp. 3–26)

S18: Ethnic Politics

May 29

Primary sources

• Reeducated: Inside Xinjiang’s Secret Detention Camps (Wolson, 2021)

Secondary sources

• Counterterrorism and Preventive Repression: China’s Changing Strategy in Xinjiang (Greitens et al., 2020)
• Problems of Stateness: Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (Nathan & Scobell, 2012, pp. 195–221)

S19: Future of the Past

June 3

Primary sources

• Portrait of Vice President Xi Jinping: “Ambitious Survivor” of the Cultural Revolution

Secondary sources

• Rejuvenation: Securing the Chinese Dream (1996–2015) (Cheek, 2016, pp. 261–314)

Full bibliography

Anderson, B. R. O. (2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (Revised Edition). Verso.

Ang, Y. Y. (2022). How Resilient Is the CCP? Journal of Democracy, 33(3), 77–91. https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2022.0041

Atwill, D. G., & Atwill, Y. Y. (2021). Sources in Chinese history : Diverse perspectives from 1644 to the present (Second edition.). Routledge.

Barnett, R., Weiner, B., & Robin, F. (Eds.). (2020). Conflicting memories : Tibetan history under Mao retold : Essays and primary documents. Brill.

Bernstein, T. P. (2013). Resilience and Collapse in China and the Soviet Union. In M. K. Dimitrov (Ed.), Why Communism Did Not Collapse (1st ed., pp. 40–64). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139565028.003

Bertolucci, B. (1987). The Last Emperor.

Brown, J. (2021). June fourth: The Tiananmen protests and Beijing Massacre of 1989. Cambridge University Press.

Central Committee of the Communist Party of China’s General Office. (2013). Document 9: Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere: A Notice from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China’s General Office. In ChinaFile. http://www.chinafile.com/document-9-chinafile-translation.

Cheek, T. (2016). The intellectual in modern Chinese history. Cambridge University Press.

Chen, J. (2001). Mao’s China and the Cold War. University of North Carolina Press.

Chen, X. (2012). Social protest and contentious authoritarianism in China. Cambridge University Press.

Chiang, K., & Jaffe, P. J. (2013). China’s destiny and Chinese economic theory. Global Oriental.

de Bary, Wm. T., & Lufrano, R. (Eds.). (2001). Sources of Chinese Tradition: From 1600 Through the Twentieth Century. Columbia University Press.

Esherick, J. (2006). How the Qing Became China. In J. Esherick, H. Kayali, & E. Van Young (Eds.), Empire to nation : Historical perspectives on the making of the modern world. Rowman & Littlefield.

Esherick, J. W. (2012). Reconsidering 1911: Lessons of a sudden revolution. Journal of Modern Chinese History, 6(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/17535654.2012.670511

Fei, X. (1992). Ethnic Identification in China (pp. 601–613). Springer US. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-1231-2_25

Greitens, S. C., Lee, M., & Yazici, E. (2020). Counterterrorism and Preventive Repression: China’s Changing Strategy in Xinjiang. International Security, 44(3), 9–47. https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00368

Hershatter, G. (2018). Women and China’s Revolutions. Rowman & Littlefield.

Hinton, W. (1967). Fanshen: A documentary of revolution in a Chinese village. Monthly Review Press.

Jia, Z. (2013). 天注定 A Touch of Sin. Xstream Pictures, Office Kitano, Shanghai Film Group.

Kirby, W. C., & Crow, B. (2014). Myths and Lessons of Modern Chinese History. 14.

Lee, A. (2007). Lust, Caution [Drama, {{History}}, {{Romance}}]. Haishang Films, Focus Features, River Road Entertainment.

Liu, X. (1994). That Holy Word, "Revolution". In J. N. Wasserstrom & E. Perry (Eds.), Popular Protest And Political Culture In Modern China (2nd edition). Routledge.

Mitter, R. (2020). China’s good war: How World War II is shaping a new nationalism. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Mullaney, T. S. (2011). Coming to terms with the nation : Ethnic classification in modern China. University of California Press.

Nathan, A. J., & Scobell, A. (2012). China’s search for security. Columbia University Press.

Perry, E. J. (2007). Studying Chinese Politics: Farewell to Revolution? The China Journal, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.2307/20066239

Saich, T. (2021). From Rebel to Ruler: One Hundred Years of the Chinese Communist Party. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Strauss, J. C. (2020). State Formation in China and Taiwan: Bureaucracy, Campaign, and Performance. Cambridge University Press.

Su, Y. (2023). Deadly Decision in Beijing: Succession Politics, Protest Repression, and the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre. Cambridge University Press.

Sun, Y. (2020). From empire to nation state: Ethnic politics in China. Cambridge University Press.

Walder, A. G. (2019). Agents of disorder: Inside China’s Cultural Revolution. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Wolson, S. (2021). Reeducated: Inside Xinjiang’s Secret Detention Camps.

Wu, Y. (2014). The cultural revolution at the margins: Chinese socialism in crisis. Harvard University Press.

Yang, R. (2013). Spider Eaters: A Memoir (15th anniversary ed.). University of California Press.

Yu, L. (2001). On Family Background. Contemporary Chinese Thought, 32(4), 17–36. https://doi.org/10.2753/CSP1097-1467320417

Zhang, Y. (1994). 活着 To Live. Shanghai Film Studios.

Zheng, X. (2014). Images, Memories, and Lives of Sent-down Youth in Yunnan. In J. A. Cook, J. Goldstein, M. D. Johnson, & S. Schmalzer (Eds.), Visualizing Modern China: Image, History, and Memory, 1750–Present (pp. 96–114).

Change Log

• 2025-03-28: Initial release
• 2025-04-03: Removed S20; Updated film and reading selection; Added content warning
• 2025-04-17: Added selections of Ellis Briggs papers
• 2025-05-08: Updated Mengding Farm paper selections
• 2025-05-30: Reduced reading for S19.