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Saving the Nation: Economic Modernity in Republican China

Online ISBN:
9780226978741
Print ISBN:
9780226978734
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press
Book

Saving the Nation: Economic Modernity in Republican China

Published online:
21 February 2013
Published in print:
2 October 2006
Online ISBN:
9780226978741
Print ISBN:
9780226978734
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press

Abstract

Economic modernity is so closely associated with nationhood that it is impossible to imagine a modern state without an equally modern economy. Even so, most people would have difficulty defining a modern economy and its connection to nationhood. This book explores this connection by examining the first nation-building attempt in China after the fall of the empire in 1911. Challenging the assumption that nations are products of technological and socioeconomic forces, the book argues that it was notions of what constituted a modern nation that led the Nationalist nation-builders to shape China's institutions and economy. In their reform effort, they confronted several questions: What characterized a modern economy? What role would a modern economy play in the overall nation-building effort? And how could China pursue economic modernization while maintaining its distinctive identity? The book shows how these questions were negotiated and contested within the Nationalist Party. Silenced in the Mao years, these dilemmas are reemerging today as a new leadership once again redefines the economic foundation of the nation.

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