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The relationship between social factors and the formation of exported mug designs is blurred. This study addresses how they influence material design. Based on a quantitative typological analysis, this paper interprets the cultural relationships underlying the evolution of mug designs exported during the Ming and Qing dynasties. The study reveals: (1) the typology and handle styles of mugs can be categorized into six types, with a predominance of Cylindrical bodies and Ear-shaped handles. Notably, artistic emphasis is concentrated on Bulbous cup bodies and Tail outward curved handles; (2) the design of mugs in the eighteenth century exhibited diversity, morphological similarities, and feature continuity, evolving from representational (Ming Dynasty) to abstract and then to minimalistic styles (Qing Dynasty), particularly evident in the three-dimensional modeling of handles for ergonomic comfort (transitioning from a singular Outward curved form to Ear-shaped form, and then to Entwined branch form); (3) the body shape of mugs transformed from Arc-barrel bodies to Bulbous bodies (focusing on heat retention), and eventually to Cylindrical bodies (prioritizing heat retention, practicality, and cost-efficiency).; (4) the volume of mugs steadily increased from the early eighteenth century, generally classified into large volume (≥ 500 ml), medium volume (200-499 ml), and small volume (< 200 ml); (5) considering the extreme range of volume (11090 ml) and height (25 cm), it indicates that these two variables do not necessarily have a direct positive correlation; (6) the low center of gravity in handle design (average width of 3.4 cm against an average height of 9.9 cm for the body) reflects considerations for the distribution of liquid weight and operational convenience. The volume of sample-10 (11127 ml) notably exceeds the typical range for tea-drinking utensils, revealing the mechanism of wealth and status symbolism. Market demand orientation emerged as the primary driver for the evolution of export mug designs during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, with adjustments in the merchant system playing a secondary role. The transformation in mug design reflects the interplay of multiple factors, with the trend toward minimalist design being a response to market demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines four typologies of secularism in China from the sixteenth century onward, through an analysis of the triadic relationship between the secular, religious, and superstitious. These notions have been considered to be derived from the particular intellectual and political history of the West, but this fails to grasp the complexity of non-Western belief systems. This article proposes to instead examine how Chinese policymakers and intellectuals actively fabricated religion and produced secularization. It goes beyond a simple rebuttal of Eurocentrism, and arguments regarding the mutual incomparability of Western and Chinese experiences of secularization. It distinguishes four typologies of secularism that emerged successively in China: (1) the reduction of Christianity from the sixteenth century to the 1900s; (2) the Confucian secular and (3) atheist secular that were conceptualized, respectively, by royalist reformers and anti-Manchu revolutionaries during the final two decades of the Qing Dynasty; and (4) the interventionist secularism pursued by the Republican and the Communist regimes to strictly supervise and regulate religious beliefs and practices. The paper argues that, if secularization is indeed Christian in nature, secularism and religion were not imposed in China under Western cultural and political hegemony. Instead, the Christian secular model was produced in China mainly via pre-existing cultural norms and the state's ad hoc political needs, making the Christian secularism itself a multipolar phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the impact of a large‐scale censorship campaign in Qing China (1644–1911) on intellectuals' writings. Using a Difference‐in‐Difference approach and analysing 23,000 poems, the study reveals a significant decrease in the frequency of censored words in poems written by censored intellectuals. There was no room to circumvent censorship by adopting homophones, split words, and variant characters. The machine learning analyses uncover some indication that the censorship campaign influenced intellectuals' writing styles, with intellectuals shifting away from the censored poetry. The campaign created intense political pressures, leading to self‐censorship, but its long‐term impact on word choices was minimal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic discussion of traditional zinc-smelting technology in China has been hampered by a paucity of physical data recovered from early production sites. In recent years, however, the discovery of former zinc-smelting sites in the municipality of Chongqing in south-western China has provided important evidence from archaeological excavations that contribute to the study of this topic. Taking the smelting furnace found at the Linjiangerdui site in Zhong County as an example, this paper introduces and discusses the form, use and maintenance of the zinc-smelting furnace of the Ming Dynasty (AD 1368–1644), and makes a preliminary comparison with the smelting furnaces dating to the Qing Dynasty (AD 1636–1912) unearthed in Shizhu County and the mountainous Hunan Province in an attempt to elucidate the development and evolution of ancient Chinese zinc-smelting technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A coalition of Chinese, Vietnamese, and French authorities spent much of 1878–1879 putting down a thousands-strong revolt led by Li Yangcai, an officer dismissed from the Guangxi provincial army. Using Chinese and Vietnamese court records, newspapers, and memoirs, I argue that the Li Yangcai rebellion and the imperial reactions, albeit ephemeral and limited compared to other revolts and their responses in the tumultuous nineteenth century, underline the crucial element of personal connections in borderland insurgencies during the last decades of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912). Literature on these figures highlights how personal circumstances, particularistic connections, and the borderland setting played a key role in facilitating the growth of these small but influential insurgencies. My examination of Li Yangcai, focusing on similar elements, contributes to the growing scholarship on limited wars. Additionally, I show how the state, in addition to using official bureaucratic channels, relied on personal relationships with influential characters in the local communities to suppress the rebels. I demonstrate not only how people behaved within institutional constraints but also how the state incorporated personal ties into its institutional arsenal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the lack of research on the embroidery types and needle techniques of the Gaoshan nationality of Taiwan, China, we used the two-dimensional verification method of literature and image analysis, Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator to illustrate their stitching techniques and to summarize the basic application rules of Gaoshan embroidery stitch. The results show that the Gaoshan nationality in Taiwan is closely related to the Han nationality. Since the Qing Dynasty, after the Gaoshan nationality traded with the Han nationality in Chinese mainland, the embroidery utensils of the Gaoshan nationality have been gradually improved. According to the degree of communication with the Han nationality, the embroidery of the Gaoshan nationality is divided into primitive ecological embroidery and immigrated embroidery. The primitive ecological embroidery has a strong primitive and religious atmosphere. The immigrated embroidery has been developed from the integration of Han and Gaoshan ethnic characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The roots of the genealogy writing tradition of the Chinese Sibe go back to the Qing Dynasty. This tradition has played a crucial role to create a genealogical community of the Sibe: genealogies were the material carriers of knowledge preserved about their ancestors and their past. However, many of the genealogies were lost during the turbulent time of the twentieth century, and although numerous Sibe clans embark on reproducing their own family trees, it is only the memory of the elderly they can most often draw on. This study is intended to present and highlight the significance a specific collection of genealogies compiled by a self-taught Sibe historian, offering valuable sources for conduct research on the history of the Qing-dynasty and the Sibe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global historical land use scenarios, including HYDE3.2 and PJ, are widely used in global change research. However, their uncertainties have not been well evaluated. Based on the historical-documents-based Chinese historical cropland dataset (CHCD), we evaluated the uncertainties of the representative global historical land use scenarios in past-millennium cropland reconstruction in China in terms of the area and spatial pattern. The results show that apparent differences exist in cropland area at the national scale between HYDE3.2 or PJ and CHCD for the Song-Liao-Jin Era (AD 1000–1279) and the Qing dynasty to present (AD 1644–1999), with a maximum relative difference ratio (RDR) of about −35% and 112%, respectively. We detected similar differences at the provincial scale, except for Guizhou, Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Xinjiang provinces. Specifically, HYDE3.2 underestimates cropland areas of nine provinces, with an absolute difference of up to 5.2 × 104 km2, while overestimates cropland areas of ten provinces, with an absolute difference of up to 5.1 × 104 km2. As for the spatial pattern, the percentage of grids with an absolute value of RDR greater than 70% between HYDE3.2 and CHCD reach up to 54%–82%, mainly distributed in major agricultural areas, frontier areas, and geographical transition zones. In conclusion, neither HYDE3.2 nor PJ reflects China's cropland area and its past-millennium change accurately, resulting from the differences in data sources, area estimation, and spatial allocation methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is “Sichuan Qingyin Performance in China; The Transmission Process, Obstruction and Way to Resolve”. The study employed the qualitative research methodology of ethnomusicology. The objectives were to 1) Investigate the development of Sichuan Qingyin performance in China. 2) Examine the transmission process of Sichuan Qingyin performance in Sichuan and Chongqing, China. Based on the study findings, 1) Sichuan Qingyin is closely related to ancient Chinese Quyi art. The sources of Sichuan Qingyin are complex. Sichuan Qingyin was formed roughly during the early Qing Dynasty. From the late Qing Dynasty to the early years of the Republic of China, Sichuan Qingyin flourished. During this period, the performances of Sichuan Qingyin were very popular in the streets of Sichuan and Chongqing. Sichuan Qingyin has developed significantly since the People's Republic of China was founded. Due to changes in the times, Sichuan Qingyin is being squeezed by other art forms, so the present state of affairs is not optimistic. 2) Today, the transmission process consists mainly of school education and professional performance groups. There are many obstacles to contemporary Sichuan Qingyin, such as a lack of performance venues, a loss of audiences, and an absence of newly composed works; this study outlines corresponding measures and recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The architectural conservation movement began in China during an era of transformation. In the period from 1840 to 1966, i.e., the end of the Qing Dynasty to the initial 17 years of the People's Republic of China, China changed its regime twice times, from the feudal Qing dynasty to the Republic of China (ROC) and then to the People's Republic of China (PRC). In of the past regime changes usually led to the complete demolition of historic buildings and cities by successive authorities. However, both the Kuomintang Party (the ruling party of ROC) and the Communist Party of China (the ruling party of PRC) chose to protect historic buildings and cities, as they considered architectural conservation helpful for nation-building. Their actions encouraged the generation of architectural conservation in China. The paper reviews the development of architectural conservation in China. It introduces the conservation policies of the KMT and CPC authorities and discusses how the government-led conservation policies impacted the development of the Chinese conservation movement. The paper provides an example from China reflective of the political influences on conservation practice in a global context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarship on the origins of modern territoriality and the modernist conception of territory has largely been confined to Europe and its colonial histories. Few attempts have been made to understand modern territoriality from an alternative epistemic starting point. This article moves beyond critiques of Eurocentrism by examining the territorial metamorphosis of the Qing Empire to modern China. Like the United States and Russia, China has retained its early modern continental colonial possessions. In order to explain the territorialisation of the multi-ethnic Qing empire, this article engages empirically with cartographic and textual representations of China from Confucian literati scholars, European Jesuit cartographers and the Manchu imperial court from the 17th to the early 19th centuries. The empirical study shows that by the early 19th century, a new territorialised conception of 'China' closely resembling that of modern territoriality had emerged. This 'modern' and Sinocentric form of territoriality encompassed areas that were hitherto seen as foreign and non-Chinese. In opposition to the extant Eurocentric historiography, this article traces the emergence of modern territoriality in imperial China to a nexus of European cartographic techniques, Qing imperial conquests and the literati synthesis of Manchu imperial and Sinocentric forms of territoriality. By showing the deep historical processes and global entanglements behind the emergence of modern China as a territorial state, the article makes a case for a polycentric account of modern territoriality [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantifying long-term and large-scale changes in cropland cover is critical for evaluating the intensity of past human activity, climate change, biodiversity loss, food security, and carbon and water cycles. This study used multiple data sources, i.e., historical reconstruction, remote sensing, statistics, and their derived products, and a combined approach for quantitative reconstruction and gridding allocation to create the Chinese Historical Cropland Dataset+ (CHCD+). Our findings showed a substantial gross change of 30.82 × 107 ha in cropland cover, equivalent to 32 % of China's land area. This represents a 3.2-fold increase compared to the net change. Such a large-scale agricultural land cover change has not been identified previously. Traditional agricultural areas, predominantly in the Yellow River and Yangtze River basins, have established a fundamental pattern for the historical development of agriculture in China. The proportion of croplands in this region consistently exceeded 70 %, reaching 90 % before the mid-Qing dynasty. We identified a two-phase pattern of historical cropland cover changes in China. Before the Qing Dynasty, there was slow growth and a substantial change in the cropland area. This has been constrained by geographical conditions, tax systems, and population size, with the gross change being six times the net change. Since the Qing Dynasty, a rapid growth and expansion phase has been observed in cropland areas, which can be explained by tax system reforms, population expansion, and the introduction of cold- and drought-resistant crops. • Cropland areas in China exhibited a prevailing expansion trend throughout the last millennium. • China's cropland experienced a gross change 3.2 times greater than the net change in the millennium. • Pre-Qing Dynasty, traditional agriculture region covered 42 % of national land, exceeding 90 % in cropland proportion. • Land policy and population size shaped cropland dynamics, imposing constraints or acting as drivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the instrumentalization of "China" in contacts between the Ming and Qing dynasties and Siam-Ayutthaya. It focuses both on the state-to-state relations and those between various members of the Siamese and the imperial societies. "China" and "Chinese-ness" stood for forms of ascribed identity within the Sinocentric world, for a form of social distinction, and for one of many identities assumed in the games of political loyalty. For the Ming and Qing empires, inclusion of a foreign land within "China" was conducted through the ritual and administrative fictions that situated Ayutthaya within a hierarchy vis-à-vis the imperial capital. Beyond the state's discourses, participation in a vaguely defined Chinese culture were means of building social networks within the merchant and official communities in Ayutthaya. For the junkmen that connected Ayutthaya and South China, multiple Chinese identities were instrumentalized and inflected according to the needs and necessities of the moment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decoration with feathers is a universal phenomenon in human history. Objects decorated with feathers were regarded as fine artworks and hence were enormously prized. In ancient China, dotting a surface with blue kingfisher feathers was a famous, complex and delicate decoration technique called diancui. Although various ancient diancui artworks appear in many museums around the world and researchers have realized significant results in studies of the history, technique and conservation of diancui, some key historical details are still not clear. In this research performed during restoration, an important object from the Palace Museum, the "Feather Decoration Hanging Screen with Birds and Flowers Pattern", was analyzed by various scientific technologies. This object is a Chinese imperial artwork of the Qing dynasty (seventeenth to eighteenth century) decorated with kingfisher feathers and the feathers of several other birds, and it represents the highest level of this period. As a typical and valuable case, the results provide important clues for solving questions arising from related academic fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The February Revolution which overthrew the Russian monarchy was greeted with euphoria by the Chinese media. Reminiscent of the 1911 Revolution which overthrew not just the Qing dynasty but also the imperial system, it resonated with Chinese intellectuals. The predominant mood of optimism was fuelled by reports which painted a rosy picture of the February Revolution, some of which bordered on naivete. As events unravelled, news reports on the February Revolution grew increasingly pessimistic about the situation in Russia, although most commentators never lost their sympathy for the revolution. Indeed, they followed the chaos in Russia with worry and concern, and tried to interpret events in ways that made sense to their Chinese readers. In this article, I examine how the February Revolution and the Provisional Government's prosecution of the war was reported by the Chinese media, thus highlighting how interpretations of historical events were unavoidably distorted by the circumstances of the time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the dominance of a two-generation approach to the study of intergenerational social mobility, multigenerational influences that link the characteristics of kin across three or more generations may be important in some populations. These effects include direct net effects of grandparents' socioeconomic characteristics on grandchildren, the effects of even more remote generations, the effects of family characteristics that bring extreme advantage or disadvantage at points in the past that are not uniformly tied to any specific past generation, a variety of demographic effects that both reweight socioeconomic distributions in successive generations and also incorporate multigenerational effects on demographic behavior itself, heterogeneous multigenerational effects in populations that contain more than one social mobility regime, and long-run multigenerational effects that result from mobility-fertility interactions in population dynamics. Genealogical data from the Qing Dynasty Imperial Lineage and from population registry data for Liaoning, China over the past several centuries provide illustrations of all of these types of multigenerational effects. Multigenerational influence is much more multi-faceted than previous speculations and empirical investigations have implied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines a largely unexplored component of China's classical garden system—the gardens of salt merchants in Tianjin during the Qing Dynasty (1636–1911). Beyond existing works, which tend to focus on imperial and scholar gardens—gardens of the ruling elites—this examination of merchant gardens contributes to garden history by revealing that merchants created gardens to improve their low social status. It further reveals shifts in the functions, architectural design and flora of the gardens which reflects both individual aesthetics and the changing fortunes of Tianjin's salt merchants in general. Salt merchant gardens in Tianjin initially presented idyllic scenery to create literary-based, self-immersed spaces. Then beginning in the 1720s, they evolved into a showcase of rising merchant power displaying affluence, thereby enabling merchants to improve their social rank. Finally, from the 1840s, salt merchant gardens gradually became extravagant enclosures as the collapse of the established social structure unfolded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When discussing Chinese food in the People's Republic of China, the concept of culinary regionalism appears everywhere. Scholarly and popular accounts alike systematically list the same four (eight, ten, or twelve) "great" regional cuisines (sidacaixi, badacaixi, etc.), asserting that the designation of the original four great regional cuisines (Lu from Shandong Province, Yue from Guangdong Province, Chuan from Sichuan Province, and Huaiyang from Jiangsu Province) arose during the Qing dynasty (1644–1911). This article argues that the standardized concept of a four- (or more) part culinary system is likely a much later historical development, possibly even of the post-Mao reform era. It draws upon different historical definitions of "Chinese" food, using the food writings of Yuan Mei (1716–98), Xu Ke (1869–1928), Lin Yutang (1895–1976), and Qi Rushan (1875–1962). How can a better understanding of the historical dynamics of culinary regionalism affect our understanding of "Chinese" food? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Embroidered bands on the edges of the sleeves of women's garments were fashionable in China during the late 19th century. They adorned Manchu and Han ladies' garments with colourful landscapes, flowers and birds, figural scenes and auspicious symbols that expressed wishes for long life, many male offspring, and an advance in social position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Binding material is a key component of painted cultural relics, and research on binding agents ("binders") is of great significance for the study of the history and preservation of cultural artefacts. In this work, our team collected 129 painted samples from 28 ancient cultural relics located in 9 provinces of China. We used an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) as well as immunofluorescence microscopy (IFM) to identify proteinous binders in these samples. Our results show that 51 painted samples were found to contain animal glue, 13 samples were found to contain egg ovalbumin, and 2 samples were found to contain casein. Two mural painting samples prepared in the Ming and Qing Dynasties (14–20 century AD) from the Jiazaerjia Mountain Grottoes in Sichuan province were found to contain casein, and this is the first time that casein binders were found in Chinese painted cultural relics. On top of our detection results, this paper also reports statistics on the chronology, geographical distribution, and artwork types in which organic binders are found, and provides evidence of the use of proteinous binders in Chinese painted cultural relics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is a wise choice for a backward country to explore overseas education bases to find the training for urgently needed talents. In 1900, the Qing government began actively sending students to study advanced technology in Japan. From that time, Tokyo Higher Technical School (THTS) became an indispensable overseas base for Chinese students studying abroad. Although the educational resources of THTS were not superior to those of the imperial universities, returning THTS graduates played a greater role in the industrial modernisation of China than the graduates from imperial universities. This article shows that the role of importers of technology is not only determined by the technology they have acquired, but also highly influenced by a variety of factors, such as opportunity and social demand, presenting a complex and changeable pattern in different contexts. For developing countries, the 'appropriateness' plays a more important role than the 'progressiveness' of the imported technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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It has been suggested that population growth dynamics may be revealed by the geographic distribution and the physical structure of ancient bridges. Yet, this relationship has not been empirically verified. In this study, we applied the archaeological records for ancient bridges to reveal the population growth dynamics in the lower Yangtze River Basin in late imperial China. We investigated 89 ancient bridges in Yixing that were built during the Ming and Qing dynasties (AD1368–1911). Global Position System information and structure (length, width, and span) of those bridges was measured during our field investigations. Their distribution density was calculated by ArcGIS. The historical socio-economic dynamics of Yixing was inferred from the distribution and structure of ancient bridges. Based on the above information, the population growth dynamics in Yixing was projected. Our results show that 77 bridges were built in Yixing during the Qing dynasty, which is 6.41 times more than the number built during the Ming dynasty. In the Ming dynasty, bridges were built on pivotal routes; in the Qing dynasty, bridges were scattered across various places. Over the period, the density distribution of bridges shifted northwestward, while the average length and width of bridges decreased. The increasing number of bridges corresponded to population growth, largely attributable to massive clan migration from northern China during the Little Ice Age. The shift in the density distribution of bridges corresponded to the formation of settlements of large clans and the blossoming of Yixing Teapot handicrafts. The scattering and the reduction in average length and width of bridges was due to the dispersal of population and the associated formation of small settlements in the latter period. Our approach is innovative and robust, and could be employed to recover long-term historical population growth dynamics in other parts of China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the literature, the ‘Overview Maps of Imperial Territories’ orHuangyu quanlan tu皇輿全覽圖, is mostly referred to as ‘the Jesuit atlas of China’. The reason is that this early eighteenth-century atlas of all Qing China’s territories plus Korea and Tibet is assumed to have resulted from European missionaries importing European cartographic practices. In this essay, I argue that this view is outdated and can no longer be sustained. By revisiting the background of the missionaries’ involvement in cartographic exchanges between Asia and Europe, the techniques used for surveying Qing territories and the production of the resulting atlases, I show that the mapping project behind the ‘Overview Maps of Imperial Territories’ is best understood as a creative answer to the unique needs of Qing frontier management and imperial control, made possible by the integration, in mensurational and in representational terms, of European and East Asian cartographic practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows and analyses the issue of the relations between Nepal and the Ch'ing Empire from the British point of view during the last months of the Manchu authority in China. Nepal, a buffer state between India and Tibet, represented for the British an important and decisive ally in South Asia. The first part of the work will be dedicated to an analysis of the political and geopolitical status of Nepal compared to Britain and China of the Ch'ing Dynasty. The second part, which further develops the first, enters into the specifics of a tribute that the Himalayan country should have offered the Emperor P'u-i. The Hsin-hai Revolution of 1911 put an end to imperial power in China and would lead to the establishment of the republic and would resolve issues and misunderstandings between the countries. The paper pays particular attention to the correspondence between the then Nepalese Prime Minister, Chandra Shum Shere, and the British Resident in Nepal, John Manners Smith. The research takes as a benchmark the wider scenario of the period immediately following the end of the Great Game and the decline of the Manchu power. The guideline and key to interpretation of the documents reflects the perspective of the geopolitical and strategic interests of the British Empire in Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent discussions on the nature and problems of Chinese state legitimacy have drawn attention to the multidimensionality of contributing factors and threats to this legitimacy. This article shifts the focus of the discussion on legitimacy to the process of Chinese state legitimation and develops answers to the question of how state legitimation strategies from the late-Qing period through the early 21st century handled an adherence both to traditional Chinese political-cultural rules of paternalistic governance and legitimation claims grounded in Western concepts of the nation-state and citizenship. The article focuses on and draws upon discussions of national citizenship, religion, and superstition in state policy directives on moral-political education from the Qing period to the Hu Jintao administration to elaborate on the ways concepts of citizenship and religiosity have been integrated with state concern for people's spiritual livelihood, fidelity to orthodoxies of good governance, concern for people's material livelihood, attentiveness to people's views, and encouragement of people fulfilling their responsibilities. It finds that religiosity is closely linked with conceptions of orthodoxy and heterodoxy and that these links create contradictions with the relationship between religiosity, national development, and citizenship rights. The article concludes by suggesting that the existence of these contradictions is assuaged by the perspective that states' legitimation objectives are met by continually adhering to the broader character of paternalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We construct 1912/18 Chinese provincial gross domestic product per capita from primary sources and project cross-sections for 1873 and 1893. The results fit the historical record. We hypothesise that regionally specific conflicts have a role to play in explaining differential growth rates, and that geography, governance, and sectoral structures explain relative income-level rankings. China's richest provinces matched Europe's poorest. A divergence did indeed occur, but our estimates show that at a broader economic level, it was perhaps not as dramatic as some of the literature implies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two decades ago, only a handful of NGOs operated legally in China. Today the sector is thriving. Even with the threat of new restrictions under the Xi Jinping government, private social initiative appears poised for even greater expansion in the future. To fully appreciate the significance of these recent developments, this essay presents a wider view of China’s long history of civic organisation, comparing the contemporary resurgence of NGOs to the historical development of private charities in the Qing and Republican periods. It finds similarities in the motivations of organisers and donors, as well as in the relationship between civic organisations and the state, but sees other developments, such as the capitalisation of the NGO sector and its ability to mobilise public opinion, as substantively new. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article focuses on the historical development of China's corporate forms in different stages, and their respective features, as well as the main causes and effects. The author discusses the governmental impact upon this corporate evolution from the perspective of ownership and control, and demonstrates its negative influence in general. It is the aim of this article to demonstrate, mainly from the lessons of history, that government should not interfere too much in the development of these corporate sectors, and unnecessary governmental interference should be subsequently removed. Shareholder protection, particularly minority shareholder protection, should, as a result, be emphasised in order to adapt modem corporate governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1911-1927 period represented a window of opportunity for the creation of a Chinese military structure with a professional officer corps. After the fall of the Qing dynasty, Jiang Baili emerged as a rare military theorist who had intellectual status, a nuanced understanding of civil-military affairs, and both domestic and foreign military training. The failure of Jiang Baili to influence China's military development was mainly due to his individual difficulties in focusing his intellectual talents on real-world issues. After producing two seminal works in the 1910s, Jiang lived for another twenty years as a marginalized, increasingly eccentric military analyst. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary geo-economic development is characterised by global transformation from the EU and Western countries, in general, towards the Asia-Pacific and East Asian concept, which will result in further evolution of the World System determined by the economies of the new industrial and post-industrial countries. The objective of this article is to investigate the role of economies of East Asian countries in global economic development. Particularly this paper analyses the situation in the textile industry, as exemplified by China, in the world market to identify prospects for its sustainable and competitive development. During the progress of this work, it was determined that the textile industry in China is currently under the influence of delayed adverse effects of the global financial and economic crisis of 2008-2010, which can further lead to systemic risk emergence in the Chinese economy, as the textile industry plays a leading role in its economic development. Analytical procedures performed in this study clearly showed the urgency of implementing technological and managerial innovations in order to increase the competitiveness of the Chinese textile industry. The government also needs to revise its measures of support to the sector. Improving competitiveness and providing sustainable growth and development of the textile industry in China allows to create a new margin of safety for the Chinese economy and secure unconditional long term leadership for the textile industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the sixteenth to eighteenth century, China underwent a commercial revolution similar to the one in contemporaneous Europe. The rise of market did foster the rise of a nascent bourgeois and the concomitant rise of a liberal, populist version of Confucianism, which advocated a more decentralized and less authoritarian political system in the last few decades of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). But after the collapse of the Ming Empire and the establishment of the Qing Empire (1644-1911) by the Manchu conquerors, the new rulers designated the late-Ming liberal ideologies as heretics, and they resurrected the most conservative form of Confucianism as the political orthodoxy. Under the principle of filial piety given by this orthodoxy, the whole empire was imagined as a fictitious family with the emperor as the grand patriarch and the civil bureaucrats and subjects as children or grandchildren. Under the highly centralized administrative and communicative apparatus of the Qing state, this ideology of the fictitious patrimonial state penetrated into the lowest level of the society. The subsequent paternalist, authoritarian, and moralizing politics of the Qing state contributed to China's nontransition to capitalism despite its advanced market economy, and helped explain the peculiar form and trajectory of China's popular contention in the eighteenth century. I also argue that this tradition of fictitious patrimonial politics continued to shape the state-making processes in twentieth-century China and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By 1735, Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville had produced forty-one maps of the Qing Empire, or China, a process significantly more complex than scholars have hitherto appreciated. A close study of d’Anville’s maps and their originals has revealed their relationship with the different versions of a Chinese atlas, the first of which was completed early in 1718, the outcome of nearly a decade of collaborative surveying between officials of the Qing Empire and European missionaries. The precise origins of some of the maps are identified for the first time, and the network behind the remarkable intercontinental exchange of cartographical material that allowed d’Anville to produce his China maps is also discussed, thereby illustrating the central role of the French Jesuits, as well as the connection with St Petersburg. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

At the furthest reach from Ireland - whether in terms of size or geography or culture - China seems an unlikely place for Irish Studies. Yet over the last few years, Irish Studies has emerged as an acknowledged academic field in several key Chinese universities. This essay looks at the obstacles to Irish Studies in China as well as Ireland's importance, after the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911, in opening up discussion of such domestic issues as the role of literature in establishing a new national identity. The many unexpected similarities between Irish and Chinese culture have ensured that translations of Irish writers such as Wilde, Yeats, Shaw, Beckett and especially Joyce have played a distinctive role in ushering a newly emerging Chinese nation into its own version of global modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an examination of Feng Erkang’s essay "Re-evaluating a Two Hundred Year-Old Mystery - a study of Emperor Yongzheng’s coronation," published on October 4, 2010. This essay is a review of Feng’s essay and a study of the issue. Out of twelve emperors in the Qing dynasty, only Yongzheng’s coronation has been called into question. The first section of the article addresses the chief reason of the problem -- that Kangxi did not name Yongzheng as heir. The second section addresses the cause of Kangxi’s death. The third section discusses accounts by the Italian missionary Matteo Ripa (1692-1745). The fourth section discusses Kangxi’s last edict. The fifth section discusses the roles Kangxi’s sons played in the palace.

From 9 to 11 August 2010, the Institute of Qing History of the Renmin University of China held the international symposium "Qing Politics and National Identity" in Beijing. Nearly 60 experts and scholars from the Chinese mainland, Taiwan, the United States, Japan, Germany, and other countries addressed the issue of "New Qing History.” This shift in paradigm benefited from focused research on marginalization in political history, as well as input from social history and cultural history methodologies. The reaction to this influx of approaches and ideas also generated a counter-reaction to “return to old political history.” This core theme runs throughout the symposium. Scholars discussed such topics as the Qing state and national identity, the Qing political system, Qing bureaucracy and government administration, Qing political culture, and state control and social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a study of the yellow riding jacket (magua) as a political tool and a symbol. The jackets were special items bestowed by Qing emperors; an example can be seen in "Illustrations of Qianlong’s Southern Tour." Previous scholars have criticized the yellow riding jacket as a non-Han costume. Focusing on the close relationship between politics and dress code, the author utilizes the study of the yellow riding jacket as a focus on Qing-dynasty political culture. The first section describes the origins of the yellow riding jacket, its typology, and imperial power. The second section discusses whether the jacket’s origin is Han or non-Han, and traces its evolution in the Qing dynasty.

Characteristics of Xinjiang Province, China, make it vulnerable to frequent natural hazards. Due to limited ability of the population to withstand and to recover from disasters, the region’s social and economic development is comparatively low. This article addresses the lack of research on this topic by gathering information from primary source documents from 1759 to 1911. The first part of the article provides an overview of disasters in Qing-dynasty Xinjiang. The second part of the article describes the types of relief provided by Qing government. The author concludes that the government paid a high level of attention to relief in the region.

After Ligdan Qayan of Caqar died in 1634, the Qing controlled the Mongols of the Southern Gobi Desert, but despite Qing efforts to obstruct them, the Qalq-a of the Northern Gobi Desert renewed trade with Ming for a time. The Ming purchased horses from the Qalq-a for their military, and the Ming court even wanted to use the Qalq-a to thwart the western advance of Qing troops. The Qing court employed military threats and economic enticements to stop Qalqa trade with the Ming and shift the trade to the Qing. Furthermore, in the name of the Tumed and Qarc in tribes, the Qing court controlled the markets between the Mongols and the Ming, not only fulfilling its own economic needs, but also controlling the Qalq-a. Under military threat from the Qing, the Ming court tacitly allowed the Qing to trade indirectly to avoid an attack on its northern border. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of assistant magistrates in the villages and towns has increased greatly since the Yongzheng reign. This article first tries to define the administrative organization inferior to that of a county and then makes an analysis on the assistant magistrates in the villages and towns. It shows that some Tongzhi (subprefect of subprefecture), Tongpan and other officials are within this system and thus proves the types of officials of the administrative organization inferior to that of a county varying. Their functions can be divided into three types. The first is only responsible for safety of a village. The second is authorized to deal with small lawsuits. The third can even collect principal tax, a similar function to a county magistrate. The large increase of administrative organization inferior to a county enforces the control of local government over the grassroots' society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In September 1906, the Qing government issued an edict that promised to prepare a constitution beginning with the reform of the administrative structure. Two months later, a plan for reform in the central bureaucratic system was issued. But reforming the local bureaucratic system was slow and difficult to implement. During the preparation for the reform of local governments, different political forces from the Qing government heatedly debated the pace and scope of the reform. The different opinions not only reflected efforts to safeguard their interests, but also involved doubts about the feasibility of the reform plan. It was not until the following July, when the "Regulations Regarding Reform of the Official System of the Provinces," which was based on the compromise among different factions, was declared. However, the drafters evaded some crucial questions and it seemed to contemporaries that the rule was just an interim measure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a summary of the proceedings of the symposium “High Qing Society and Yangzhou” held from 23 - 24 October 2010. Organized by noted Qing scholars Chen Jiexian, Feng Erkang, and Yan Chongnian, sponsored by the city of Yangzhou, and co-hosted by Nankai University, Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, and Yangzhou University, the symposium was attended by over 40 scholars from China and overseas. The focus of so-called high Qing period concerns the eighteenth century. The author provides summary on the papers presented for each four categories of presentations. They are: political system and social life; the culture and intellectual history of Yangzhou; and the rise and fall of Yangzhou.

This article presents a detailed account of the various revisions and annotations of the Annals of Taizu (Taizu benji) in the Draft History of the Qing dynasty (Qing shigao). Since different parts of the Draft History were housed in Beijing and Taipei, scholars have not been able to compare the versions until 1978, when Taiwanese scholars published the first annotated Draft History of the Qing Dynasty. Between 2007 and 2008, further refinements of unpublished sections of ji (annals of emperors), zhi (record of events), biao (lists of officials), zhuan (biographies of notable figures) were published for the first time by the National Palace Museum in Taipei. Based on these and other historical materials, the author discusses the reasons for the errors in the Annals of Taizu.

This article is an introduction and description of the so-called Old Manchu Archives. The Manchu language was invented based on Mongolian scripts under the order of Nurhachi in 1599. By 1632, the script was revised under the order of the first Qing emperor Huang Taiji. The revised script is known as New Manchu script. Old Manchu documents written from that 33-year period were compiled during the Qianlong period and the collection is known as Old Manchu Archives. This article discusses different editions of the archives, the process of compiling the documents, content of the archives, physical characteristics of the documents, discussion of authenticity of various historical editions, overview of various modern editions, and a detailed discussion of the edition published by the China Number One Historical Archives.

This paper discusses the essence and formation of the Monthly Archives of the Eight Banners and the connection between the Monthly Archives and the Veritable Records of early emperors/Khans in the Qing dynasty. Evidences show that the compilations of Monthly Archives by two Banners of the same major colors were officially formed at least in the beginning of Hong Taiji's reign. As a sample archive of 1631 reveals, Monthly Archives recorded various events of the later Jin dynasty by focusing on the speeches and actions of Grand Khans on a daily basis. These archives were officially preserved in the Literate Institute, and were compiled together in different subjects by Manchu literati officials. Together with inter-state documents, these archives became original sources of the later Veritable Records and other official history compilations. Although the Monthly Archives had long been considered missing, these archives could be closely related to the three early Veritable Records compiled in 1636 and Shunzhi reign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses an important issue on the Manchu-Han relationships in the Qing dynasty, namely the differences in the law of Qing dynasty regarding its treatments of different ethnic groups. The distinction between the Manchus and Han people could be barely seen if we only pay attention to the Qing rulers' sinolization sayings that "the Manchus and Han people are one family" and "no distinction between the Manchus and Han people." But from the household register policy, we may see clearly that the Qing dynasty ruled the Banner people and Han people in different ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Qing rulers inherited a Ming tradition of sacrificing the former "sage rulers" after they entered into Beijing in 1644. The temple of former emperors of the successive dynasties had been constructed, and the list of "sage rulers" and their "famous ministers" to be offered sacrifices was regulated to serve the political need of the Qing dynasty. By many rounds of increasing and reconfiguring the former rulers and ministers, Qing rulers eventually built up a genealogy of sagely rulership that included many rulers of former dynasties established by minority ethnic groups in China's history. This final structure of temple sacrifices to former emperors had its multi-faceted meanings. The selection of "famous ministers" had set up moral models for the bureaucrats, and the "sage rulers," examples and critical sources for the later emperors. By enhancing its legitimacy through this tradition, Qing rulers fundamentally supported the political culture with a clear identity of Confucius orthodoxy and Chinese civilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imperial tour was the great important official activity in the early Qing dynasty. In the time of Kangxi and Qianlong reigns, they frequently went north to the Mountain Resort in Chengde, and raised the hunting trips, besides there were the eastern tour (Mukden), southern tour (Jiangnan), and western tour (Wutai Mountain), these imperial tours continued until the early 19th century. By preparing these imperial tours, the emperors could patrol and observe the public sentiment, custom. In the same time, excellent literary, outstanding armed strength was advocated and rewarded. The emperors want to unfold the Manchu imperial authority, simultaneously to coordinate the relation between the central government and local governments, shaped models of Qing Dynasty’s unique disposition. Shanxi’s Wutai Mountain is located neat the Great Wall, where is the boundary between Mongolian and Chinese people. There were coexisting the Chinese and the Tibetan Buddhism, especially attracted the Mongolian to go to worship. Visited by the Qing emperors did push its historical status to the peak. Making Tibet inside the frontier was that the definition of Wutai Mountain by Emperor Jiaqing. After Emperor Jiaqing ascended to the throne, the Great Qing entered the post-Qianlong time. Emperor Jiaqing followed the regulations established during the Qianlong time, imperial touring was one of the tradition except southern tour. Emperor Jiaqing paid close attention to raise western tour in 1811. He prepared discretely for many years, however besides pecuniary embarrassment, as a result of the cognitive disparity between the emperor and the bureaucrat, his western tour differed from the previous, and the Qing had not conducted again. This study is about the Quing’s last western tour based on analyzing some archives, rare books holding in the National Palace Museum, especially the archives of Wutai Wei Dang. The Grand Secretariat Archives (collection of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica) is very useful. I also deliberate the Western tour magnificent ceremony of Jiaqing imperial edition to analyze its whole story, and demonstrate the religious factor was the special function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from the Ming dynasty’s major defeat in the battle of Saerhu in 1619 and concluding with the Qing government’s suppression of the Zheng regime in Taiwan in 1683, China engaged in a series of frequent and furious military campaigns during the Ming-Qing transition in the seventeenth century. War lasted for more than sixty years, with battles spanning from frontier areas to inland regions, from foreign invasions to internal revolts. In addition to the Ming troops and the Qing army’s crack Manchu cavalry, major European powers were involved in these struggles as well, facilitating the use of the most advanced firearms at that time. The scale and frequency of these wars was unique compared with that seen in both Chinese military history and military activity around the world. Academic research on this period has mainly concentrated on the introduction of European artillery into China by the Jesuits and Chinese literati converts, focusing also on the function of the cannon in battles conducted within Northern China. However, in all reality, artillery also played an important role in Southern China. Fujian and Guangdong officials were aware of the power of Western artillery as early as the 1620s. Starting from that time, the Southeast coast was constantly harassed by the Dutch and pirates, who posed a considerable threat with their wide use of European cannons. Consequently, Chinese officials took advantage of the advanced casting technology in the Southern provinces and began the mass production of the cannon. Through the use of weapons of this type, Zheng Zhilong (1595-1661), a pirate granted amnesty by the Ming court, was able to oppose the Dutch fleet and subsequently suppress revolts along the Southeast coast. The Western cannon was also a key factor in Ming resistance against the Qing dynasty after the Qing army conquered the most part of China. With a strong naval fleet, Zheng Chenggong (1624-1662) expelled the Dutch occupying Taiwan and was able to oppose the Qing regime for over thirty years. This article reexamines Chinese and Western historical literature as well as existing cannons from the Ming-Qing transition period in an attempt to explore the seventeenth-century spread of European artillery along the Southeast coast of China and the influence of this spread on Chinese military history. The possible role artillery has played in the history of material culture is also examined within the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]