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This paper explores the origin and role of the Buddhist taxonomic category "zong 宗" ("sect" or "school") in the formation of modern Buddhism in China. It does so by examining a highly significant late-Qing Buddhist text titled Ba-zong-er-xing 八宗二行 (Eight Schools and Two Practices), which the author discovered recently in Japan. Authored by the 19th-century Manchu bannerman official Hešeri Rushan 赫舍裏如山, Eight Schools and Two Practices had a direct influence on the prominent Chinese lay Buddhist Yang Wenhui (1837–1911)'s Shi-zong-lue-shuo 十宗略说 (Brief Outline of the Ten Schools) (1913), which subsequently became the most important narrative model, known as the ten-school model, for describing Chinese Buddhist history in modern times. Historians have long recognized that Yang Wenhui's Brief Outline of the Ten Schools (1913) was influenced by the medieval Japanese text hasshū kōyō 八宗綱要 (Essentials of the Eight Schools) composed by the 13th-century Japanese monk Gyōnen. Identifying, in detail, Hešeri Rushan's influence on Yang Wenhui sheds light on how a narrative model for Buddhism in its national form grew out of trans-national intellectual sharing and interactions, and how Chinese Buddhism emerged from the interactive and mutually enabling Sino-Japanese discursive field of the 19th century. Gyōnen, Rushan, and Yang Wenhui all used the category zong, referring to both doctrine and school/sect, to organize narratives of Buddhist history. Their uses were, however, different. Gyōnen's conception of zong (shū in Japanese) was fixed and exclusive, whereas zong for Rushan and Yang meant more of a mobile, nonexclusive identity. Without knowledge of Japanese Buddhism, Rushan made creative use of zong for describing the history and current condition of Chinese Buddhism, thereby superseding the traditional framework of lineage, doctrine, and precept, or zong 宗, jiao 教, lu 律. Rushan's zong provided the necessary prerequisite knowledge for Yang Wenhui to understand Gyōnen's theories, which he studied for constructing his own historical narrative and vision for modern Buddhism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guangzhou is located in the southern part of China, near the South China Sea, belongs to Guangdong Province. It serves as China's southern gateway to the world and was historically called "The Southern Treasure of the Emperor", playing a crucial role in China's maritime trade history. Throughout Chinese history, Guangzhou underwent several cycles of "closure" and "opening", policies that severely impacted trade. However, foreign merchants never ceased to request permission from the Chinese government to engage in trade. In 1757, Emperor Qianlong decreed Guangzhou as the only one official port for foreign trade. This edict led to the establishment of the one port trading system in Guangzhou, as the Qing government aimed to counter foreign influences and local uprisings while maintaining a self-sufficient small-scale agricultural economy. Western nations and their traders sought opportunities within this system, aspiring to expand trade to other regions of China, even the inland areas. The exclusive status of Guangzhou as China's only one trading port persisted until 1842, following the defeat of the Qing government in the Opium War against Britain, the Nanjing Treaty was signed. This treaty opened Guangzhou, Shanghai, Ningbo, Fuzhou, and Xiamen as trading ports, bringing an end to the one port trading system. The reasons and impacts of the establishment of this system have not been comprehensively analyzed to date. Therefore, this paper based on historical archives, analyzes both the direct and underlying reasons behind Emperor Qianlong's decision and elucidates the system's diverse impacts on various aspects of Qing-era China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the 1990s, environmental degradations received ample attention both in the academic community and the general public in China. However, these issues had appeared before over the past two millennia. Indeed, over the course of Chinese history, there were several "golden periods" such as the Han, the Tang, and the Ming and the Qing. Yet looking closely at their accomplishments, one can see that these glories, often built on marked agricultural expansion, caused serious detriments (loss of water source and forests, etc.) to the Chinese environment. In order for China to achieve a sustainable development into the future, one needs to draw historical lessons from the past and balance between the needs for economic growth and environmental protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that scholars should see environmental history not as a specialized subfield but as a research paradigm useful to all students of modern China. It first presents an expanded definition of an "historical actor" and encourages scholars to integrate a range of organic and inorganic Others into their cast of characters. The article then addresses the subject of the environment and time, proposing alternative ways of periodizing Chinese history, linked to the idea of the Anthropocene. In the final section the discussion turns to the problem of space, focusing on the ways that Qing history has reshaped our understanding of the relationship between the natural world, center and periphery, and state formation. Setting aside both declensionist and triumphalist narratives about China's past, this article suggests that the methods, concepts, and research agenda of environmental history can enrich the work of all students of Chinese history regardless of specialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The New Text school Gongyang Commentary on the Confucian classic the Spring and Autumn Annals operates on the principle that the classical text contains deep meanings that lie beyond the literal sense of the words and need to be discovered by reading between the lines. Such a principle of the hermeneutics of suspicion makes it possible for the interpreter to fit the text into any context or framework with political implications, and the Gongyang school commentaries have indeed often been used for a particular political purpose, with the general tendency of establishing the dichotomy of the Chinese and the barbarian in political Confucianism. Although the Gongyang commentaries did not have much influence for a very long time in Chinese history, it was revived during the last imperial dynasty of Qing and by the royalist and reformist Kang Youwei at the end of Qing. Some Chinese scholars have taken a new interest in the Gongyang commentary tradition for expressing their views on contemporary geopolitics, and therefore it is important to review the Gongyang Commentary and its hermeneutic principles to help us better understand the connection of hermeneutics with politics in contemporary scholarship in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Translation among different ethnic languages has always played a political and cultural role throughout the history of China. Its importance can be comparable to the translation of the Buddhist Scriptures in the Tang and Song dynasties and, to a certain extent, it is deemed to surpass the scientific and technological translation wave in the late Ming and early Qing dynasty in terms of duration, number of participants, and number of translated works. However, it has not drawn much scholarly attention. The present paper aims to investigate translation among different ethnic languages in the Yuan dynasty from the standpoint of the 'state translation program'. The analysis will be conducted, from four aspects, namely the nomination of translation officials, the selection of texts to be translated, the establishment of translation institutions at the national level, and the cultivation of translators. The results of our study show that the governors of the Yuan dynasty enhanced translation as a method of state governance by embedding translation officials in the administrative machinery, setting up cooperative state translation agencies, selecting materials to be translated and training national translators in a systematic manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Internet of Things is a huge system that collects and transmits real-time information. The smart space location is a part of IOT that collects location information, and on the other hand, it is an important tool to analyze the internal relationship of information and help users better understand its laws. As an integral part of the geographical landscape, human settlement environments have the main characteristics of both physical and cultural geography. The human settlement environments in the area along the Shu Road in the late Qing Dynasty (1840–1912) have important historical and geographical features. The main route of the Road to Sichuan takes the basic pattern of "Four in the north and three in the south," with extensive coverage and overflow range; its complex landform brings diverse climate types and vastly different scenery as there are many factors related to the three cultural regions of Guanzhong, Qinba, and Shudi involved. In the application of the Internet of Things in geography, through high-frequency active monitoring, the situation changes can be grasped in a timely manner, the law of changes and trends can be discovered, and the geographic information of mountain village landforms can be provided to the public in a timely manner. Based on Ferdinand von Richthofen: Tagebücher aus China and Hand Drawing of China: Record of the History of Chinese Architecture in Japan, by retrospective restoration, on-site investigation, comprehensive application of relevant theories, and methods in historical geography, architectural typology, art phenomenology, and aesthetics, this study attempted to reasonably divide, scientifically classify, thoroughly analyze, extract the characteristics from, and improve the culture of the village landscapes in the Qinba Mountains along the Shu Road in the late Qing Dynasty from the perspectives including the size types and site relationship, building types and form structures, construction materials and decorative arts, general style, and aesthetic characteristics. It intends to revitalize the culture of village landscapes in the Qinba Mountains along the Shu Road in the late Qing Dynasty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Islamic astronomy, Huihui tianwen in Chinese, once had a splendid time in the history of Chinese sciences. It was in practical usage parallel with Chinese traditional astronomy for almost four centuries. It spread to China since the beginning of Northern Song dynasty (960-1127), and officially abolished by Manchu Qing authority in 1669. During this approximately seven hundred years, Islamic astronomy played the roles of either adding astronomical values into that of Chinese astronomy or of running as independent establishment alongside Chinese astronomical bureau. In this short article we intend to briefly delineate the rise and fall of Islamic astronomy in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes the political campaign against The life of Wu Xun (Wu Xun zhuan, 1950), launched by Mao Zedong in 1951, as a point of departure to explore the intertwining relationship between cinema and the new historiography in post-1949 China. While the criticisms of The life of Wu Xun highlighted the central role of peasant warfare in imperial Chinese history and thereby resulted in the growing popularity of the class view in Chinese historiography, the making of two other films set in the Qing dynasty, Song Jingshi (1955) and Lin Zexu (1959), attested to a tension between two historiographical trends in Mao's China: the class view and historicism. This article argues that the entanglement of historians and non-historians, including filmmakers, allowed for the making of a history-centred public space of communication for both historians and laypersons alike to resort to China's past to make sense of the present and even attack Mao. Second, such a mode of history-qua-political discussion and polemic paved the way for the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution. In the mid-1960s, the tension between two historiographical trends would finally lead to the purge of historical researchers, filmmakers, writers and dramatists during the Cultural Revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No fiction is without a narrative of human relationships. In Chinese literary history, the stories represented by Jin Ping Mei are especially seen as dealing with human relationships. Some researchers have interpreted Jin Ping Mei from the perspective of human relationships; however, the generic concept cannot describe social connections in Chinese culture. The concept of guanxi, the ubiquitous and quotidian social network in China, better describes the specific human relationships in this fiction. Guanxi as a Chinese cultural phenomenon originating from Confucianism is effective in procuring resources through instrumental and sentimental mechanisms. In Jin Ping Mei, which is centered on Ximen Qing, a guanxi network connects all the characters. Ximen Qing's fortune is built on guanxi manipulation. Guanxi, however, which was expected to embody Confucian values, violated Confucian principles in the late Ming context. Jin Ping Mei marks a turning point for attitudes toward guanxi in literary representation, and this derogatory attitude persisted in the narrative of fiction throughout the Qing dynasty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The late Ming Dynasty Megadrought (LMDMD) (1637–1643) occurred at the end of Ming Dynasty and is the severest drought event in China in the last millennium. This unprecedented drought contributed significantly to the collapse of the Ming Dynasty in 1644, casting profound impacts on Chinese history. Here, the physical mechanism for the LMDMD is studied. Based on paleoclimate reconstructions, we hypothesize that this drought was initially triggered by a natural drought event starting in 1637 and was then intensified and extended by the tropical volcanic eruption at Mount Parker in 1641. This hypothesis is supported by the case study of the Community Earth System Model‐Last Millennium Experiment archive as well as sensitivity experiments with volcanic forcing superimposed on natural drought events. The volcano‐intensified drought was associated with a decreased land‐ocean thermal contrast, a negative soil moisture response, and a weakening and eastward retreating West Pacific Subtropical High. Plain Language Summary: The collapse of the Ming Dynasty at 1644 and, in turn, the historical transition from the Ming Dynasty to Qing Dynasty significantly changed the Chinese history into a long period of conservative policy. The collapse of Ming Dynasty at 1644 is greatly associated with the late Ming Dynasty Megadrought (LMDMD) (1637–1643). In this study, based on paleoclimate reconstructions and climate modeling, we show that the LMDMD is triggered by a natural drought event and is then intensified and extended by the strong volcanic eruption at Mt. Parker in 1641. This "superposition" mechanism of LMDMD and the spatiotemporal characteristics of this drought are reproduced by our volcanic sensitivity experiments with volcanic forcing superimposed on natural drought events, and the results demonstrate that the explosion of Mt. Parker at the end of a natural drought event amplified and extended the drought for 3 years, generating the megadrought. The volcano‐prolonged drought is associated with the failure of East Asia Summer Monsoon (EASM), which is caused directly by the decreasing land‐ocean thermal contrast after the volcanic eruption and indirectly by negative soil moisture feedback as well as weakening and eastward retreating of the West Pacific Subtropical High (WPSH). Key Points: The late Ming Dynasty Megadrought (LMDMD) is triggered by a natural drought event in 1637 and is then intensified and extended by the strong volcanic eruption in 1641Volcanic eruption superimposed on a drought triggered by internal variability can intensify drought conditions, such that the drought becomes severer than that triggered by internal variability or external forcing aloneThe intensification of LMDMD is related to the weakening of land‐ocean thermal contrast, the retreat of West Pacific Subtropical High, and the decrease of soil moisture after volcanic eruption [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many historians of China, particularly those based in North America, insist that the Qing dynasty's territorial expansion was imperial and comparable to the imperial expansions of other global empires. Other historians, particularly but not only those based in the People's Republic of China, continue to resist this interpretation. They argue that dynastic expansion in the Ming and Qing periods was simply a form of nation-state building, akin to similar processes in Europe. Rather than rejecting their claims as a product of Chinese nationalism, we argue that the term "empire" should be (re)understood as a global co-production, emerging from multiple intersecting histories and scholarly debates about those histories. Doing so challenges influential definitions of empire that rely on a distinction between empires and nation-states, highlighting their dual presence in both Euro-American and Chinese pasts (and presents). This move demands a rejection of periodizations that suggest that empires ceased to exist following the period of decolonization from 1945 to the 1970s. This opens up new avenues of historical and normative inquiry to acknowledge the modern continuity between empires and nation-states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at how globalization in the nineteenth century was inextricably entangled with localization in the Canton–Hong Kong–Macau nexus on the southern fringe of China by tracing the growth of its unique medical culture. It explains the 'glocalizing' process by tracing the development of this medical culture, which consists of knowledge construction and institution building, in the context of highly volatile epidemiological conditions aggravated by increasingly heavy inter-regional trade and migration. It traces the dynamic circulation of people, materials, ideas, and practices in this southern edge of China, which was traditionally connected to southeast Asia and shared ecological backdrops that produced similar epidemiological experiences. The Canton nexus in the nineteenth century saw the growth of native medical knowledge that focused less on theoretical innovation than on the efficacy of therapeutic strategies. These ideas were likely to have been informed or reinforced by new anatomical knowledge disseminated by Western medical missionaries on the ground early in the century. The medical culture in the region was also marked by the formation of a series of local institutions that were fusions of Western-style hospitals and native merchant-run charity halls where diseases were studied and treated, and new public health management negotiated and implemented by experts from different traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

They demonstrate the complexity of issues concerning the history of China's northern kingdoms, and open up new questions for further research. This special issue contains five articles researching the founding history of four northern dynasties: the Liao (907-1125), Jin (1115-1234), Yuan (1206-1368), and Qing (1616-1911). [Extracted from the article]

The article summarizes the history of successes and failures of codification efforts in China and looks at the legislative process of the forthcoming enactment of the Chinese Civil Code. Topics discussed are historical development of codification from the late Qing dynasty, the Republic of China era and the period after the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC), as well as promulgated general provisions, and potential difficulties legislators may face in drafting the Civil Code.

Despite the lack of political accountability, ancient autocracies maintained a level of monetary stability that rivals modern democracies. This paper hypothesizes that it is the threat of counterfeiting that has constrained currency debasement. Unwilling to share seigniorage with counterfeiters, who are active only if currency is debased, the government refrains from debasement unless in extreme fiscal situations. To document the facts, we build a database of historical Chinese copper coins that covers the period from the Qin dynasty (221 BC-207 BC) to the Republic of China. We also use the introduction of the steam press in late Qing China as a natural experiment to test the theory. The steam press produced coins of fine patterns that counterfeiters were unable to mimic. As the theory predicts, the removal of the threat of counterfeiting triggered the most serious debasement in the history of the Qing dynasty (1644-1912). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented about an itinerary of study on the potential contributions of American and ethnic studies in determining China's place in the global context in an effort to elucidate the materiality of knowledge that historically constituted the country. Topics include the historicization of modern China as a problem of study, the ongoing contradictions embedded in competing imperialist and capitalist imperatives, and an elaboration on Chinese civilization as the problem of study.

The article focuses on China and the country's history. Topics discussed include Chinese Communist Party, Qing dynasty in the country and Chinese poitical leader Mao Zedong. Further, other topics which includes foreign relations of China, Boxer uprising in the country and other revolutions in the country in 1911 and 1949 are also discussed. In addition, topics which includes Tiananmen protest in the country in 1989, Chinese stateman Deng Xiaoping and British statesman George Macartney are also discussed.

This article investigates the practice of returning marked papers to rejected candidates in late imperial Chinese examinations. The practice--common from the sixteenth century to the abolition of imperial examinations in 1905--established a sense of personal communication between examiners and examinees and was an opportunity for rejected candidates to benefit from the examination system. The failed papers returned to their authors enabled them to make sense of their performance by interpreting, when not misconstruing, examiners' comments. The examiners sometimes praised the papers and blamed the decision to fail on other examiners. As a result, most rejected candidates tended not to challenge the examiners through official channels or take collective action against the examination system. Thus, in the late imperial examination system, the ways in which rejecting decisions could be negotiated and construed were no less important than the awarding of degrees to an extremely small proportion of participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Xinhai Revolution, which opened the road to the modernization process of China, overthrew the alien Manchurian dynasty that ruled the country from 1644 and offered a new model of political structure and governance on the basis of a Constitution and within the framework of a parliamentary republic. It radically differed from a traditional model of governance. The activity of the revolutionary Nanking Government (1912-1913), especially in the period of the interim presidential rule of Sun Yat-sen, laid down the "channel" along which the movement to modernization in the political sphere began. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After 1895 as the Manchu monarchy failed to deal with the national crisis created by China's loss in the first Sino-Japanese War, the ideology of revolution won a foothold. A paradigm shift in Chinese revolutionary discourse, radicalized by way of Japanese translations and symbolized by Sun Yat-sen's self-proclaimed 'revolutionary party,' embraced the view of the rising masses as masters of history. It was during the age of world revolution that Kang Youwei shaped his worldview. While juxtaposing the French Revolution with the anti-Manchu revolution, he betrayed his background in the New Text Confucian canon by lending legitimacy to the rebels. In analyzing Kang's memorials of 1898, this paper reveals how his reform theory and practice were framed by his vision of world revolution, and how the words bianfa, weixin and bianzheng were interwoven with the unseen geming, rhetorically mixing the history of world revolution with the Tang-Wu tradition. This paper asserts that the geming discourse in Kang's use inscribed with a radical blueprint for China was actually an imposition of modernity onto the Qing court rather than empowering its legitimation in a traditional Confucian way. In scrutinizing these keywords in transnational contexts, the analysis crosses not only the fields of language, politics, Classical study and intellectual culture, but also the subtle layers of intertextual verification, psychological complexity and political and cultural intensities, and attempts to open new dimensions for the study of Kang Youwei and the 1898 reform movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the history of publishing and printing in China during the early Qing era. Emphasis is given to the how the social role of the print medium was appropriates by the early Qing literati to position themselves within an economy of cultural influence and elite social prestige. The author focuses on publisher Zhang Chao and the communal production and circulation of manuscripts among elite social networks. The benefits of exclusivity to the reputation and market value of Zhang Chao's printed books are noted.

After Wang Yangming died, different interpretations of his doctrine emerged, and thus the factionalization of the Yangming School of Mind also occurred. To Liu Zongzhou, who is considered the last master of Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism, accompanied with this factionalization there came the degeneration of Wang Yangming's followers. In this study I discuss the following five issues: firstly, Liu's sense of the degeneration of Wang Yangming's followers, secondly, the debate on Wang Yangming's 'Four Sentences of Teaching,' mainly the debate between Qian Dehong and Wang Ji, and the one between Xu Fuyuan and Zhou Rudeng, thirdly, Liu's criticism of Wang Yangming's 'Four Sentences of Teaching' and the debates on it, fourthly, Liu's criticism of moral decay in the circle of Wang Yangming' followers, including Wang Ji, Wang Gen, Tao Shiling, and the scholars of Mount Baima, lastly, Liu's scheme for moral reformation, including his Renpu as a basic project and the founding of Zhengren huei. From the discussion of these five issues I will elucidate how Liu, as a master of Neo-Confucianism, reflected to the intellectual problems of his time, and his scheme for moral reformation related to the intellectual climate in the period from late Ming to early Qing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In normal circumstances, the Qing government operated its usual social control mechanisms with the assistance of the local gentry, who mediated between the local government and the people. However, the gentry could come into direct conflict and confrontation with the government if their interests were not satisfied or were encroached on. The government-local gentry conflict in the Changsha Rice Riot of 1910 can serve as a typical case. Because of complex and intricate conflicts of interest, the local gentry not only failed to help the local officials suppress the riot, but took advantage of the mood of the famine victims to confront the local officials. This threw them into disarray, rendering them unable to control the development of events. The Qing government suppressed the local gentry by force and inflicted severe punishment upon the representatives of the old gentry who had incited the riot, so that they lost their ties with government. The new gentry, on the other hand, had also lost faith in the government because of the delay in the preparation of the constitution. The escalation of the government-gentry conflict led to cleavage between the government and the local gentry. The failure of this traditional mechanism of social control undermined the rule of the Qing dynasty and accelerated its fall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the imperial policies of the early Qing dynasty from 1645 to 1720 in China regarding scholars, scholarship, and public service examinations. During the previous Ming dynasty, scholars from the lower Yangzi Delta region were noted for their superior training and concomitant high grades on government administered examinations. The adaptive polices of the Qing dynasty regarding this group of scholars is explored. The article also discusses Confucianism, the Palace Examination of 1659, China's Kangxi emperor Aisin Gioro Xuanye (r. 1662-1722), and Jiangnan province scholars Xu Yuanwen (1634-1691) and Ye Fang'ai (1629-1682).

Do external shocks affect local government quality and, consequently, long-term economic development? The collapse in 1911 of the Qing Dynasty in China was one of the greatest institutional shocks in world history, marking the end of more than 2,000 years of imperial rule. We exploit this shock to examine the impact of changes in historic local government quality on economic development today. By measuring variations in governance quality across 1,664 Chinese counties and examining their impact on long-term economic development, we show that historical differences in local governance quality are strong predictors of current geographical differences in economic development. This positive relationship is robust to a rich gamut of controls and checks. To further address causality issues, we instrument historical government quality with the location of military towns in the preceding Ming dynasty. The analysis shows that history has left a deep legacy on governance differences across China that determine, to a considerable extent, current Chinese regional inequalities. • Historical differences in local governance quality in China are a predictor of current differences in economic development. • Centuries of a system —the Chongfanpinan— that enshrined geographical differences in government quality still matter for local development today. • The influence of 2000 years of imperial rule is still deeply embedded in Chinese society. • Such historical influence has survived the century of political and economic upheaval that followed the demise of the Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the study of modern Chinese history and examines the limited available historical material from the period prior to 1949. Information about the field of Chinese historiography is presented. Details are provided about the relationship between historical materials and historical studies and about the importance of quality historical materials to historical research. The need to publish historical materials on a large scale is emphasized and complications associated with this effort are explored.

This article traces how the concept of the "Central State" (Zhongguo), the term used to refer to China in classical and modern Chinese, experienced thorough transformation and gained its modern meaning as a territorial, sovereign country during the second half of the nineteenth century. The Qing empire once defined its Other primarily diachronically as previous dynasties. As the Qing empire reconceptualized itself from a dynastic state to an imperial nation, its Other became redefined horizontally as foreign colonial powers. This article argues that the translation of international law and experiences of diplomats overseas, both facilitated by the Qing's systematic engagement with the Euro-centric "family of nations" following the Arrow War (1856–60), played an important role in this conceptual revolution. By the last decade of Qing rule, the "Central State" was perceived by many of its own intellectuals and officials as but one "parallel" (pingxing) country competing for survival in a globe comparable to the Spring and Autumn period of ancient China; meanwhile, the Qing was viewed as but one regime in Chinese history whose fate warranted special concern only as a means to save the trans-dynastic entity that was the Chinese nation (Zhongguo). Boding ill for the fate of China's last dynasty, this nineteenth-century reenvisioning shaped how the "Central State" has been imagined domestically and internationally ever since. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]