Transforming China (Historical Changes and the Limitations of European Experience)

Author: Wang Guobin (USA), translated by Li Bozhong and Lian Lingling
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1998-12-01
Features: As a creative and challenging exploratory work, this book draws extensively from and selects the latest achievements in both Chinese and Western historiography. It examines economic change, state formation, and social struggle from three perspectives, comparing the long-term histories of China and Western Europe to refute various long-standing Western-centric research frameworks. It also outlines the overall context and distinctive features of the social, economic, and political histories of both civilizations. Wang Guobin's Transforming China—Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience focuses on the economic development of China and Europe between 1400 and 1800, covering a broad range of topics. It includes state formation and institutions, social conditions and resistance, and interpretations of revolutions. The author attempts to explain why China and Europe faced nearly identical problems during the 15th to 18th centuries but developed vastly different solutions, as well as why Britain did not follow China's development path. Wang Guobin avoids applying Western social science analyses and concepts of historical change and dynamics, instead employing a rigorous and steady comparative historiographical approach. He acknowledges that explaining the changes and continuities in long-term historical processes is extremely difficult, as he believes world development does not follow a single model: countries have not only followed different development paths in the past but will continue to do so in the future. What distinguishes him from previous scholars is that while earlier researchers only asked why China did not experience an industrial revolution, he also explored why Britain did not take China's development path. Additionally, the author's comparative analysis of the French and Chinese revolutions—viewing the French Revolution from the Chinese perspective and the Chinese Revolution from the French perspective—provides sharp insights. In the past, we often spoke in general terms about how China learned from the French Revolution, particularly in the struggles against restoration and counter-restoration, without analyzing the similarities and differences in the social environments, the roles of elites, democratic ideas, and peasant consciousness between the two countries. Wang Guobin's interpretation in this regard offers a valuable example.