Reviews
"Rising China and its Postmodern Fate is a highly informed and insightful set of reflections on the question, what are we to make of the much-discussed 'rise' of China? Horner combines a wide-ranging specialist knowledge and an ability to look at the question from many angles in succession. This is a unique and marvelous piece of deep reflection on some of the most important issues of history of our time."
—Arthur Waldron, Lauder Professor of International Relations, University of Pennsylvania
Description
China’s sense of today and its view of tomorrow are both rooted in the past—and we need to understand that connection, says China scholar Charles Horner. In Rising China and Its Postmodern Fate, Horner offers a new interpretation of how China’s changed view of its modern historical experience has also changed China’s understanding of its long intellectual and cultural tradition. Spirited reevaluations of history, strategy, commerce, and literature are cooperating—and competing—to define the future.
The capstone of modern China was the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949 and its rejection of Confucianism, capitalism, and modernity. Yet today’s rising China retains few vestiges of what Mao wrought. What then, Horner asks, is post-Mao, postmodern China? Where did it come from? How did it get here? Where is it going?
Contemporary views of the great periods in Chinese history are having a significant influence on the development of rising China’s national strategy, says…
Charles Horner, a student of China for four decades, is Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute. He has served in the Department of State, taught at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, and been a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and of the Board of Directors of the U.S. Institute of Peace. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the National Interest.
