In their introduction to this excellent collection of nine essays, most of which were presented at the 1998 Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, historians Rebecca Karl and Peter Zarrow write convincingly that the “1898 period” in particular and the late Qing in general mark the moment when “Chinese experiences of modernity” (p. 10) began. Recognizing that many of the elements we associate with the May Fourth paradigm first appeared in the under-studied late-Qing period, the editors decry how the late Qing “continues to be treated in an isolated fashion and is seldom drawn into the main currents of ‘Chinese modernity,’ which are seen as more properly placed in the later May Fourth period” (p. 7). The reason to study 1898 now is that we can see and compare China's confrontations with two global capitalisms (late 19th and late 20th centuries). We don't need a “functionalist exhumation of 1898;” we need an approach that helps us understand the “local effects of globalizing trajectories” (p. 7). In sum: “[We need to] rethink 1898 not as an event per se but, more important, as a vital conjunctural historical moment, as an extended moment during and through which Chinese intellectuals and society consciously confronted and began to reformulate the Chinese historical problematic” (p. 7).

This monumental work is in many ways the essence of Professor Kindermann's 50 years' research on East Asia, theoretically based on the Munich school of neo-realism (of which he is the pre-eminent representative) and inspired by his many personal encounters with those Asian leaders who shaped the region's rise in world politics. It also introduces interesting research by other German scholars, which is often excluded from the English-language literature that dominates the Asian studies field. The focus of the analysis is on the foreign policy of the states in the West Pacific region (including Myanmar and Indochina), their interactions and their place in world politics. It is impossible to summarize the 34 chapters within this review. The books offer a superb chronological and contextual overview of a crucial period in East Asia that is highly readable and illustrated with relevant photos. The most space is devoted to China, documenting its rise from imperial victim to major economic power. The coverage of China's interaction with foreign powers and the domestic background is very detailed, especially concerning the Kuomintang before and after 1949, and the Taiwan issue. The account of the era after the Pacific War focuses mostly on the People's Republic of China. Several pages are devoted to the Quemoy crisis of 1954–55, which revealed the complexities of the US–PRC–Taiwan triangle. Kindermann demonstrates how this crisis was the first application of Washington's “calculated ambiguity” towards the PRC concerning Taiwan. A whole chapter is devoted to the second Taiwan crisis of 1958 and its aftermath in 1962. Kindermann's interviews in Taiwan show how the US actively prevented Chiang Kai-shek's plan of occupying two mainland Chinese cities to start the “liberation” of the PRC. There are four chapters on how the Communist Party established and maintained its rule over China, but the majority deal with China's foreign interactions. On Tibet, Kindermann argues that the 17-item agreement of 1951 between Tibetan leaders and the Communist government may have served as a tolerable solution to the Tibet issue and thus have prevented a lot of hardship for the Tibetan people, even though the Tibetan representatives had been coerced into signing it.

This old-fashioned political and diplomatic history of the conflict between the Qing court and foreign powers in 1900 makes a significant, if not always convincing, contribution to our understanding of the Boxer troubles. Arguing that previous studies have been flawed by an excessive focus on “the so-called ‘Boxer Rebellion’ ” (p. vii), this book focuses on how the Qing court came to declare war on the foreign powers in June of 1900. Its close analysis of court politics and actions of the foreign diplomatic corps in Beijing makes excellent use of archival records from Belgium, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and the United States plus published documents from Russia and Japan – an impressive research accomplishment that adds an important new dimension to our understanding this critical moment in modern Chinese history.

In four chapters tracing the background to the Boxer incident, Xiang argues that the death of Prince Gong in 1898 deprived the Qing court of a critical balancing figure. When southern reformers overplayed their hand in the 1898 reforms, the Empress Dowager responded in a coup that brought an incompetent group of ultra-conservative Manchu princelings to power. At the same time, a new kind of imperialism representing an “unholy alliance” of nationalist elites, commercial interests and Christian missionaries threatened China with the scramble for concessions. Xiang is particularly effective in describing the catch-up imperialism of Germany, spurred by the erratic Catholic bishop Anzer, and the “theatrical performance” of the Italians, whose rebuff by the Qing court emboldened the conservative princes.

Jos Gamble sets himself a seemingly impossible task: to “take the city of Shanghai as a whole” as his “fieldwork site,” so that he can produce an “ethnography of a city,” as opposed to an “ethnography in a city.” To apply to any large urban centre interpretive strategies associated with studies of small-scale communities is a tall order. To apply them to Shanghai seems hubristic, given its sheer size and the dramatic changes it underwent between 1992 and 2000, the period during which Gamble made field work stays totalling over 20 months. The most striking thing about this book, then, is simply how quickly the author manages to convince the reader (this reader, anyway) that his project is not foolhardy. The “Introduction” did not dispel my doubts. I was pleased to see from its opening pages that Gamble had made a more serious effort than some of those writing about the city's recent past have done to read widely in and make use of the now vast scholarly literature on old Shanghai. But I came away from the “Structure of the book” section that concludes the “Introduction” convinced that I would end up feeling that his reach had exceeded his grasp. Midway through the next chapter, though, I got an inkling – that soon grew to a conviction – that I had in my hands the best English language work to date on Shanghai in the post-1978 era of reform.

This volume originated in a collection of workshop papers given at the University of Birmingham in June 2000. The problems with such collections are well known: the papers can quickly become out of date; their quality can be variable; or the collection can lack over-arching intellectual purpose. With this volume the first two problems are negligible: the papers are still largely relevant and of sufficient quality to demand our attention. The third problem is, however, evident: the volume has 14 main chapters divided into three sections covering economic, social and political, and foreign policy change in China, yet the relationship between some of the chapters within sections, or indeed between sections, is not established. This is not too apparent in the six chapters on economic change, which work well together, but much more so in the section on social and political change where chapters on welfare reform, the internet, Taiwan, neo-authoritarianism, and the Asian financial crisis sit alongside each other. The section on foreign policy is largely detached at the back of the volume with no apparent relationship to the preceding chapters.

We can have some sympathy for the editors and their aspiration to present “a comprehensive book on the scope and dynamics of change affecting China” (p. ix): the facets of rapid change in China are so many and their interaction so complex that building a model of China's transformation is particularly challenging. Yet this is precisely what social science must attempt not least by rigorous use of theory, and it is a major weakness of the book that it is largely an exercise in micro-level empiricism with few appeals to theory building. This is not true of all contributions: Zhao Chenggen's chapter on the limits of rational authoritarianism in dealing with the problems arising from economic liberalization is acerbic and convincing. Guan Xinping ties China's struggle to create a modern welfare system to the pressures of neo-liberal globalization. But with regard to the volume as a whole the editors seem uncertain where to locate China's changes in social science terms: industrialization, modernization theory, Asian developmentalism, transition studies? They call for a dialogue of theoretical approaches (p. 9) but this feels as much like uncertainty as eclecticism.

In analysing the youthful cohort that launched the Tiananmen protest movement, Luo Xu draws our attention to the problematic connection between young people's quest to define individual identity and the decision to commit themselves to political and social action. How, he asks, could a “self-centered ‘me generation’ . . . engage in such an enormous collective action that demanded great devotion to a common idealistic cause?” (p. ix)

Part one, “The journey” treats intellectual formulations from Bei Dao's poem I Don't Believe (1976) to Cui Jian's song I Have Nothing (1986), and summarizes public discourses by and about youth from the Democracy Wall (1978|–79) to the lesser known “Pan Xiao discussion” (1980) and “Shekou Storm” (1988). Xu's narrative implies that the tidal changes of the 13 years from the death of Mao to the Tiananmen uprising created two mini-generations. The first (late 1970s and early 1980s) was preoccupied with unresolved issues of the Cultural Revolution. The second (late 1980s) sought to redefine the relationship between the individual and the public realm.

The eight essays in this volume represent the research of a new generation of scholars examining historical change in 20th-century modern China, namely Kuomintang party-state development between 1925 and 1970. According to Ernest P. Young in the introduction, these essays describe the “cultural, ideational, and symbolic dimensions” of change in the KMT party-state activities and the response by elites and ordinary people.

If we define, as does Nobel prize-winner Douglass C. North, “institutional change” as the beliefs, ideas, rules, laws, norms, and so on that influence the motivation, choices, and actions of individuals and organizations (private and public) in society, we then say the book under review is about institutional reform and its protagonists and opponents.

Creating a new society requires at least some degree of institutional change. Those holding power resist change, clinging to old institutions. The ensuing struggle can be ferocious, with many possible outcomes. When the KMT began promoting institutional reform in 1925, it encountered great resistance, and after 1934 the resistance had not only stalled reforms, it had stirred up great social disharmony.

At the time of the convening of the 16th Party Congress in November 2002, the Party leadership confronted an urban society splintered by the blessings and the blows of two decades of ever-deepening marketization. This article explores the composition of urban society at that juncture, and aims to delineate its changing social structural break-down. It also investigates the correlation between Jiang Zemin's “three represents” and the various separate social groups making up the cities at the turn of the century. While arguing that in Jiang's vision the lowest stratum of society may have been intentionally excluded from his “represents,” the piece also shows the stance of the state towards several groupings and its means of dealing with each. The piece concludes with a suggestion that new top leaders Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao appeared, as of the time they took office, to be turning a new leaf.

Few policy domains can come close to Taiwan affairs in exemplifying the way Jiang's reigning authority has been self-extended beyond his official tenure. Fighting for his place in history, Jiang's desire to reset the cross-Strait scoreboard before his full retirement remains strong. Also, the structure of the newly elected SCP clearly reinforces Jiang's ability to cast a long shadow over Hu for some time to come. Hu is thus expected to adhere with great caution to Jiang's updated policy guidelines on Taiwan affairs, as laid out in the retiring general secretary's farewell Party work report to the CCP 16th Congress. Besides, Hu has few incentives not to because the Taiwan affairs portfolio carries excessive risk and a slow return, in addition to being one of the policy areas that he is least prepared for. However, the symbolic significance of the Taiwan issue also means that the generational turnover from Jiang to Hu cannot be considered complete until Hu takes full command over Beijing's policy towards Taiwan.