The China Question

Ho-fung Hung is Henry M. and Elizabeth P. Wiesenfeld Professor in Political Economy in the Department of Sociology and Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.

• Preface; Introduction: Orientalism in the longue durée; Part I. Catholic Scholarship: 1. From Pax Mongolica to the long sixteenth century; 2. The seventeenth-century crisis and the rise of Sinophilia; Part II. Enlightenment Philosophy: 3. Early Enlightenment Sinophilia; 4. Late Enlightenment Sinophobia; Part III. Institutionalized Orientalism: 5. Romantic Sinology after the French Revolution; 6. Scientific-racist Sinology in the age of empire; Part IV. Cold War Area Studies: 7. From Sinology to China Studies; 8. The 'Asiatic mode of production' myth; Part V. Self-Orientalism: 9. Self-orientalizing nation building; 10. Contested Confucianism; Conclusion: de-orientalizing triumph, re-orientalizing perils.

'The China Question belongs on the shelf with classics by Jonathan Spence and Harold Isaacs. Western views of China have oscillated between 'Contempt and naïve idealization.' Social science research has brought empirical data to our understanding of China, but Orientalism still exerts powerful sway over policy and academic discourse.' David M. Lampton, author of Living U.S.-China Relations