The Challenge of the West in Chinese Culture from the mid-19th century to our Time

This course discusses the effect that contact with the West has had on Chinese cultural and intellectual history. Our main signposts will be the emergence of interest in the West in China and struggles between Chinese conservatives and reformers, from the Opium War through the Sino-Japanese War to “the Hundred Days”; the Boxer uprising and its cultural meaning; the Chinese engagement with Western literature and thought in the “May Fourth” movement; the adoption and rejection of the Soviet model in the Mao era, and attitude to the outside world in the Cultural Revolution; characteristics of the Chinese view of the West in the early twenty-first century.