Recommended for history enthusiasts, traces China's rich civilization through its ups and downs with a focus on the struggles of forming and maintaining a cohesive identity, while fiercely protecting individualism, the book offers an insight into how family, intellect, and autocratic rule blend to form what is contemporary China.

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THIS EDITION HAS BEEN REPLACED BY A NEWER EDITION.. The late John King Fairbank was the West's doyen on China, and this book is the full and final expression of his lifelong engagement with this vast ancient civilization. This book remains a masterwork without parallel--a concise and authoritative account of China and its people over four millennia. The distinguished historian Merle Goldman has brought the book up to date with a chapter on events in the post-Mao period and a new preface and epilogue. She provides a detailed account of the wide array of changes--social, economic, cultural, and even political--that have taken place in China over the past two decades.

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