Home / Books / China in the World

China in the World

Culture, Politics, and World Vision

China in the World cover image

Sinotheory

More about this series

Read the Introduction

Book

Pages: 232

Illustrations: 3 illustrations

Published: March 2022

Author: Ban Wang

In China in the World, Ban Wang traces the evolution of modern China from the late nineteenth century to the present. With a focus on tensions and connections between national formation and international outlooks, Wang shows how ancient visions persist even as China has adopted and revised the Western nation-state form. The concept of tianxia, meaning “all under heaven,” has constantly been updated into modern outlooks that value unity, equality, and reciprocity as key to overcoming interstate conflict, social fragmentation, and ethnic divides. Instead of geopolitical dominance, China’s worldviews stem as much from the age-old desire for world unity as from absorbing the Western ideas of the Enlightenment, humanism, and socialism. Examining political writings, literature, and film, Wang presents a narrative of the country’s pursuits of decolonization, national independence, notions of national form, socialist internationalism, alternative development, and solidarity with Third World nations. Rather than national exceptionalism, Chinese worldviews aspire to a shared, integrated, and equal world.

Praise

“What is China? How can the Chinese experience be brought to bear on world modernities? In China in the World, Ban Wang compellingly explores the rise and development of modern China in ever-changing cross-cultural contexts. It is an overarching engagement with the issues of self-perception, cultural representation, and transnational communication through the mediums of literature, cinema, and political treatise.” - David Der-wei Wang, Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Literature and Comparative Literature, Harvard University

“China in the World is an exceptional work in Chinese Studies. Ban Wang shifts focus to China’s place in the world and its imagination, presentation, and ideas for itself and the world. Wang’s wide vision, deep reading, and consistent conversation between history and reality shape the texture of this brilliant book.” - Wang Hui, author of China’s Twentieth Century: Revolution, Retreat, and the Road to Equality

"China in the World is an elegantly efficient volume. . . . I enjoyed reading the clearly articulated arguments and histories presented in China in the World, and I look forward to following the conversations it inspires." - Julia Keblinska, Modern Chinese Culture and Literature

“Aimed at using the past to understand the present, [China in the World] ends by pondering whether the combined legacies of tianxia and socialist internationalism will enable China to rule the world or sow global harmony. Anyone interested in similar questions will find this book inspiring and compelling. A must-read for Chinese studies. . . . Essential.” - G. Li, Choice

"China in the World: Culture, Politics, and World Vision is an inspiring and highly engaging work that explores the international outlooks of modern Chinese thoughts and culture. Reading a wide array of cultural texts ranging from political theory and fiction to cinema and theater, Ban Wang delineates the tension and interaction between nationalism and internationalism in China’s nation-building projects in the modern age." - Yucong Hao, Journal of Asian Studies

"China in the World is an engaging historical treatise on the conceptualizations behind the formation of a modern Chinese state. The extensive use of empirical research is an inspiration for future research that wishes to problematize and reassess the nation-state perspective of world order." - Violetta Ravagnoli, IIAS Review

Buy

Availability: Loading...

Price: Loading...

Buy the e-book:

Open Access

Read OA Edition

Funding information for the OA format is found at the bottom of the page.

Request a desk or exam copy Spring 2026 Web Sale

Information

Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Additional Information Funding Information

Author/Editor Bios

Back to Top
Ban Wang is William Haas Professor of Chinese Studies at Stanford University, editor of Chinese Visions of World Order: Tianxia, Culture, and World Politics, also published by Duke University Press, and author of Illuminations from the Past: Trauma, Memory, and History in Modern China.

Table Of Contents

Back to Top
Series Editor's Foreword  vii
Acknowledgments  xi
Introduction: Empire, Nation, and World Vision  1
1. Morality and Global Vision in Kang Youwei's World Community  19
2. Nationalism, Moral Reform, and Tianxia in Liang Qichao  40
3. World Literature in the Mountains  59
4. Art, Politics, and Internationalism in Korean War Films  80
5. National Unity, Ethnicity, and Socialist Utopia in Five Golden Flowers  101
6. The Third World, Alternative Development, and Global Maoism  123
7. The Cold War, Depoliticization, and China in the American Classroom  148
8. Using the Past to Understand the Present  170
Notes  187
Bibliography  201
Index  211

Rights

Back to Top

Sales/Territorial Rights: World

Rights and licensing

Additional Information

Back to Top
Related Links Paper ISBN: 978-1-4780-1084-5 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4780-0980-1 / eISBN: 978-1-4780-1236-8 / DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478022558

Funding Information

Back to Top
This title is freely available in an open access edition made possible by a generous contribution from Stanford University.