Bibliography: p. 440-490.

Introduction: Approaches to Understanding China's History. The Variety of Historical Perspectives. Geography: The Contrast of North and South. Humankind in Nature. The Village: Family and Lineage. Inner Asia and China: The Steppe and the Sown -- Pt. 1. Rise and Decline of the Imperial Autocracy. 1. Origins: The Discoveries of Archaeology. Paleolithic China. Neolithic China. Excavation of Shang and Xia. The Rise of Central Authority. Western Zhou. Implications of the New Archaeological Record. 2. The First Unification: Imperial Confucianism. The Utility of Dynasties. Princes and Philosophers. The Confucian Code. Daoism. Unification by Qin. Consolidation and Expansion under the Han. Imperial Confucianism. Correlative Cosmology. Emperor and Scholars. 3. Reunification in the Buddhist Age. Disunion. The Buddhist Teaching. Sui-Tang Reunification. Buddhism and the State. Decline of the Tang Dynasty. Social Change: The Tang-Song Transition. 4. China's Greatest Age: Northern and Southern Song. Efflorescence of Material Growth. Education and the Examination System. The Creation of Neo-Confucianism. Formation of Gentry Society. 5. The Paradox of Song China and Inner Asia. The Symbiosis of Wen and Wu. The Rise of Non-Chinese Rule over China. China in the Mongol Empire. Interpreting the Song Era. 6. Government in the Ming Dynasty. Legacies of the Hongwu Emperor. Fiscal Problems. China Turns Inward. Factional Politics. 7. The Qing Success Story. The Manchu Conquest. Institutional Adaptation. The Jesuit Interlude. Growth of Qing Control in Inner Asia. The Attempted Integration of Polity and Culture -- Pt. 2. Late Imperial China, 1600-1911. 8. The Paradox of Growth without Development. The Rise in Population. Diminishing Returns of Farm Labor. The Subjection of Women. Domestic Trade and Commercial Organization. Merchant-Official Symbiosis. Limitations of the Law. 9. Frontier Unrest and the Opening of China. The Weakness of State Leadership. The White Lotus Rebellion, 1796-1804. Maritime China: Origins of the Overseas Chinese. European Trading Companies and the Canton Trade. Rebellion on the Turkestan Frontier, 1826-1835. Opium and the Struggle for a New Order at Guangzhou, 1834-1842. Inauguration of the Treaty Century after 1842. 10. Rebellion and Restoration. The Great Taiping Rebellion, 1851-1864. Civil War. The Qing Restoration of the 1860s. Suppression of Other Rebellions. 11. Early Modernization and the Decline of Qing Power. Self-Strengthening and Its Failure. The Christian-Confucian Struggle. The Reform Movement. The Boxer Rising, 1898-1901. Demoralization. 12. The Republican Revolution, 1901-1916. A New Domestic Balance of Power. Suppressing Rebellion by Militarization. Elite Activism in the Public Sphere. The Japanese Influence. The Qing Reform Effort. Constitutionalism and Self-Government. Insoluble Systemic Problems. The Revolution of 1911 and Yuan Shikai's Dictatorship -- Pt. 3. The Republic of China, 1912-1949. 13. The Quest for a Chinese Civil Society. The Limits of Chinese Liberalism. The Limits of Christian Reformism. The Tardy Rise of a Political Press. Academic Development. The New Culture Movement. The May Fourth Movement. Rise of the Chinese Bourgeoisie. Origins of the Chinese Communist Party. 14. The Nationalist Revolution and the Nanjing Government. Sun Yatsen and the United Front. The Accession to Power of Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kaishek). The Nature of the Nanjing Government. Systemic Weaknesses. 15. The Second Coming of the Chinese Communist Party. Problems of Life on the Land. Rural Reconstruction. The Rise of Mao Zedong. The Long March, 1934-1935. The Role of Zhou Enlai. The Second United Front. 16. China's War of Resistance, 1937-1945. Nationalist Difficulties. Mao's Sinification of Marxism. Mao Zedong Thought. The Rectification Campaign of 1942-1944. American Support of Coalition Government. 17. The Civil War and the Nationalists on Taiwan. Why the Nationalists Failed. Nationalist Attack and Communist Counterattack. Taiwan as a Japanese Colony. Taiwan as the Republic of China -- Pt. 4. The People's Republic of China, 1949-1991. 18. Establishing Control of State and Countryside. Creating the New State, 1949-1953. Collectivizing Agriculture. Collective Agriculture in Practice. Beginning Industrialization. Education and the Intellectuals. The Anti-Rightist Campaign, 1957-1958. 19. The Great Leap Forward, 1958-1960. Background Factors. The Disaster of 1959-1960. Revival: Seizing Control of Industrial Labor. Party Rectification and Education. The Sino-Soviet Split. The Great Leap Forward as a Social Movement. 20. The Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976. Underpinnings. Mao's Aims and Resources. Role of the People's Liberation Army. How the Cultural Revolution Unfolded. The Red Guards. The Seizure of Power. Foreign Affairs. Decentralization and the Third Front. The Succession Struggle. The Cultural Revolution in Retrospect. Aftermath. 21. Deng Xiaoping's Reforms, 1978-1988. Rehabilitation and Party Rebuilding. Agricultural Development. Industrial Development. Foreign Trade and Investment. Science and Technology. The Party and the Public. The Democracy Movement. The Tiananmen Massacre, June 4, 1989. Epilogue. Illustrations follow pages 76, 172, and 300.

Recognized for decades as the West's doyen on China, John King Fairbank here offers the full and final expression of his lifelong engagement with this vast, ancient civilization. Fairbank's masterwork, China: A New History is without parallel as a concise, comprehensive, and authoritative account of China and its people over four millennia. Bringing to bear sixty years of research, travel, and teaching, Fairbank weaves a richly detailed history that reaches from China's neolithic days to its troubled present. With a deft hand, he depicts a country ever-changing and yet constant in its effort to achieve a cohesive identity, an enormous and enormously complex nation perpetually balancing between the imperatives of force and the power of ideas. Here are the Chinese autocrats in their various times and guises, maintaining Confucian civility and order through--paradoxically--the perpetual threat of irrational imperial violence. Here is the intellectual class, revered for its wisdom and counsel and yet--as events from the Cultural Revolution to the massacre in Tiananmen Square demonstrate--eminently expendable. And here are China's farmers engaged in a never-ending, backbreaking attempt to tame their temperamental countryside only to face repeated famine as China's agrarian-based economy fails to develop. At the center of all stands the Chinese family, until recently the model for both obedience and tyranny in society at large. Fairbank traces the growth of a civilization that could embrace so many contradictions and disruptions and yet retain a strong sense of its identity. Following China's ambivalent relations with the West and with the forces of modernization, he identifies, even in the great leap forward signaled by the Communist Revolution, the assumptions that have informed Chinese society for thousands of years. From the influences of Buddhism through the flowering of Song China to the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, this richly illustrated history unfolds in the wise yet often unconventional style that is quintessentially Fairbank: informal, witty, magisterial, and clear. Informed by the most recent scholarly research, this delicately nuanced and broadly interpretive introduction to the Chinese people and their past will enlighten both the novice and the seasoned China-watcher.