Ebook: The fall and rise of China: healing the trauma of history

"For over a century, from the First Opium War in 1839-42 to the end of the Second World War, China was repeatedly humiliated by Western imperial powers and by its smaller neighbor, Japan. For a time the Middle Kingdom seemed on the verge of becoming a pawn of foreign interests. Then, in a process unmatched in history, this great culture recovered vigorously from its seemingly hopeless plight - so much so that today the state, its leaders and its burgeoning economic and military might are globally acknowledged and not infrequently feared. The Fall and Rise of China: Healing the Trauma of History traces the country's development in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries up to the present day and offers an explanation of the collective mentality that enabled China, confronted by the superiority of Western science and technology, to commit to the unsparing self-diagnosis that enabled its impressive rise and radical transformation. The country identified the aspects of Western civilization it must adopt in order to remove the cultural impediments to its own renaissance. Profoundly wounded, China prescribed for itself a therapy that followed the same principle used in Chinese medicine: that the cause lies first and foremost within oneself. Prevention and treatment must therefore always begin with one's own deficiencies and mistakes. In this powerful polemic Paul Unschuld presents an entirely new understanding and analysis of China's past and offers fascinating insights into its possible future."--Publisher's website.;Part 1. China -- Zhongguo -- An empire at the centre of the world. A distant king is turned away -- A distant pope is expelled -- An emperor's legacy is erased -- Part 2. A civilization in free fall. The breach and the thief -- The British intervention: Trauma 1 -- The Taiping rebellion -- The British-French intervention: Trauma 2 -- The Russian Intervention: Trauma 3 -- The French intervention: Trauma 4 -- The Japanese intervention: Trauma 5 -- The German intervention: Trauma 6 -- The Boxer protocol: Trauma 7 -- The custodian banks: Trauma 8 -- The Japanese invasion: Trauma 9. -- Part 3. A clash of cultures? How would you have reacted? -- The tradition of existential autonomy -- Europe and the discovery of social welfare -- China takes its fate into its own hands -- First steps to a new beginning -- Science and medicine -- How much westernization? -- Marxism in China -- The path to the present -- Conclusion.