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Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China, W.W Norton and Company: $29.95; cloth; 876 pages.
Jonathan D. Spence in "The Search for Modern China” endeavours to facilitate an understanding of China. He says, quite rightly, that "in trying to understand China today we need to know about China in the past" (pp. xix-xx). That is why Spence begins his narrative in the late 16th century, when China was ruled by its last native dynasty on the eve of the Manchu conquest.
Interestingly, the Yale historian explains that his book is not about modern China. Rather, it is about a centuries-long effort to create such a country, one which is both integrated and receptive, fairly sure of its own identity yet able to join others on equal terms in the quest for new markets, new technologies, new ideas" (p.xx).
By this definition, Spence says, China is not today and never has been a modern country.
Certainly, China in the Qing dynasty was far from being **fairly sure of its own identity yet able to join others on equal terms**. As Spence points out, China did not even have a national flag in its 4,000 years of existence, until one was created in the nineteenth century, when it consciously began to acquire what it thought were the attributes of a modern nation.
As is to be expected, Spence finds numerous parallels in Chinese history. Thus, he likens General Claire Chennault's World War II "Flying Tigers" to the foreign mercenary Ever-Victorious Army formed to fight the Taiping rebels; he sees similarities between Great Leap Forward rhetoric and the vision of Hong Xiuquan, the Taiping Heavenly King, and he compares the Shanghai Communique of 1972 with the Treaty of Nerchinsk of 1689.
This does not mean, of course, that China is unchanging. During the Qing dynasty, for example, China spurned British requests for developing trade. Spence quotes the Qianlong emperor's message to George III of England:
"We have never valued ingenious articles, nor do we have the slightest need of your country's manufactures. Therefore, O king,