Revolution and Renaissance in Nineteenth-Century China: The Age of Tseng Kuo-fan

CHINA'S INNER STRUGGLE is essentially a search for new forms of life. When China was opened by force, over one hundred years ago, and brought into the orbit of the Western world and its economic systems, she was forced into a transformation which has not yet been completed. In order to survive, China had to aim at becoming a modern national state with a newly integrated economy. This transformation was impossible without a fundamental change of Chinese society. The old agrarian country is beginning to industrialize. The ancient universal empire has been replaced by a republic; Western ideas of democracy and of Marxism have destroyed the old unity of Confucian political thinking. And, like the Western world, China is in the midst of an ideological crisis. In addition to her agrarian and economic problems, China will have to solve this crisis in order to find a new balance of her social forces.