Timothy Cheek, University of British Columbia, Vancouver

Timothy Cheek began studying China at the Australian National University in the 1970s and has travelled to China and worked with Chinese colleagues since 1981. After receiving his PhD in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University in 1986 he taught in the US until 2002 when he took up his chair at the University of British Columbia. His research, teaching and translating focus on the recent history of China, especially the role of Chinese intellectuals in the twentieth century and the history of the Chinese Communist Party. His books include Living with Reform: China since 1989 (2006), Mao Zedong and China's Revolutions (2002) and Propaganda and Culture in Mao's China (1997), as well as New Perspectives on State Socialism in China (1997, edited with Tony Saich), The Secret Speeches of Chairman Mao (1989, translated and edited with Roderick MacFarquhar and Eugene Wu), and China's Establishment Intellectuals (1986, edited with Carol Lee Hamrin). Most recently, he has edited A Critical Introduction to Mao (2010) and co-edited with Stuart R. Schram Volume 3 of Mao's Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings, 1912–1949 (2015). In recent years he has been working with some Chinese intellectuals to explore avenues of communication and cooperation to address problems of global change.

http://www.cambridge.org/cn/academic/subjects/history/east-asian-history/intellectual-modern-chinese-history?format=PB

This vivid narrative history of Chinese intellectuals and public life provides a guide to making sense of China today. Timothy Cheek presents a map and a method for understanding the intellectual in the long twentieth century, from China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese war in 1895 to the 'Prosperous China' since the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Cheek maps the changing terrain of intellectual life over this transformative century in Chinese history to enable readers to understand a particular figure, idea or debate. This map provides coordinates to track different times, different social worlds and key concepts. The historical method focuses on context and communities in six periods to make sense of ideas, institutions and individual thinkers across the century. Together they provide a memorable account of the scenes and protagonists, arguments and ideas of intellectuals and public life in modern China.

A comprehensive synthesis of modern Chinese history across the twentieth century, presenting the importance of intellectuals in public life in modern China

Places the Chinese experience in a global context from 1895 to the present, making it comparable with European and world events

Introduces new analytical perspectives for the study of intellectual history, including ideological moments, the directed public sphere and worlds of intellectual life