The Story of China Post 1

The Story of China Post 1 PDF Author: Scott Riebel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
China Post 1 is celebrating its 100th anniversary. Founded in Shanghai, China in November 1919, the history of this Post is in fact a history of the membership of the Post, their love for it and their dedication and efforts in ensuring the success and survival of this organization. During the early years, the Post conducted operation much like any other Post within the American Legion.In 1938, following the Japanese occupation of China, the membership shifted focus and much of their work consisted of clandestine operations, intelligence gathering and reporting through their established business connections.On December 8, 1941 following Pearl Harbor, all U.S. expats were gathered up and incarcerated in "civilian detention facilities" like Pootung Prison. During that long incarceration, Post members continued their intel gathering and reporting through a vast network of established civilian contact. One member in particular stands out, Past Commander Frank D. Mortimer.Following the war and their release from incarceration, Post members immediately returned to the old Post home and began the process of assisting expats and veterans return to the U.S., locate missing relatives, arrange for final honors; frankly, anything that was within their power to accomplish with little money. In 1948 the people abandoned the Chiang Kai-shek government in favor of Mao Zedong and in 1948, Americans in Mao's China became persona non grata. So began our exile.The Soldier of Fortune moniker appealed to a certain category of war fighters in South East Asia. The resurgence of the Post is due in large part to these people.You just cannot join China Post 1. Membership in the Post is not solicited. Prospective members MUST be recommended by a current member. The veracity of their application is carefully verified, and an intake interview is conducted. The brand that is China Post 1 is carefully protected.The story of China Post 1 is the story of the membership. This is a collection of their stories and their contributions to maintaining the Post and its brand. This is their story.

The Story of China Post 1

The Story of China Post 1 PDF Author: Scott Riebel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 335

Get Book Here

Book Description
China Post 1 is celebrating its 100th anniversary. Founded in Shanghai, China in November 1919, the history of this Post is in fact a history of the membership of the Post, their love for it and their dedication and efforts in ensuring the success and survival of this organization. During the early years, the Post conducted operation much like any other Post within the American Legion.In 1938, following the Japanese occupation of China, the membership shifted focus and much of their work consisted of clandestine operations, intelligence gathering and reporting through their established business connections.On December 8, 1941 following Pearl Harbor, all U.S. expats were gathered up and incarcerated in "civilian detention facilities" like Pootung Prison. During that long incarceration, Post members continued their intel gathering and reporting through a vast network of established civilian contact. One member in particular stands out, Past Commander Frank D. Mortimer.Following the war and their release from incarceration, Post members immediately returned to the old Post home and began the process of assisting expats and veterans return to the U.S., locate missing relatives, arrange for final honors; frankly, anything that was within their power to accomplish with little money. In 1948 the people abandoned the Chiang Kai-shek government in favor of Mao Zedong and in 1948, Americans in Mao's China became persona non grata. So began our exile.The Soldier of Fortune moniker appealed to a certain category of war fighters in South East Asia. The resurgence of the Post is due in large part to these people.You just cannot join China Post 1. Membership in the Post is not solicited. Prospective members MUST be recommended by a current member. The veracity of their application is carefully verified, and an intake interview is conducted. The brand that is China Post 1 is carefully protected.The story of China Post 1 is the story of the membership. This is a collection of their stories and their contributions to maintaining the Post and its brand. This is their story.

The Paradox of China's Post-Mao Reforms

The Paradox of China's Post-Mao Reforms PDF Author: Merle Goldman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674654532
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Book Description
China's bold program of reforms launched in the late 1970s--the move to a market economy and the opening to the outside world--ended the political chaos and economic stagnation of the Cultural Revolution and sparked China's unprecedented economic boom. Yet, while the reforms made possible a rising standard of living for the majority of China's population, they came at the cost of a weakening central government, increasing inequalities, and fragmenting society. The essays of Barry Naughton, Joseph Fewsmith, Paul H. B. Godwin, Murray Scot Tanner, Lianjiang Li and Kevin J. O'Brien, Tianjian Shi, Martin King Whyte, Thomas P. Bernstein, Dorothy J. Solinger, David S. G. Goodman, Kristen Parris, Merle Goldman, Elizabeth J. Perry, and Richard Baum and Alexei Shevchenko analyze the contradictory impact of China's economic reforms on its political system and social structure. They explore the changing patterns of the relationship between state and society that may have more profound significance for China than all the revolutionary movements that have convulsed it through most of the twentieth century.

Out of the Gobi

Out of the Gobi PDF Author: Weijian Shan
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119529492
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 505

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Book Description
Foreword by Janet Yellen Weijian Shan's Out of the Gobi is a powerful memoir and commentary that will be one of the most important books on China of our time, one with the potential to re-shape how Americans view China, and how the Chinese view life in America. Shan, a former hard laborer who is now one of Asia's best-known financiers, is thoughtful, observant, eloquent, and brutally honest, making him well-positioned to tell the story of a life that is a microcosm of modern China, and of how, improbably, that life became intertwined with America. Out of the Gobi draws a vivid picture of the raw human energy and the will to succeed against all odds. Shan only finished elementary school when Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution tore his country apart. He was a witness to the brutality and absurdity of Mao’s policies during one of the most tumultuous eras in China’s history. Exiled to the Gobi Desert at age 15 and denied schooling for 10 years, he endured untold hardships without ever giving up his dream for an education. Shan’s improbable journey, from the Gobi to the “People’s Republic of Berkeley” and far beyond, is a uniquely American success story – told with a splash of humor, deep insight and rich and engaging detail. This powerful and personal perspective on China and America will inform Americans' view of China, humanizing the country, while providing a rare view of America from the prism of a keen foreign observer who lived the American dream. Says former Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen: “Shan’s life provides a demonstration of what is possible when China and the United States come together, even by happenstance. It is not only Shan’s personal history that makes this book so interesting but also how the stories of China and America merge in just one moment in time to create an inspired individual so unique and driven, and so representative of the true sprits of both countries.”

The Story of China

The Story of China PDF Author: Michael Wood
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781471175985
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
'A learned, wise, wonderfully written single volume history of a civilisation that I knew I should know more about' Tom Holland 'Masterful and engrossing...well-paced, eminently readable and well-timed. A must-read for those who want - and need - to know about the China of yesterday, today and tomorrow' Peter Frankopan China's story is extraordinarily rich and dramatic. Now Michael Wood, one of the UK's pre-eminent historians, brings it all together in a major new one-volume history of China that is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand its burgeoning role in our world today. China is the oldest living civilisation on earth, but its history is still surprisingly little known in the wider world. Michael Wood's sparkling narrative, which mingles the grand sweep with local and personal stories, woven together with the author's own travel journals, is an enthralling account of China's 4000-year-old tradition, taking in life stationed on the Great Wall or inside the Forbidden City. The story is enriched with the latest archaeological and documentary discoveries; correspondence and court cases going back to the Qin and Han dynasties; family letters from soldiers in the real-life Terracotta Army; stories from Silk Road merchants and Buddhist travellers, along with memoirs and diaries of emperors, poets and peasants. In the modern era, the book is full of new insights, with the electrifying manifestos of the feminist revolutionaries Qiu Jin and He Zhen, extraordinary eye-witness accounts of the Japanese invasion, the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution under Chairman Mao, and fascinating newly published sources for the great turning points in China's modern history, including the Tiananmen Square crisis of 1989, and the new order of President Xi Jinping. A compelling portrait of a single civilisation over an immense period of time, the book is full of intimate detail and colourful voices, taking us from the desolate Mongolian steppes to the ultra-modern world of Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. It also asks what were the forces that have kept China together for so long? Why was China overtaken by the west after the 18th century? What lies behind China's extraordinary rise today? The Story of China tells a thrilling story of intense drama, fabulous creativity and deep humanity; a portrait of a country that will be of the greatest importance to the world in the twenty-first century.

The Story of China

The Story of China PDF Author: Michael Wood
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250202582
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
A single volume history of China, offering a look into the past of the global superpower and its significance today. Michael Wood has travelled the length and breadth of China, the world’s oldest civilization and longest lasting state, to tell a thrilling story of intense drama, fabulous creativity, and deep humanity that stretches back thousands of years. After a century and a half of foreign invasion, civil war, and revolution, China has once again returned to center stage as a global superpower and the world’s second largest economy. But how did it become so dominant? Wood argues that in order to comprehend the great significance of China today, we must begin with its history. The Story of China takes a fresh look at the Middle Kingdom in the light of the recent massive changes inside the country. Taking into account exciting new archeological discoveries, the book begins with China’s prehistory—the early dynasties, the origins of the Chinese state, and the roots of Chinese culture in the age of Confucius. Wood looks at particular periods and themes that are now being reevaluated by historians, such as the renaissance of the Song with its brilliant scientific discoveries. He paints a vibrant picture of the Qing Empire in the 18th century, just before the European impact, a time when China’s rich and diverse culture was at its height. Then, Wood explores the encounter with the West, the Opium Wars, the clashes with the British, and the extraordinarily rich debates in the late 19th century that pushed China along the path to modernity. Finally, he provides a clear up-to-date account of post-1949 China, including revelations about the 1989 crisis based on newly leaked inside documents, and fresh insights into the new order of President Xi Jinping. All woven together with landscape history and the author’s own travel journals, The Story of China is the indispensable book about the most intriguing and powerful country on the world stage today.

Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China PDF Author: Ezra F. Vogel
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674257413
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 553

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Book Description
Winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist An Economist Best Book of the Year | A Financial Times Book of the Year | A Wall Street Journal Book of the Year | A Washington Post Book of the Year | A Bloomberg News Book of the Year | An Esquire China Book of the Year | A Gates Notes Top Read of the Year Perhaps no one in the twentieth century had a greater long-term impact on world history than Deng Xiaoping. And no scholar of contemporary East Asian history and culture is better qualified than Ezra Vogel to disentangle the many contradictions embodied in the life and legacy of China’s boldest strategist. Once described by Mao Zedong as a “needle inside a ball of cotton,” Deng was the pragmatic yet disciplined driving force behind China’s radical transformation in the late twentieth century. He confronted the damage wrought by the Cultural Revolution, dissolved Mao’s cult of personality, and loosened the economic and social policies that had stunted China’s growth. Obsessed with modernization and technology, Deng opened trade relations with the West, which lifted hundreds of millions of his countrymen out of poverty. Yet at the same time he answered to his authoritarian roots, most notably when he ordered the crackdown in June 1989 at Tiananmen Square. Deng’s youthful commitment to the Communist Party was cemented in Paris in the early 1920s, among a group of Chinese student-workers that also included Zhou Enlai. Deng returned home in 1927 to join the Chinese Revolution on the ground floor. In the fifty years of his tumultuous rise to power, he endured accusations, purges, and even exile before becoming China’s preeminent leader from 1978 to 1989 and again in 1992. When he reached the top, Deng saw an opportunity to creatively destroy much of the economic system he had helped build for five decades as a loyal follower of Mao—and he did not hesitate.

Last Boat Out of Shanghai

Last Boat Out of Shanghai PDF Author: Helen Zia
Publisher:
ISBN: 034552232X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
"The dramatic, real-life stories of four young people caught up in the mass exodus of Shanghai in the wake of China's 1949 Communist Revolution--a precursor to the struggles faced by emigrants today. Shanghai has historically been China's jewel, its richest, most modern and westernized city. The bustling metropolis was home to sophisticated intellectuals, entrepreneurs, and a thriving middle class when Mao's proletarian revolution emerged victorious from the long civil war. Terrified of the horrors the Communists would wreak upon their lives, citizens of Shanghai who could afford to fled in every direction. Seventy years later, the last generation to fully recall this massive exodus have opened the story to Chinese American journalist Helen Zia, who interviewed hundreds of exiles about their journey through one of the most tumultuous events of the twentieth century. From these moving accounts, Zia weaves the story of four young Shanghai residents who wrestled with the decision to abandon everything for an uncertain life as refugees in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the U.S. Young Benny, who as a teenager became the unwilling heir to his father's dark wartime legacy, must choose between escaping Hong Kong or navigating the intricacies of a newly Communist China. The resolute Annuo, forced to flee her home with her father, a defeated Nationalist official, becomes an unwelcome young exile in Taiwan. The financially strapped Ho fights deportation in order to continue his studies in the U.S. while his family struggles at home. And Bing, given away by her poor parents, faces the prospect of a new life among strangers in America"--

Chinese Lessons

Chinese Lessons PDF Author: John Pomfret
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0805076158
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
"As a twenty-two-year-old exchange student at Nanjing University in 1981, John Pomfret was one of the first American students to be admitted to China after the Communist Revolution of 1949. Living in a cramped dorm room, Pomfret was exposed to a country few outsiders had ever experienced, one fresh from the twin tragedies of Mao's rule - the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution." "Twenty years after first leaving China, Pomfret returned to the university for a class reunion. Once again, he immersed himself in the lives of his classmates, especially the one woman and four men whose stories make up Chinese Lessons, an intimate and revealing portrait of the Chinese people." "Beginning with Pomfret's first day in China, Chinese Lessons takes us back to the often torturous paths that brought together the Nanjing University History Class of 1982. We learn that Old Wu's father was killed during the Cultural Revolution for the crime of being an intellectual; Book Idiot Zhou labored in the fields for years rather than agree to a Party-arranged marriage; Little Guan was forced to publicly denounce and humiliate her father." "As we follow Pomfret's classmates from childhood to university and on to adulthood, we see the effect that the country's transition from near-feudal communism to First World capitalism has had on his classmates. This riveting portrait of the Chinese people will not only change your understanding of China but also challenge your perception of the way fate can shape the course of nations as surely as it has the extraordinary lives of these five classmates."--BOOK JACKET.

A Village with My Name

A Village with My Name PDF Author: Scott Tong
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022633905X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
An “immensely readable” journey through modern Chinese history told through the experiences of the author’s extended family (Christian Science Monitor). When journalist Scott Tong moved to Shanghai, his assignment was to start the first full-time China bureau for “Marketplace,” the daily business and economics program on public radio stations across the US. But for Tong the move became much more: an opportunity to reconnect with members of his extended family who’d remained there after his parents fled the communists six decades prior. Uncovering their stories gave him a new way to understand modern China’s defining moments and its long, interrupted quest to go global. A Village with My Name offers a unique perspective on China’s transitions through the eyes of regular people who witnessed such epochal events as the toppling of the Qing monarchy, Japan’s occupation during WWII, exile of political prisoners to forced labor camps, mass death and famine during the Great Leap Forward, market reforms under Deng Xiaoping, and the dawn of the One Child Policy. Tong focuses on five members of his family, who each offer a specific window on a changing country: a rare American-educated girl born in the closing days of the Qing Dynasty, a pioneer exchange student, a toddler abandoned in wartime who later rides the wave of China’s global export boom, a young professional climbing the ladder at a multinational company, and an orphan (the author’s daughter) adopted in the middle of a baby-selling scandal fueled by foreign money. Through their stories, Tong shows us China anew, visiting former prison labor camps on the Tibetan plateau and rural outposts along the Yangtze, exploring the Shanghai of the 1930s, and touring factories across the mainland—providing a compelling and deeply personal take on how China became what it is today. “Vivid and readable . . . The book’s focus on ordinary people makes it refreshingly accessible.” —Financial Times “Tong tells his story with humor, a little snark, [and] lots of love . . . Highly recommended, especially for those interested in Chinese history and family journeys.” —Library Journal (starred review)

Breaking with the Past

Breaking with the Past PDF Author: Hans Van de Ven
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231137389
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
From 1854 to 1952, the Chinese Maritime Customs Service delivered one-third to one-half of all revenue available to China’s central authorities. Much more than a tax collector, the institution managed China’s harbors and surveyed the Chinese coast. It oversaw a college training Chinese diplomats; translated legal, philosophical, economic, and scientific documents; organized contributions to international exhibitions; and pioneered China’s modern postal system. After the 1911 Revolution, the agency began managing China’s international loans and domestic bond issues, and in the 1930s, it created a coast guard to combat smuggling. The Customs Service was central to China’s post-Taiping entrance into the world of modern nation-states and twentieth-century trade and finance, and this is the first comprehensive history of the Customs Service’s activities and truly cosmopolitan nature. At times, the Service kept China together when little else did.