This book is a timely and solid portrait of modern China from the First Opium War to the Xi Jinping era. Unlike the handful of existing textbooks that only provide narratives, this textbook fashions a new and practical way to study modern China. Written exclusively for university students, A-level or high school teachers and students, it uses primary sources to tell the story of China and introduces them to existing scholarship and academic debate so they can conduct independent research for their essays and dissertations. This book will be required reading for students who embark on the study of Chinese history, politics, economics, diaspora, sociology, literature, cultural, urban and women's studies. It would be essential reading to journalists, NGO workers, diplomats, government officials, businessmen and travellers. -- .

Though wary of China's rapid rise, her neighbors have considerable experience of dealing with unequal power without surrendering their autonomy. For its part, China has a long memory of unequal or "tributary" relations and a relatively brief and turbulent experience of working within the current useful fiction of "sovereign equality" in international relations. The emerging pattern will have to take account of the great discrepancy in economic and military power between the future China and her neighbours, and of how such asymmetry can be managed peacefully. Negotiating Asymmetry explores how the real or imagined norms governing past relations may shape China's future position in the region by considering how relationships have changed over the past two centuries. The volume argues that neither the "Chinese world order" of tribute relations nor the Westphalia model of sovereign equality ever operated effectively in Asia, but suggests that the past does offer strong indicators about the shape of a new order in Asia.