明鏡新聞網: 从中国官方数据解密中国近现代史

2011年12月2日星期五

从中国官方数据解密中国近现代史

China's official data for demystifying China's modern history

- Launching a new book: China's Political Economy in Modern Times: Changes and Economic Consequences, 1800–2000

从中国官方数据解密中国近现代史：《中国近代和当代的政治经济变化及其后果(1800-2000)》新书发布

Time: 19:00-21:00, 6^th December (Tuesday), 2011 [12月6日 (周二) 晚7-9点]
Venue: Sheikh Zayed Theatre (NAB LG08), LSE

Speaker: Dr Kent Deng (Economic History; CCPN; CIBL, LSE)

Chair: Professor Athar Hussain (Asia Research Centre, LSE)

Abstract: The year 2011 is the centenary of the 1911 Revolution. It is time for us to revisit China’s history in the past two centuries. The period from 1800 to 2000 was underscored by turbulent changes unseen since the Mongol conquest of the thirteenth century. Crises of wide scope and high intensity appeared: recurrent civil wars, repeated unrest, continual political purges, society-wide narcotic abuse, and an unparalleled man-made famine. China was also defeated five times by invaders and forced into humiliating treaties with a host of foreign powers. China became a country of Murphy’s Law, everything that could go wrong, went wrong. The aim of the book is to unveil the key mechanisms affecting a quarter of humanity over the past two centuries. The major objective of the study is to disentangle truth from myth, probe the real historical causation, and measure the costs and benefits of changes. The sole criterion used here is whether they delivered anything good for the majority instead of falling into the Hegelian fatalist trap of ‘all that is real is rational and all that is rational is real’. Changes could well be irrational and unnecessary in the view of historical counterfactual. The intended thrust of this book is a high degree of consistency, something commonly lacking in works in this field, in explaining China’s past failure and China’s recent success without introducing an external force such as the British invasion in the 1840 Opium War or some farfetched factors such as universal class struggle or oriental despotism.

Speaker’s Biography: Dr Kent Deng is Reader in Economic History, Director of China in Comparative Perspective Network (CCPN); Co-Director of theConfucius Institute for Business London (CIBL), LSE. He is Fellow of Royal Historical Society (FRHistS), and the winner of ‘The Best Thesis in the Last Four Years’, awarded by the International Economic History Society, 1994. He is the author of several books on the maritime sector of China, the Chinese literati and the Chinese peasantry. He has also written a list of papers and articles.

Note: This is a public lecture, as first come first serve basis. It is jointly arranged by Asia Research Centre, China in Comparative Perspective Network (CCPN), and Confucius Institute for Business London (CIBL)

邓钢博士是伦敦经济学院经济史系准教授，中国比较研究网主任(CCPN)，伦敦商务孔子学院联席院长 (CBIL)；皇家历史学会院士；曾为国际经济史协会最佳论文奖获得者；发表了论著5部，论文数十篇。这部新著专为纪念辛亥革命100周年而作，它全面系统地审视了中国过去200年的历史，有助于我们深度理解中国及其社会发展的历程，以及对中国社会未来发展走势的展望。这次隆重的新书发布演讲是由伦敦经济学院亚洲研究中心、中国比较研究网和伦敦商务孔子学院联合举办，并由亚洲研究中心主任、著名经济学家、亚洲和中国专家Athar Hussain教授主持。