Modern China: A Very Short Introduction

Citation

Mitter, R. (2025). Modern China: A Very Short Introduction (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. Very Short Introductions.

Chapter Summary

The third edition is a pocket-sized book of about 170 pages (xxii + 149 pages) in seven chapters, with illustrations, a timeline, bibliographical references and an index. The chapter titles show its design: two historical chapters, then four chapters that each put one question about modernity to a different part of Chinese life. The publisher's description presents the book as an integrated picture of Chinese society, culture, economics, politics and art, and says this edition addresses Xi Jinping's growing influence, China's changing foreign policy, the COVID era and its legacy, and the growth of Chinese technological innovation.

Chapter 1: What is modern China?

The opening chapter poses the question that organises the book: what "modern" means when applied to China. It sets up the approach of the later chapters, which test modernity against history, society, the economy and culture in turn.

Chapters 2–3: The old order and the new; Making China modern

The two historical chapters. The titles indicate a movement from the old order and its replacement to the projects of making China modern, the background against which the thematic chapters ask their questions.

Chapters 4–6: Is Chinese society modern?; Is China's economy modern?; Is Chinese culture modern?

Three thematic chapters, each asking the book's question of one domain. The publisher's description of the book opens with the kind of contrast at stake: a country of great economic weight where many people still live in poverty while others live in technologically advanced cities with extensive surveillance.

Chapter 7: Brave new China?

The closing chapter's title asks where China is heading. The publisher's description says the book addresses China's current international status and its growing political and financial significance in the twenty-first century, themes that bear directly on this question.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–3: Defining and making modern China

• Modernity as a question: the book treats whether, and in what sense, China is modern as an open question rather than a settled label.
• Old order and new: the contrast between the older order and what replaced it, the subject of Chapter 2.

Chapters 4–7: Society, economy, culture and the present

• Modern society, economy and culture: three separate tests of modernity, each with its own chapter.
• "Brave new China": the closing question about the country's present course and global role.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A clear organising question. The chapter titles show a book built around one question, applied in turn to history, society, the economy and culture, rather than a compressed chronological narrative. This gives a short book a firm structure and makes it suitable for discussion.
• Breadth in a small space. The publisher presents it as an integrated account of politics, society, economy, culture and art, a range that longer narrative histories often treat separately.
• An expert author. Mitter's books include A Bitter Revolution: China's Struggle with the Modern World and China's War with Japan, 1937–1945, the latter a 2014 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title; China's encounter with the modern world, the subject of A Bitter Revolution, is also the question of this book.
• Updated for recent events. The third edition (2025) adds discussion of the Xi Jinping era, the COVID period and technological growth, so it reaches further into the present than the earlier editions.

Limitations

• Very short by design. With about 150 pages of text, the two historical chapters can only give the history in compressed form; readers who need a sustained narrative of events will need a longer history.
• Thematic rather than chronological. Because four chapters are organised by theme, the order of events is not always laid out step by step; the timeline at the end is the main aid for keeping dates in order.
• China only. The book does not set Chinese developments alongside those of Japan or Korea, which a course on East Asia also needs.

Where It Fits in the Course

This is the shortest book in the course and a natural first reading on modern China. It works best before the longer histories. Jonathan Spence's The Search for Modern China is a long narrative from the late Ming dynasty to the early twenty-first century and gives the sequence of events that Mitter's thematic chapters assume. Patricia Ebrey and Anne Walthall's East Asia and Charles Holcombe's A History of East Asia are full regional surveys; their modern chapters cover the same period as Mitter's book alongside Japan and Korea (and, in Holcombe, Vietnam).

For students specialising elsewhere in the course, Mitter can serve as the China component of a reading list that otherwise centres on Japan, alongside Marius Jansen's The Making of Modern Japan. F. W. Mote's Imperial China 900–1800 covers the centuries before the period of this book and is useful background for the old order discussed in Chapter 2.

How to Use This Book

No prior knowledge of Chinese history or language is required, and the book can be read in two or three sittings.

• First reading: read Chapters 1–3 together for the historical framework, then Chapters 4–6 in any order; finish with Chapter 7.
• With a survey course: read the whole book in the first week as an overview, then reread the relevant thematic chapter alongside the survey's chapters on twentieth-century and contemporary China.
• For discussion or essays: use the book's central question as a prompt. For each thematic chapter, note what evidence counts for and against calling China "modern" in that domain, and compare the answers across society, economy and culture.
• Alongside it: keep the timeline at the back open while reading the thematic chapters, and use the references to choose a longer history or a study of a single period.