The interactions and mutual perceptions of China and Indonesia were a significant element in Asia's postcolonial transformation, but as result of the prevailing emphasis on diplomatic and political relations within a Cold War and nation-state framework, their multi-dimensional interrelationship and its complex domestic ramifications have escaped scholarly scrutiny. China and the Shaping of Indonesia provides a meticulous account of versatile interplay between knowledge, power, ethnicity, and diplomacy in the context of Sino-Indonesian interactions between 1949 and 1965. Taking a transnational approach that views Asia as a flexible geographical and political construct, this book addresses three central questions. First, what images of China were prevalent in Indonesia, and how were narratives about China construed and reconstructed? Second, why did the China Metaphor -- the projection of an imagined foreign land onto the local intellectural and political milieu -- become central to Indonesians' conception of themselves and a cause for self criticism and rediscovery? Third, how was the China Metaphor incorporated into Indonesia's domestic politics and culture, and how did it affect the postcolonial transformation, the fate of the ethnic Chinese minority, and Sino-Indonesian diplomacy? Employing a wide range of hitherto untapped primary materials in Indonesian and Chinese as well as his own interviews, Hong Liu presents a compelling argument that many influential politicians and intellectuals, among them Sukarno, Hatta, and Pramoedya, utilized China as an alternative model of modernity in conceiving and developing projects of social engineering, cultural regeneration and political restructuring that helped shape the trajectory of modern Indonesia. The multiplicity of China thus constituted a site of political contestations and intellectual imaginations. The study is a major contribution both to the intellectual and political history of Indonesia and to the reconceptualization of Asian studies, it also serves as a timely reminder of the importance of historicizing China's rising soft power in a transnational Asia.

Lo Jung-pang (1912‒81) was a renowned professor of Chinese history at the University of California at Davis. In 1957 he completed a 600-page typed manuscript entitled China as a Sea Power, 1127‒1368, but he died without arranging for the book to be published. Bruce Elleman found the manuscript in the UC Davis archives in 2004, and with the support of Dr Lo’s family prepared an edited version of the manuscript for publication.Lo Jung-pang argues that during each of the three periods when imperial China embarked on maritime enterprises (the Qin and Han dynasties, the Sui and early Tang dynasties, and the Song, Yuan, and early Ming dynasties), coastal states took the initiative at a time when China was divided, maritime trade and exploration peaked when China was strong and unified, and then declined as Chinese power weakened. At such times, China’s people became absorbed by internal affairs, and state policy focused on threats from the north and the west. These cycles of maritime activity, each lasting roughly five hundred years, corresponded with cycles of cohesion and division, strength and weakness, prosperity and impoverishment, expansion and contraction.In the early 21st century, a strong and outward looking China is again building up its navy and seeking maritime dominance, with important implications for trade, diplomacy and naval affairs. Events will not necessarily follow the same course as in the past, but Lo Jung-pang’s analysis suggests useful questions for the study of events as they unfold in the years and decades to come.

The book is about the author’s personal experiences in China from 1949 to the present. She went through all the political movements, of which the most devastating were the Anti-Rightist Movement and the Cultural Revolution. At the end of the former，her husband was labelled a “Rightist” and the whole family suffered with him.

At the turn of the twentieth century, a wave of Chinese men made their way to the northern Mexican border state of Sonora to work and live. The ties--and families—these Mexicans and Chinese created during led to the formation of a new cultural identity: Chinese Mexican. During the tumult of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, however, anti-Chinese sentiment ultimately led to mass expulsion of these people. Julia María Schiavone Camacho follows the community through the mid-twentieth century, across borders and oceans, to show how they fought for their place as Mexicans, both in Mexico and abroad.

British imperialism profoundly influenced the development of the modern world order. This same imperialism created modern Singapore, shaping its colonial development, influencing its post-colonial reorientation. Winston Churchill was British imperialism's most significant 20th-century statesman. Churchill never visited Singapore, yet their two stories heavily influenced each other. Singapore became a symbol of British imperial power in Asia to Churchill, while Singaporeans later came to see him as symbolising that power. The fall of Singapore to Japanese conquest in 1942 was a low point in Churchill's war leadership, one he forever labelled by calling it "the worst disaster in British military history". It was also a tragedy for Singapore, ushering in three cruel years of occupation. But the interplay between these three historical forces -- Churchill, empire, and Singapore -- extended well beyond this most dramatic conjuncture. No single volume critically examines that longer interplay. This collection of essays does so by analysing Churchill's understanding of empire, his perceptions of Singapore and its imperial role, his direction of affairs regarding Singapore and the Empire, and his influence on the subsequent relationship between them.

In Clothing Gandhi's Nation, Lisa Trivedi explores the making of one of modern India's most enduring political symbols, khadi: a homespun, home-woven cloth. The image of Mohandas K. Gandhi clothed simply in a loincloth and plying a spinning wheel is familiar around the world, as is the sight of Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and other political leaders dressed in "Gandhi caps" and khadi shirts. Less widely understood is how these images associate the wearers with the swadeshi movement -- which advocated the exclusive consumption of indigenous goods to establish India's autonomy from Great Britain -- or how khadi was used to create a visual expression of national identity after Independence. Trivedi brings together social history and the study of visual culture to account for khadi as both symbol and commodity. Written in a clear narrative style, the book provides a cultural history of important and distinctive aspects of modern Indian history.

This book offers an alternative perspective to look into Hong Kong’s colonial pasts, tracing how malleable forms of colonial power are underpinning institutions and cultural imaginaries across the social body. Such a collaborative colonial power formation gave shape to the Hong Kong Chinese and its impacts are still lingering after 1997.

The evolution of Hong Kong, as a British colony and now a Special Administrative Region at China's door step, has always been inextricably intertwined with the situation in China. This relationship is examined through various perspectives in this volume.