The Search for Modern China

Spence’s one-volume narrative runs from the collapse of the late Ming around 1600 to the end of the twentieth century, and its organising question is the one in the title: not when China modernised but what successive generations of Chinese were searching for — a workable state, a defensible territory, a way to absorb foreign technique without surrendering to foreign power. Qing consolidation, the Opium Wars, the Taiping, the 1911 revolution, the warlords, the Republic, the Communist victory, the Great Leap, the Cultural Revolution, Deng’s reforms and Tiananmen are all narrated as episodes in that one search rather than as a story of decline and rescue.

Why it’s on the list: The standard single-volume modern history, sitting in Li Lu’s Chinese-civilization section as the narrative backbone under the philosophical and classical entries around it.

Where I saw it: On Li Lu’s Recommended Book List, the Himalaya Capital bibliography — 137 entries across six numbered sections. Kyle saved it as two X posts that between them photographed only the value-investing section; this entry came from the source PDF. Li Lu lists it as W. W. Norton & Co., 1991.

Connections

• Li Lu’s Recommended Book List — the list this came from.
• China — the subject; Li Lu’s own formation is the history this book narrates.