Publisher’s Foreword

The first Opium War marked the beginning of China’s modern history. Henceforth, since the constant bullying China had suffered for its backwardness was so traumatic that most Chinese people reached a national consensus that China was inferior to other countries in its technology, state institution and culture. It was high time that China had started to change the situation of“being vulnerable to Western Powers”and to rejuvenate the Chinese nation through cultural criticism and cultural innovation. Therefore, Chinese people“opened their eyes to the outside world”and started to learn from Japan, Europe, America and even Soviet Russia. Chinese people had long been stuck in a time-pressed mentality to get rid of its long-standing impoverishment, debility and backwardness, and to surpass those western powers that had intimidated them. It can be said that in the pursuit of strengthening and reviving the Chinese nation, we have focused too much on understanding others and learning from them rather than introducing ourselves to them. In fact, this situation has remained unchanged even after the launching of China’s modernization cause-the social and economic reform in 1978. In the 1980s and 1990s, translating a large number of Western works into China was a good example to show the mainstream of this one-way exchange at that time. This is the brief history of Chinese people’s understanding of the relationship between China and the rest of the world since its modern times.

The other side of the story is that in the pursuit of strengthening and reviving the Chinese nation since its modern times, we have, through“material (technological) criticism”,“institutional criticism”and“cultural criticism”, never ceased to search for“the path”of saving China from national genocide and enriching her at the same time. This“path”is, first of all, our thought, our flag as well as our soul. However, what’s more important is: what kind of thought, flag and soul can save our nation, strengthen our country and enrich its people? The Chinese people finally found a path to save their nation after they had struggled unremittingly for more than 100 years in failures, humiliation and anxiety, and made continuous explorations such as the practice of“taking traditional Chinese learning as the main body while the Western one as its assisting parts”, the experiment of“constitutional monarchy”, the disillusion of“capitalist political system”and the major setbacks of the socialist systems worldwide in the early 1990s. It is a path of victorious revolution, a path of national independence and liberation, a path of localizing the theories of scientific socialism in China and a path of socialist modernization with Chinese characteristics. The past three decades of reform and opening up has witnessed the rapid development of China’s socialist market economy, the great achievements of its political, cultural and social construction, the increase of its overall national strength, culturally soft power as well as its international influence, and more importantly the success of its socialist system with Chinese characteristics, which has as its institutional system, although not perfect, come into sound being. China, a dream seeker for over a hundred years, is rising up in the world with a firmer and more confident posture in its path of development, ideology and institutional system.

At the same time, it should also be noted that the long-standing cognition and cultural psychology of learning from western countries has made us ignore the fact that we seldom take the initiative to introduce ourselves, no matter the“old China”or the“new China”, to the rest of the world even though we have risen up as one of the super powers among them. Meanwhile, people in the west have long been, in their cultural exchanges with us, so misguided by their preconceived impression that China is still inferior to them, and that they rarely have no sufficient knowledge of China’s current development, let alone of the path we have taken, of the scientific application of“Chinese theories”and“Chinese institutional system”, and of our unique significance and contributions to human civilization. The absence of“self-introduction”also resulted in such slanders as“China collapsing”,“China Threat”and“Chinese State Capitalism”fabricated by the dissidents with ulterior motives.

It can be said that in the process of our experimenting development, usually nicknamed as“crossing the river by feeling the stones”, we have spent more time learning from and understanding the western world on the one hand, and understanding ourselves by adopting the western experience and discourse system on the other hand, while ignoring the importance of“self-cognition”and“self-introduction”. When we tried to integrate into the world with a more tolerant and friendly attitude, we were not objectively and truly understood by the rest of the world. Therefore, it is an important job of those academic researchers with a sense of justice and responsibility to tell the whole world the path a successful socialism system with Chinese characteristics has been innovated, the true story of China’s renaissance and the lessons we’ve learned, to take the opportunity of international publicity, to show the world the real China and to let them know that the modernization path initiated in the west is not the last stop of human evolution and socialism with Chinese characteristics too can be the treasure of human ideologies.

To this end, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences rallied up their first class scholars, together with the ones from other institutions for the compilation of the Understanding China Series. The Series covers a multitude of topics including the Chinese road, Chinese theories, the combing and introduction of the Chinese institutional systems, and the objective description and interpretation of China’s development in contemporary times from the perspective of political system, human rights, rule of law, economic institutional system, finance, social governance, social security, population policy, values, religious beliefs, national policy, rural issues, urbanization, industrialization, ecology, ancient civilization, literature and arts.

It is expected that after the publication of the Series, readers in home will understand China’s modernization process for the past 150 years in a more objective way and see the problems facing us in a more rational view, and the urgency of comprehensively deepening the ongoing reform, together with our national confidence, will both be advanced; It is also hoped that they can not only gather consensus and draw resources for our on-going reform and development, but improve the foreign readers’ understanding of China and thus create a better international environment for our future development.