Recently, the English version of Rural China,1901-1949: Modernization and Resilience by Professor Wang Xianming of History College, Nankai University has been officially published by famous press Routledge and is going to be distributed worldwide.

The work’s Chinese version, which was published by SSLP in 2017, received the second prize of the 8^th National Outstanding Achievement Award of Scientific Research in Colleges and Universities (in the category of Humanities and Social Sciences) and the first prize of the 17th Tianjin Social Science Outstanding Achievements (in the  Works category). Meanwhile, it was selected into the Chinese academic translation project of NSFC, which led to the English version we have today.

One has to know the Chinese countryside before he really knows China. The book, focused on rural China from 1901 to 1949, involves a vast area containing Shanxi, Shandong, Guizhou, Hunan, Hubei, Hebei, Anhui, Shaanxi, Jiangsu, Tianjin and so on. A big picture of the changes emerging in Chinese villages over nearly half a century is presented in 6 chapters. The first chapter discussed the rural social changes that took place before and after the 1911 Revolution; the second discusses the relationship between the transition of township institutions and rural society; the third delves into the changes which took place during the modernization process; the fourth lays out how society was stratified while the changes took place; the fifth is concerned with the changes in rural power structure; the last chapter concentrates on the crisis and countermeasures taken in Chinese village society in the 1930s.

Wang Xianming chose a certain aspect to center each chapter as a basis to build a clear discussion of fundamental problems and contradictory movements in rural society. By explaining their great significance in the social, political, economic and cultural fields, he has constructed an interpenetrating frame in which the inner mechanism of evolution in rural Chinese society in the early 20^th century and the history of the village is thoroughly researched.

As a famous academic publisher under the auspices of the Taylor& Francis Group, Routledge has been acknowledged for its extraordinary academic works. This book represents the power and status which the history discipline of Nankai University holds in the study of Chinese rural history, allowing the excellent research findings of Nankai University to reach the global stage and promoting the international communication of Chinese village history studies. The voice of Chinese scholars is indeed getting louder and louder.

(Reported by Kun Fu, translated by Xixi Zheng, edited by Daniel Stefan and JianjingYun)