Jeffrey Wasserstrom is Chancellor’s Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine.  His most recent books, both published in 2016, are, as author, Eight Juxtapositions: China through Imperfect Analogies from Mark Twain to Manchukuo (Penguin), and, as editor, The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China (Oxford).  An Associate Fellow of the Asia Society who belongs to and has served on the Board of Directors of the National Committee on United States-China Relations, he is Editor of The Journal of Asian Studies, Advising Editor for Asia for The Los Angeles Review of Books, and a member of Dissent magazine’s Editorial Board. His commentaries and reviews have appeared in many general interest periodicals, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Internazionale, TIME, Slate, The American Scholar, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Nation, and The Times Literary Supplement. He is currently writing a book about the Boxer Uprising and the invasion by armies marching under eight different flags that crushed it, while also collaborating with Maura Cunningham on a third edition of the primer China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know.

Last Updated: September 4, 2016

Viewpoint

01.13.13

Is Xi Jinping a Reformer? It’s Much Too Early to Tell

Rachel Beitarie & Jeffrey Wasserstrom
Last weekend, Nicholas Kristof wrote in the pages of The New York Times that he feels moderately confident China will experience resurgent economic reform and probably political reform as well under the leadership of recently installed Communist...

Sinica Podcast

10.19.12

From the Ruins of Empire

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
{vertical_photo_right}Today on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn host a discussion with Pankaj Mishra on his book From the Ruins of Empire, a history of Asia’s intellectual response to Western imperialism in the late nineteenth and early...

Books

10.03.12

Chinese Characters

Angilee Shah and Jeffrey Wasserstrom (Editors)
Though China is currently in the global spotlight, few outside its borders have a feel for the tremendous diversity of the lives being led inside the country. This collection of compelling stories challenges oversimplified views of China by shifting the focus away from the question of China’s place in the global order and zeroing in on what is happening on the ground. Some of the most talented and respected journalists and scholars writing about China today profile people who defy the stereotypes that are broadcast in print, over the airwaves, and online. These include an artist who copies classical paintings for export to tourist markets, Xi’an migrant workers who make a living recycling trash in the city dumps, a Taoist mystic, an entrepreneur hoping to strike it rich in the rental car business, an old woman about to lose her home in Beijing, and a crusading legal scholar.The immense variety in the lives of these Chinese characters dispels any lingering sense that China has a monolithic population or is just a place where dissidents fight Communist Party loyalists and laborers create goods for millionaires. By bringing to life the exciting, saddening, humorous, confusing, and utterly ordinary stories of these people, the gifted contributors create a multi-faceted portrait of a remarkable country undergoing extraordinary transformations. —University of California Press{chop}

Out of School

06.25.12

Review: “The Revolutionary”

Jeffrey Wasserstrom
The Revolutionary, a new documentary that has begun showing on university campuses and at cultural centers, looks at the life of Sidney Rittenberg, a ninety-year-old man who has had an extraordinary variety of experiences. Born into a well-to-do...

Sinica Podcast

03.09.12

The Mirror of History: China Through the Looking Glass

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
Sinica is coming out a bit earlier than usual this week: We were lucky enough to catch Jeffrey Wasserstrom on Monday during a well-timed visit to Beijing, and dragged him into the studio to get his views on the recent elections in Wukan, what is...

Books

03.01.10

China In the 21st Century

Jeffrey Wasserstrom
The need to understand this global giant has never been more pressing: China is constantly in the news, yet conflicting impressions abound. Within one generation, China has transformed from an impoverished, repressive state into an economic and political powerhouse. In China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, Jeffrey Wasserstrom provides cogent answers to the most urgent questions regarding the newest superpower and offers a framework for understanding its meteoric rise. Focusing his answers through the historical legacies—Western and Japanese imperialism, the Mao era, and the massacre near Tiananmen Square—that largely define China's present-day trajectory, Wasserstrom introduces readers to the Chinese Communist Party, the building boom in Shanghai, and the environmental fall-out of rapid Chinese industrialization. He also explains unique aspects of Chinese culture such as the one-child policy, and provides insight into how Chinese view Americans. Wasserstrom reveals that China today shares many traits with other industrialized nations during their periods of development, in particular the United States during its rapid industrialization in the 19th century. Finally, he provides guidance on the ways we can expect China to act in the future vis-a-vis the United States, Russia, India, and its East Asian neighbors.  —Oxford University Press