Joseph W. Esherick is a Professor Emeritus of the University of California, San Diego. He received a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on the intersection of social and political history of modern China. His major publications include Reform and Revolution in China: the 1911 Revolution in Hunan and Hubei (University of California Press, 1976), The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (University of California Press, 1988), and Ancestral Leaves: A Family Journey Through Chinese History (University of California Press, 2011). A volume on the fall of the Qing, China: How the Empire Fell, co-edited with George Wei, is forthcoming in 2014 from Routledge.

Last Updated: August 21, 2017

Conversation

08.21.17

Should Publications Compromise to Remain in China?

Margaret Lewis, Andrew J. Nathan & more
The prestigious “China Quarterly will continue to publish articles that make it through our rigorous double-blind peer review regardless of topic or sensitivity,” wrote editor Tim Pringle on Monday after days of intense criticism of the brief-lived...

Viewpoint

10.14.14

On Dealing with Chinese Censors

Joseph W. Esherick
It was a hot afternoon in June in the East China city of Jinan. I was returning to my hotel after an afternoon coffee, thinking of the conference I had come to attend and trying to escape the heat on the shady side of the street. My cell phone rang...

Conversation

09.05.13

To Reform or Not Reform?—Echoes of the Late Qing Dynasty

Orville Schell, John Delury & more
Orville Schell:It is true that China is no longer beset by threats of foreign incursion nor is it a laggard in the world of economic development and trade. But being there and being steeped in an atmosphere of seemingly endless political and...