TheRiseandFallofImperialChina

How did social networks affect the Chinese empire? China was a global superpower for almost two thousand years, but has fallen behind in recent centuries and is now rising again. This book, The Rise and Fall of Imperial China, examines the factors that led to China’s decline from the 7th to the 20th century. Author Yuhua Wang shows how short-lived emperors often ruled strong states, while long-lasting emperors governed weak ones. He argues that Chinese rulers faced a fundamental trade-off, known as the sovereign’s dilemma: a coherent elite that could strengthen the state could also overthrow the ruler. Strengthening state capacity and keeping rulers in power for longer required different social networks in which central elites were embedded. Wang examines how these social networks shaped the Chinese state and vice versa, and how the ruler’s pursuit of power by fragmenting the elites became the final culprit for China’s fall. Through more than a thousand years of Chinese history, The Rise and Fall of Imperial China highlights the role of elite social relations in influencing the trajectories of state development.

作者简介

YuhuaWangistheFrederickS.DanzigerAssociateProfessorintheDepartmentofGovernmentatHarvardUniversity.HeistheauthorofTyingtheAutocrat’sHands:TheRiseoftheRuleofLawinChina.