When Hu Jintao became president of China in 2003, very little was known about this enigmatic man. The son of a man who fell victim to China's tumultuous Cultural Revolution, Jintao began his Communist Party career in some of China's poorest and most remote provinces before getting his first big breaks in Beijing. As president, he has impressed many with his ability to maintain order and stability in China, but he has angered others with his lack of concern for human rights. This in-depth, full-color biography helps unravel the mystery surrounding Jintao by exploring his rise from humble engineering student to powerful leader of the world's most populous country, and discussing what his rule means to the future of China and the world.
Through biographies of China's most colorful and famous personalities, John Wills displays the five-thousand-year sweep of Chinese history from the legendary sage emperors to the tragedy of Tiananmen Square. This unique introduction to Chinese history and culture uses more than twenty exemplary lives, including those of statesmen, philosophers, poets, and rulers, to provide the focus for accounts of key historical trends and periods. What emerges is a provocative rendering of China's moral landscape, featuring characters who have resonated in the historical imagination as examples of villainy, heroism, wisdom, spiritual vision, political guile, and complex combinations of all of these.
In the last quarter-century, the resources of China's pre-socialist past have been rediscovered and combined with current influences to reinvent Chinese culture. This is the first source to digest China's vast cultural output and make it accessible to the English-speaking world. More than 1,000 entries, written by an international team of specialists, explore a diverse range of subjects- from prisons to rock groups and underground Christian churches to TV talk shows- while also offering biographical essays and information on more traditional cultural topics.