Introduction. History, Culture and Modernity in China

Abstract

The article provides a short introduction to the main topics and aims of this thematic issue on history, culture and modernity in China. It outlines the multi-faceted approaches to a (or more than one) modernity between and beyond Westernisation and Sinicisation as formulated in the twentieth century, be it in Republican China, Taiwan or the People's Republic, and how this is reflected in "Western" historiography on China. For China, (re)articulations of "alternatives" would open up the possibility for more than just one single, homogenising, culturalist-essentialist (and top-down defined) "Chinese dream". Since discussions of modernity are always closely linked to the concerns of the present, shifts in global economy and politics might, in turn, also lead to new conceptions of what a "global modernity" (if such a single entity exists) should mean and how the Chinese case might relate (or contribute) to it.