Kung-chʻüan Hsiao

Bio: Kung-chʻüan Hsiao is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: China & Rural history. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 272 citations.

Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China, Part I

Abstract: I set forth in this paper a partial description and preliminary analysis of rural marketing in China. This neglected topic has significance with ranges far beyond the disciplinary concerns of economics. It interests anthropologists in particular because marketing structures of the kind described here for China appear to be characteristic of the whole class of civilizations known as “peasant” or “traditional agrarian” societies. In complex societies of this important type, marketing structures inevitably shape local social organization and provide one of the crucial modes for integrating myriad peasant communities into the single social system which is the total society. The Chinese case would appear to be strategic for the comparative study of peasant marketing in traditional agrarian societies because the integrative task accomplished there was uniquely large; because the exceptional longevity and stability of Chinese society have allowed the marketing system in many regions to reach full maturity prior to the beginnings of modernization; and because available documentation of Chinese marketing over several centuries provides rich resources for the study of systemic development—of change within tradition.

A Surplus of Men, A Deficit of Peace: Security and Sex Ratios in Asia's Largest States

Abstract: and stability rest in large measure on the internal security of nations. Analysts have long examined factors such as arms transfers and ethnic violence in this regard, but the list now includes variables that were not traditionally viewed as related to national security. Unemployment rates, water tables and river oows, infant mortality, migration patterns, infectious disease epidemiology, and a whole host of other variables that tap into the general stability of a society are now understood to affect security. To understand the long-term security dynamics of a region, one must inquire into what Thomas Homer-Dixon and others have termed the “environmental security” of the nations therein. Our own research is surely located in that aeld of inquiry, yet we contemplate a variable that has been by and large neglected even by scholars of environmental security. One overlooked wellspring of insecurity, we argue, is exaggerated gender inequality. Security scholarship is theoretically and empirically impoverished to the extent that it fails to inquire into the relationship between violence against women and violence within and between societies. We believe that our research demonstrates that the long-term security trajectory of a region is affected by this relationship. A Surplus of Men, A Deacit of Peace

Insiders and Outsiders: The Xiangtan Riot of 1819 and Collective Action in Hunan

Abstract: -Qingshilu (365.6b, 1819) ... the Hunanese being well known to be exceedingly clannish, brought their influence to bear on the politics of the country, and became known as the political factor called the &dquo;Hunan Party.&dquo; The Hunanese, in their own country, are noted for their independence and haughty exclusiveness, not only towards Foreigners, but even to Natives from other provinces; and owing to this attitude, and their successful endeavours to prevent Foreigners entering the province, Hunan earned the name of &dquo;The Closed Province.&dquo;

The Cambridge History of China

Abstract: 1. Introduction: the old order John K. Fairbank 2. Ch'ing Inner Asia c.1800 Joseph Fletcher 3. Dynastic decline and the roots of rebellion Susan Mann Jones and Philip A. Kuhn 4. The Canton trade and the Opium War Frederic Wakeman, Jr 5. The creation of the treaty system John K. Fairbank 6. The Taiping Rebellion Philip A. Kuhn 7. Sino-Russian relations, 1800-62 Joseph Fletcher 8. The heyday of the Ch'ing order in Mongolia, Sinkiang and Tibet Joseph Fletcher 9. The Ch'ing Restoration Kwang-Ching Liu 10. Self-strengthening: the pursuit of Western technology Ting-Yee Kuo and Kwang-Ching Liu 11. Christian missions and their impact to 1900 Paul A. Cohen Bibliographical essays Bibliography Glossary and index.

Political, Social, and Cultural Reproduction via Civil Service Examinations in Late Imperial China

Abstract: Most previous scholarship about the civil service examination system in imperial China has emphasized the degree of social mobility such examinations permitted in a premodern society. In the same vein, historians have evaluated the examination process in late imperial China from the perspective of the modernization process in modern Europe and the United States. They have thereby successfully exposed the failure of the Confucian system to advance the specialization and training in science that are deemed essential for nation-states to progress beyond their premodern institutions and autocratic political traditions. In this article, I caution against such contemporary, ahistorical standards for political, cultural, and social formation. These a priori judgments are often expressed teleologically when tied to the “modernization narrative” that still pervades our historiography of Ming (1368–1644) and Ch'ing (1644–1911) dynasty China.