Edwin Pak-Wah Leung – författare

Through the individual characteristics of China's political leaders, a nation-building process began. Chinese leaders fell into two categories of reformers: conservative and liberal. Conservative reformers saw a corruption of the moral order of society that needed to be eliminated in order to restore the country's moral integrity, while liberal reformers attempted to embrace the flaws and lead China toward Socialism. One hundred Chinese leaders—from the Opium War to 2001—are profiled in this comprehensive biographical dictionary.This book provides the most up-to-date coverage of modern Chinese political leadership during the Imperial, Republican, and Communist periods. Political leaders throughout each period had a common desire for reform within the country while maintaining China's political and cultural legacy. Leung invokes the uniqueness of those leaders in their struggle for personal gain and national improvement as they fought to preserve traditional values. Written by 30 international scholars and experts in the field using both Western and Chinese sources, this is the most authoritative dictionary on the subject.

China today remains a divided country, as a result of the Civil War between the Chinese Nationalists and Communists. The Chinese Civil War, has been regarded by many as an important subject in the study of modern Chinese history, as this protracted struggle ultimately led to the Communist victory on the Mainland and the Nationalist government's retreat to the island of Taiwan in 1949. Considered an extremely important turning point in modern Chinese history, the Civil War is also of great international significance. The A to Z of the Chinese Civil War is the first book of its kind written in English.

The Chinese Civil War, which lasted several years or several decades, depending on how you define it, was one of the most momentous wars of the 20th century for it determined the fate of the world’s most populous country, and was bitterly fought with millions of combatants involved and hundreds of millions of civilians affected. More to the point, it was won by the Chinese Communist Party under Mao Zedong, who imposed Communist rule, while the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan. It also heated up the Cold War for quite some time, as the Communists were supported by the Soviet Union and the Nationalists by the United States.This second edition of the Historical Dictionary of the Chinese Civil War studies the longer, broader war and its chronology carefully tracks the major events. The introduction then provides a broad overview, describing the contending forces, and showing how the Communists come out on top. The details, and these are crucial, are laid out in over 200 cross-referenced dictionary entries dealing with the opposing forces and parties, the major campaigns and battles, the Long March, and of course the leadership on both sides. This book, one of few such in English, provides a very solid basis for study, but that can be accomplished more effectively by consulting the titles listed in an extensive bibliography.