This remarkable book - the first in-depth examination of the civil liability regime for marine oil pollution damage from a law and economics perspective - examines the efficiency and effectiveness of the regime, with particular attention to whether it is in fact designed in the public interest or merely a distribution of risks and costs among interested parties. The question is asked: does the liability system give the potential polluter incentives to take precautionary measures to avoid p...

What must China do to become truly democratic and equitable? This question animates most progressive debates about this potential superpower, and inChina's Twentieth Century the country's leading critic, Wang Hui, turns to the past for an answer. Beginning with the birth of modern politics in the 1911 revolution, Wang tracks the initial flourishing of political life, its blossoming in the radical sixties, and its decline in China's more recent liberalization, to arrive at the cros...

This translation of the introduction to Wang Hui’s Rise of Modern Chinese Thought (2004) makes part of his four-volume masterwork available to English readers for the first time. A leading public intellectual in China, Wang charts the historical currents that have shaped Chinese modernity from the Song Dynasty to the present day.

Challenging both the bureaucratic one-party regime and the Western neoliberal paradigm, China's leading critic shatters the myth of progress and reflects upon the inheritance of a revolutionary past. In this original and wide-ranging study, Wang Hui examines the roots of China's social and political problems, and traces the reforms and struggles that have led to the current state of mass depoliticization.Arguing that China's revolutionary history and its current liberalization are p...

A king lights emergency beacons just to make his favorite concubine laugh. A prince survives an assassination attempt by pretending to die with an arrow in his belt. A reformer builds the most powerful state in China—only to be destroyed by the very laws he created. Ancient Chinese history is full of moments like these, but you rarely hear them told this way.This book brings the turbulent Spring and Autumn and early Warring States periods to life as a series of vivid human dramas. Y...

"Origins of Chinese Civilization: A History of China" by Hui Wang takes you on a journey through China's ancient past, told in a way that feels like you're listening to an elder recounting myths around a campfire. The book starts with Fuxi, the first leader, whose inventions like the Eight Trigrams and fishing nets shaped early Chinese culture. The story moves through key figures like Nüwa, who patched the sky and shaped humanity from clay, and the Yan Emperor, who pioneered agriculture an...

"Apocalypse Awakening" takes you on a heart-pounding journey into a post-apocalyptic world filled with mystery and terror. Sean, our protagonist, suffers from sudden hallucinations that warp his perception of reality. After a four-year self-imposed exile from the world, an invitation to a high school reunion prompts him to venture out of his safe haven.Upon arrival, Sean is horrified to find his classmates transformed into monstrous beings, with only Layla appearing untouched by th...

The Qing dynasty entered the eighteenth century with an awkward problem: the Kangxi Emperor had built a powerful empire, but his many sons were already turning the question of succession into a dangerous political contest.From that struggle emerges the world of Yongzheng and Qianlong—two emperors whose reigns reshaped Qing government, frontier policy, military power, and court politics. Along the way appear some of the dynasty's most memorable figures: Nian Gengyao and Longkodo, th...

A king breaks an alliance for land that never existed.A diplomat survives a brutal flogging because he refuses to bite his own tongue.And a teenage ruler faces five invading armies during his father's funeral.Welcome to the world of ancient China's Warring States — a time when a clever speech could change the fate of kingdoms and a single deception could start a war.In The Spring and Autumn & Warring States Periods: A History of China — Part Two, I bring this tu...

Before the Qing dynasty ruled China, the Manchus were Jurchens living on a dangerous northeastern frontier contested by Ming China, Joseon Korea, and the Mongol world.The Qing Dynasty: A History of China — Part One follows that transformation from the fragmented Jurchen communities of the Ming frontier to the rise of Nurhaci and Hong Taiji, the founding of the Later Jin and Great Qing, the fall of the Ming, and the reigns of the Shunzhi and Kangxi emperors....

The Northern Song dynasty began in 960 after decades of upheaval during China's Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. At the center of its rise stood Zhao Kuangyin, Emperor Taizu of Song—a successful general confronting the problem that had destroyed so many regimes before his own: how do you build a stable dynasty when powerful generals are accustomed to making and unmaking emperors?The Northern Song Dynasty: A History of China — Part One follows the dynasty from Zhao K...

At the height of the Qing Dynasty, the Qianlong Emperor ruled one of the largest and wealthiest empires on earth. Within little more than a century, that confidence would be tested by corruption, rebellion, foreign war, political reform, and a world changing faster than the imperial court could comfortably follow.The Qing Dynasty: A History of China, Part Three follows China from the late Qianlong era through Jiaqing, Daoguang, Xianfeng, Tongzhi, Guangxu, and the final yea...