Analysis

Chang’s treatment of the main Asian religions is a distinctively Christian one. In his discussions of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Zen, Hinduism, and Islam, he includes two chapters on each, one an understanding of the religion from a Christian perspective, and the second a Christian critique of that religion.

At each step, Cooper seeks to fulfill the promise of the title, showing how a case can be made either for Taiwan as a nation-state or as a province of China. Given the incendiary nature of this subject, he has achieved remarkable success in maintaining a balanced and neutral approach.

The twenty chapters in this collection of essays fall into four sections, entitled: “Christianity and the Dynamics of Qing Society”; “Christianity and Ethnicity”; “Christianity and Chinese Women”; and “The Rise of an Indigenous Chinese Christianity.”

David Aikman has given us perhaps the most controversial introduction to the explosive increase and growing influence of Christianity in China. According to Aikman, we are talking not just about an incredible increase in the number of Chinese Christians in the past fifty years (from one or two million to more than 70 million), but what might become a fundamental shift in world power alignments.

In this fast-paced volume, China history expert Jonathan Spence studies the lives of sixteen Western advisors of various sorts who went to China to make a difference in that great nation.