China in Transition

The 21st Century is said to be the ‘Asian Century’, and the key to understanding this is to understand China. Although most of us know of China’s swift rise from communist to ‘Red Capitalist’ state, western discourse continues to approach China monolithically and from the outside, reflecting western preoccupations and anxieties with great conflicts over power and geopolitics, but giving little thought to how everyday Chinese people think and feel about their rapidly changing worlds. This subject explores how China’s massive social, economic, environmental, and political transformations are being lived from within the world’s most populous nation, centring the Chinese experience and grounding its approach in the spaces and places of a diverse nation. You will gain the ability to speak intelligently on a range of topics integral to explaining China’s rise, position, and future, with a sensitivity to geographical differentiation. This subject also equips you for a range of careers in which a deeper understanding of China today would be an advantage and offers students a foundation for further engagement with the variegated and vitally important geographies of contemporary China.