Reading China: Past and Present

This is an advanced reading course offered in modern Chinese language to explore China’s modern history and contemporary society through intensive and extensive readings. The course aims to develop and enhance students' critical thinking through a series of thinking processes, including contextualising, interpreting, evaluating, and analysing the reading materials. It selects ten crucial themes including the New Culture Movement, gender, political campaigns, population policies, and rural issues. Students will engage with a wide range of reading materials including autobiography, novels, and journal articles to understand China from multiple perspectives. The course is organised in a chronological way with the first half of the course on Republican period (1912-1949) and the second on contemporary Chinese society (1949-present). This course helps students to develop and form their own arguments for research related to China. It is suitable for heritage learners or students who have an advanced level of proficiency in spoken and written Chinese (completion of Modern Chinese B CHIN3025).