In analysing the youthful cohort that launched the Tiananmen protest movement, Luo Xu draws our attention to the problematic connection between young people's quest to define individual identity and the decision to commit themselves to political and social action. How, he asks, could a “self-centered ‘me generation’ . . . engage in such an enormous collective action that demanded great devotion to a common idealistic cause?” (p. ix)

Part one, “The journey” treats intellectual formulations from Bei Dao's poem I Don't Believe (1976) to Cui Jian's song I Have Nothing (1986), and summarizes public discourses by and about youth from the Democracy Wall (1978|–79) to the lesser known “Pan Xiao discussion” (1980) and “Shekou Storm” (1988). Xu's narrative implies that the tidal changes of the 13 years from the death of Mao to the Tiananmen uprising created two mini-generations. The first (late 1970s and early 1980s) was preoccupied with unresolved issues of the Cultural Revolution. The second (late 1980s) sought to redefine the relationship between the individual and the public realm.

Much of this book is based on extensive fieldwork in the Meihuashan Nature Reserve (and nearby protected areas) of western Fujian as well as substantial examination of relevant historical records. Its basic purpose is to explore the interaction between people (in this case Hakka) and their surrounding ecological environments as influenced by their culture. The study is set within a long-term historical context stretching in the case of the tiger over approximately 2000 years. The chronicling of the status of the tiger illustrates how culture and ecological conditions are intertwined. While the tiger is a focal point in this book, it is not the only ecological case analysed in considering how and why ecological conditions have altered in this part of China as a result of variations in local cultural, social and economic conditions.

The basic thesis of this book is that culture dominates man-induced ecological change. Hence, little or no progress can be made in understanding ecological change without a thorough study of the way cultural factors influence attitudes to nature. It is especially important to do this at the local level, particularly in China.

There are two reasons why this is a desirable approach. First, in-depth local studies can enhance understanding of the national situation. Local or regional studies can be very valuable even when their results cannot be completely transferred to other parts of the country. Secondly, Coggins argues that local people are often the final arbiters of ecological change and that nature conservation can make little progress without local support and knowledge (for example, p. 283).

With Beijing set to host the 2008 Olympic Games, interest in Chinese sports has increased. Due to the greater successes of Chinese sportswomen in the international arena compared to Chinese sportsmen, interest in women's sports has been particularly keen. There are only a few books in English on Chinese sports, and this is the first book focusing on women's sports, and so it will be useful to journalists and instructors n sport studies seeking basic background information. The author performs the valuable service of pulling together nearly 300 Chinese articles and chapters. She reviews all of the available relevant official statistics, but – as is often true of such statistics – it is not always clear what they mean. For example, there is the tantalizing fact that Sichuan's sports system seems to have more gender parity than Guangdong's and Beijing's. This might provide good insight into the differential effects of the inland and coastal economies on women's social status, but this analysis is never fully carried out. The problem of interpreting the statistics is partly corrected by the 48 semi-structured interviews with sportswomen of varied backgrounds, but the content of the interviews is slightly disappointing, as many of the quoted responses seem to repeat the official picture without offering much in the way of deeper insights.

Anyone wishing to read a compelling and thorough history of Taiwan will do no better than turn in the first instance to Denny Roy's new volume. Its aspiration is simple: to trace the political development of Taiwan from Chinese outpost and contested European colony to 21st-century democracy. Applying a broad-brush approach, Taiwan is a careful synthesis of the published research with few surprises for the specialist, but the book will appeal most to the non-specialist and the student market.

In the opening pages, the author sells short his contribution. This book, he promises, “examines selected events from the last several centuries . . . ,” but “more recent periods are studied in greater depth” (p. 2). In fact, the first 54 pages that analyse the history of Taiwan prior to the more familiar story of the island's return to rule by mainlanders are the most fascinating. In saying this, I do not intend to demean the remaining 200 pages – far from it, for Roy's account of the rise and fall of the Kuomintang is among the finest available. However, authors rarely allow their readers to appreciate the full impact of pre-1945 colonial (European, Chinese or Japanese) administration on Taiwan, though for Roy this is an essential part of the story. Without this historical context, it is impossible to understand fully the foundations of Taiwan's recent regime change.

This is the first volume to introduce Taiwan's industrial growth both in the early years and in the recent period. The existing English and Chinese literature on post-war Taiwan economic history does not go beyond the mid-1980s. Despite studies of individual sectors and cases, a more general introduction about the economic adjustments since the late 1980s from a historical perspective has remained absent. Therefore, this volume to some extent can fill this gap in the literature. The book also uses some new materials about the policy process and the factors that influenced government industrial policy.

However, there are a number of weaknesses in the book. The theme of the volume – the role of government in economic growth – is not new. Readers may be disappointed to find that the book does not provide any new accounts of this issue. The major argument made by the authors is that the industrial success in Taiwan can be attributed to the state's capability to continually adopt new development strategies in response to changing circumstances. Thus, this is another volume on the statist paradigm that holds that a capable state is responsible for industrial success. The account provided by the developmental state thesis, a dominant approach in the statist paradigm, is an institutional approach – that the right institutional arrangements enable the state to formulate and implement its industrial policy to govern the market (see, Robert Wade, Governing the Market (Princeton, 1990)). What is the book's explanation for the government being able to adopt the right development models in response to changing environments? Do the authors agree with the developmental state thesis's argument of a strong state with autonomy and capability, or do they develop a new account? Surprisingly, no answers are provided. But without such an explanation, the argument is based on a shaky foundation.

This old-fashioned political and diplomatic history of the conflict between the Qing court and foreign powers in 1900 makes a significant, if not always convincing, contribution to our understanding of the Boxer troubles. Arguing that previous studies have been flawed by an excessive focus on “the so-called ‘Boxer Rebellion’ ” (p. vii), this book focuses on how the Qing court came to declare war on the foreign powers in June of 1900. Its close analysis of court politics and actions of the foreign diplomatic corps in Beijing makes excellent use of archival records from Belgium, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and the United States plus published documents from Russia and Japan – an impressive research accomplishment that adds an important new dimension to our understanding this critical moment in modern Chinese history.

In four chapters tracing the background to the Boxer incident, Xiang argues that the death of Prince Gong in 1898 deprived the Qing court of a critical balancing figure. When southern reformers overplayed their hand in the 1898 reforms, the Empress Dowager responded in a coup that brought an incompetent group of ultra-conservative Manchu princelings to power. At the same time, a new kind of imperialism representing an “unholy alliance” of nationalist elites, commercial interests and Christian missionaries threatened China with the scramble for concessions. Xiang is particularly effective in describing the catch-up imperialism of Germany, spurred by the erratic Catholic bishop Anzer, and the “theatrical performance” of the Italians, whose rebuff by the Qing court emboldened the conservative princes.

In their introduction to this excellent collection of nine essays, most of which were presented at the 1998 Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, historians Rebecca Karl and Peter Zarrow write convincingly that the “1898 period” in particular and the late Qing in general mark the moment when “Chinese experiences of modernity” (p. 10) began. Recognizing that many of the elements we associate with the May Fourth paradigm first appeared in the under-studied late-Qing period, the editors decry how the late Qing “continues to be treated in an isolated fashion and is seldom drawn into the main currents of ‘Chinese modernity,’ which are seen as more properly placed in the later May Fourth period” (p. 7). The reason to study 1898 now is that we can see and compare China's confrontations with two global capitalisms (late 19th and late 20th centuries). We don't need a “functionalist exhumation of 1898;” we need an approach that helps us understand the “local effects of globalizing trajectories” (p. 7). In sum: “[We need to] rethink 1898 not as an event per se but, more important, as a vital conjunctural historical moment, as an extended moment during and through which Chinese intellectuals and society consciously confronted and began to reformulate the Chinese historical problematic” (p. 7).

The eight essays in this volume represent the research of a new generation of scholars examining historical change in 20th-century modern China, namely Kuomintang party-state development between 1925 and 1970. According to Ernest P. Young in the introduction, these essays describe the “cultural, ideational, and symbolic dimensions” of change in the KMT party-state activities and the response by elites and ordinary people.

If we define, as does Nobel prize-winner Douglass C. North, “institutional change” as the beliefs, ideas, rules, laws, norms, and so on that influence the motivation, choices, and actions of individuals and organizations (private and public) in society, we then say the book under review is about institutional reform and its protagonists and opponents.

Creating a new society requires at least some degree of institutional change. Those holding power resist change, clinging to old institutions. The ensuing struggle can be ferocious, with many possible outcomes. When the KMT began promoting institutional reform in 1925, it encountered great resistance, and after 1934 the resistance had not only stalled reforms, it had stirred up great social disharmony.

This collection of ten short stories from the 1990s, translated and annotated by Fran Martin, highlights the importance of the topic “queer” in a non-Western context. Not only is the excellent quality of the translation worthy of mention; the familiarity of the author with queer theory, Taiwanese social history and Chinese literature in general is also outstanding.

In her detailed introduction, Fran Martin illustrates vividly the relevance of tongzhi-literature (tongzhi wenxue is the expression currently used to describe the same-sex discourse in the Taiwanese world) within the broader transformation of Taiwanese society in general and “in the public discourse on sexualities” in particular (p. 2). She attributes the development of tongzhi-literature and the more recent sub-genre of ku'er-literature (ku'er wenxue or “queer literature”) to the rise of postmodernism (houxiandai zhuyi) in post martial-law Taiwan (p. 4–5).

This books offers an appreciation of the life and work of Father Mon Van Genechten, a Belgian artist-priest who was a missionary in China from 1930 to 1946. It presents Father Van Genechten as an open-hearted and creative man of faith, and also makes the rather dramatic claim that Van Genechten, whose art combined Chinese styles with Christian iconography, should be seen as a Chinese artist.

The book contains two essays: one by De Ridder, on the art-historical context of Van Genechten's work; and the other by Swerts, giving fuller biographical detail. It also includes a brief memoir of Van Genechten by a former student; reproductions of his paintings, woodcuts and photographs; a list of his exhibitions; and a catalog of his known works. This catalogue is, unfortunately, less useful than it might be as it gives neither the current location of a work nor where it is reproduced.

Van Genechten is no neglected genius, but he is potentially interesting to students of Christian missionary work in China, of the modern development of Christian art, and also to students of modern Chinese art. His career – which encompassed decorating churches in Inner Mongolia, teaching at the Catholic University of Peking, and being prisoner of war in Shandong – offers a fresh perspective on East–West artistic interchange. But while the book introduces a worthwhile subject, it falls short in analysis and historical contextualization.

Following his earlier publication of three volumes of China through Western Eyes (1991–96), Roberts now concentrates on the Western perception of Chinese food and eating behaviour. In the first half of the present book, Roberts quotes travellers' tales from Marco Polo and other adventurers, personal journals of European missionaries in the 16th and 17th centuries, reports of English envoys such as Lord Macartney, merchants of the 19th century, and journalists' accounts from the Second World War to the Cultural Revolution. Part one, “West to East” starts with a succinctly written introduction and a chapter that draws from anthropological works on Chinese diet, food beliefs, and table manners. Roberts then discusses Western perceptions (more often imaginations) of Chinese food, which transformed from curiosity to aversion, rejection, and eventual popular acceptance.