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![]() Interestingly, the Yale historian explains that his book is not about modern China. He says, quite rightly, that “in trying to understand China today we need to know about China in the past.” That is why Spence begins his narrative in the late 16th Century, when China was ruled by its last native dynasty on the eve of the Manchu conquest. Spence in “The Search for Modern China” endeavors to facilitate an understanding of China. ![]() Even Deng Xiaoping has said that one has to go back to the Ming Dynasty, to the time when the 15th-Century explorer Zheng He went on expeditions to the western oceans, to discover a time when China did not practice a closed-door policy. This obsession with secrecy, this passion to prevent foreigners from finding out what China is really like, accounts to some extent for the myths and mystique surrounding China. When an English merchant, James Flint, presented a petition levying charges against the superintendent of customs, the emperor, after verifying the allegations, dismissed the official, sentenced Flint to three years of exile in Macao for having violated protocol, and had the Sichuanese who helped him prepare the Chinese-language petition publicly beheaded. ![]() The Chinese Empire in those days went to great lengths to keep even its language a secret from foreigners. ![]()
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