Lawrence R. Sullivan

Updated annually, The World Today Series: East & Southeast Asia 2026–2027 provides historical background on East & Southeast Asia to help readers gain a thorough understanding of contemporary developments in this region. Broad introductory chapters are followed by sections on each country in the region. The combination of factual accuracy and up-to-date detail make this an outstanding resource for researchers, practitioners in international development, media professionals, government officials, potential investors, and students to understand the immediate background of contemporary developments.

Major new developments have occurred in the realm of science and technology in the People’s Republic of China especially in artificial intelligence, green technology, quantum computers. Historical Dictionary of Science and Technology in Modern China, Second Edition contains 30 new entries, an updated bibliography, extensive updates to the chronology to cover the many events that occurred since the last edition. Giving special attention to the individual scientists and entrepreneurs in the West and China responsible for major developments and advances of AI technology along with developments in ancillary fields such as science fiction and films that influence elite and popular opinion on the frequently opaque world of AI. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, cross-referenced dictionary entries, a glossary, appendix and an extensive bibliography.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is described as the basis of a “fourth industrial revolution” with profound effects to science, industry, and various aspects of society. Rooted in philosophical and technological developments dating back to ancient times in both the West and China, AI has emerged as a powerful force transforming basic relations between humankind and machines. Historical Dictionary of Artificial Intelligence in China gives special attention to the individual scientists and entrepreneurs in the West and China responsible for major developments and advances of AI technology along with developments in ancillary fields such as science fiction and films that influence elite and popular opinion on the frequently opaque world of AI. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, cross-referenced dictionary entries, a glossary, appendix and an extensive bibliography.

The World Today Series: Africa 2025–2026 is an annually updated presentation of Africa. It provides historical background on Africa to help readers gain a thorough understanding of contemporary developments in this region. Broad introductory chapters are followed by sections on each country in the region. The combination of factual accuracy and up-to-date detail make this an outstanding resource for researchers, practitioners in international development, media professionals, government officials, potential investors, and students to understand the immediate background of contemporary developments.

The World Today Series: Africa provides students with vital information on all countries on the African continent through a thorough and expert overview of political and economic histories, current events, and emerging trends. Each country is examined through the following sections: Basic Facts; Land and People; The Past: Political and Economic History; The Present: Contemporary Issues; and The Future. In addition to country chapters, the book features extended essays on Africa’s Historical Background and the Colonial Period. The combination of factual accuracy and up-to-date detail along with its informed projections make this an outstanding resource for researchers, practitioners in international development, media professionals, government officials, potential investors and students. The content is thorough yet perfect for a one-semester introductory course or general library reference. Available in both print and e-book formats and priced low to fit student and library budgets.

Following decades of ignoring the environment, China has become a global leader in air and water purification, solid waste management, and wastewater treatment with dramatic growth especially in solar and wind power while major outstanding problems include continued reliance on coal and other fossil fuels especially in power plants and heavy industry. Concise Encyclopedia of Green Technology in China provides a basic understanding of green technology in the environmental and economic policies of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Green technology is defined as any technology used to mitigate or reverse the deleterious effects of human activity on the natural environment, green technology involves the application of multiple environmental sciences including green chemistry, material sciences, and hydrology along with utilization of renewable energy sources such as geothermal, solar, tidal and wave, and wind power. Innovative technologies developed in China include mass production of electric vehicles (EVs), development of photovoltaics along with electronic devices for remote sensing, monitoring, and utilization of enhanced computer power for the analysis of big data.

Covering the years 1921 to 2021, this Dictionary reviews the major events, leaders, ideologies, and policies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Topics range from the accomplishments of the CCP, most notably, the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 and economic growth and prosperity beginning in 1978-79 to the major disasters of the Great Leap Forward (1958-60) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) under the leadership of Chairman Mao Zedong (1943-76). Historical Dictionary of the Chinese Communist Party, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 400 cross-referenced entries on key people, places, and institutions. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Chinese Communist Party.

Covering wide-ranging topics including the arts and entertainment along with customs and traditions from the ancient imperial and modern eras, the Historical Dictionary of Chinese Culture provides more than 300 separate entries along with a comprehensive Chronology, Glossary of Chinese cultural terms, and extensive Bibliography of Western and Chinese language sources. Entries of decorative and fine arts include ceramics and porcelains, handicrafts, jade and seal carving, jewelry, and painting with literary subjects including fiction and non-fiction and especially poetry. Also covered are major customary practices from childbirth and childrearing to marriage and weddings to funerals and burial practices along with critical areas of education and major entertainment venues of cinema and film, classical puppetry, and theater, ancient and modern. Unsavory aspects of the culture are also examined, including crime, foot-binding, pornography, and prostitution, and the government policies aimed at their eradication along with major events affecting the trajectory of Chinese cultural development, especially the New Culture-May Fourth Movement (1917-1921) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Throughout the text, Chinese language translations of key terms are presented in italics and parenthesis along with biographies of figures central to the creation of China’s magnificent cultural heritage.

The largest emitter of green-house gases since 2007 and top polluter of the increasingly stressed Pacific Ocean, the People’s Republic of China is both a major contributor to environmental degradation and a leading contender to mitigate and stabilize global environmental conditions. Reviewing the history of the PRC from the periods of central economic planning (1953-1978) followed by the single-minded pursuit of economic growth and mass consumption beginning in 1978-1979 to the adoption of a more balanced approach stressing environmental protection and restoration beginning in the 1990s, Historical Dictionary of the Chinese Environment documents both the enormous damage to the country’s natural environment and the dramatic attempts by the Chinese government and environmental non-government organizations (ENGOs) at environmental amelioration and restoration. Historical Dictionary of the Chinese Environment contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 200 cross-referenced entries on environmental degradation including air and water pollution, deforestation, desertification, and resource depletion while efforts at amelioration and restoration include river and waterway clean-ups, reforestation and desert control, restoration of fisheries, creation of national nature reserves, along with energy conservation and development of renewables such as solar and wind power. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Chinese Environment.

In an act of totally unnecessary and wanton destruction, British forces in China during the Second Opium War (1856-1860) looted and destroyed much of the Old Imperial Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan) including three imperial gardens and hundreds of halls, pavilions, and temples stock full of ancient artwork, antiquities, and literary works. More than a hundred years later, President Xi Jinping (2013- ) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) proclaimed the “rejuvenation” of the Chinese nation with the economic and especially military power to prevent any such recurrence of “national humiliation.” Though not yet a superpower equal in global stature to the United States, the PRC is undoubtedly poised to become the equal if not the superior power in the Asia-Pacific region expanding its territorial claims in the South China Sea and asserting undisputed economic dominance. With government, business, and academic leaders debating how regional and global powers should respond to a rising China. Historical Dictionary of Chinese Foreign Affairs contains a chronology, an introduction, a glossary, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 300 cross-referenced entries on major events, national institutions, foreign nations, and personages impacting Chinese foreign affairs along with the many institutions of the post-World War II international order that the PRC has engaged especially since the 1970s. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Chinese foreign affairs.

The Historical Dictionary of the Chinese Economy covers the world’s second largest macro economy. Extensive attention throughout the volume is given to the historical development of the Chinese economy since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. Included is a review of developments during the period of central economic planning adopted from the Soviet Union (1953-1978) and in-depth information and analysis on the various policies and fundamental changes brought about in China by the inauguration of economic reforms from 1978-1979 through 2016. This book contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 400 cross-referenced entries on critical sectors of the economy including automobiles, banking and finance, national currency, economic regulation, trade and investment, and important industries such as agriculture, computers and electronics, iron and steel, real estate, and shipping.. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about China’s economy.

When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) assumed power in October 1949 China was one of the poorest nations in the world and so weak it had been conquered in the late 1930s and early 1940s by its neighbor Japan, a country one-10th its size. More than five decades later, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is an emerging economic, political, and major military power with the world’s fastest growing economy and largest population (1.35 billion in 2015). A member of the United Nations Security Council since the early 1970s and a nuclear power, China wields enormous influence in the world community while at home what was once a nation of largely poverty-stricken peasants and urban areas with little-to-no industry has been transformed into an increasingly urbanized society with a growing middle class and an industrial and service sector that leads the world in such industries as steel and textiles while becoming a major player in computers and telecommunications. All the while the country has remained under the tight political control of a one-party system dominated by the Chinese Communist Party that despite periods of intense political conflict and turmoil governs China with a membership in 2014 of 88 million people—the largest single organization on earth. This third edition of Historical Dictionary of the People's Republic of China contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about China.

The Historical Dictionary of Science and Technology in Modern China provides the most up-to-date information on science and technology in China from the late nineteenth century to the present. Special attention is given to the historical factors, scientists, and historical figures behind each scientific development. In particular, this book pays attention to the scientists who were persecuted to death or tortured during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), and whose scientific research was therefore tragically cut short. The historical dictionary provides information on science and technology in China from the late nineteenth century to the present including: ·a chronology; ·introduction; ·extensive bibliography; ·over 700 cross-referenced dictionary entries on major scientific and technological fields and sub-fields; ·entries on western scholars and educators who also impacted scientific achievements in China. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the science and technology in China.

When the Reverend Halvor Ronning, his sister Thea, and fellow missionary Hannah Rorem set out in 1891 to found a Lutheran mission and school in the interior of China, they could not have foreseen the ways in which that decision would ripple across generations of the Ronning family. Halvor and Hannah would marry, and their son Chester, born in Hubei Province in 1894, would spend over half his life in China as a student, teacher, and a Canadian diplomat. Chester's daughter, Audrey, studied at Nanking University during the Chinese Civil War and later spent decades reporting on the People's Republic of China for the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and many other publications. ""During the last century,"" Audrey Topping notes, ""a member of our family was there for almost every event of importance."" China Mission presents a personal history of her family's ties to their adopted home and the momentous events that radically changed one of the most powerful countries in the world. The Ronnings found Imperial China at the end of the nineteenth century to be a nation on the cusp of change, and they were swept up as both observers and participants in these dramatic events. During their years as missionaries, the Ronnings witnessed the Boxer Uprising in 1898, the subsequent Palace Coup and the Siege of Peking, the death of the last emperor, and the collapse of China's dynasty system. They also endured personal challenges -- famine, births, deaths, and the almost constant threat of attack -- that were countered with songs, celebrations, friendship, and a deep appreciation for the culture of which they had become a part. Later, Chester Ronning would return to China, as would his daughter Audrey, bringing their family's story to the end of the twentieth century. This extraordinary account, compiled from the diaries, letters, and photographs of three generations, offers modern readers a rare and remarkable look at a world long gone.

The Chinese Communist Party, as the political leader of the world's largest country and second largest economy, plays an undeniably important role in global politics. Founded in a boarding school in Shanghai in 1921, the Chinese Communist Party is one of the oldest ruling parties in the world since its takeover of mainland China in 1949 under the leadership of Chairman Mao Zedong. Since its inception, the party has survived a civil war with the Kuomintang (1946-1949); the political, cultural, and humanitarian catastrophe of the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960), where upwards of 30 million Chinese civilians died; and the death of the Chinese Communist Party's dominant leader, Mao Zedong, in 1976. In recent years, intellectuals and party members have been given increasing leeway to express their opinions, and Lawrence R. Sullivan takes advantage of this new research to provide a comprehensive history of one of the world's most fascinating political movements. The Historical Dictionary of the Chinese Communist Party contains a chronology, an introductory essay, an appendix, an extensive bibliography, and more than 400 cross-reference dictionary entries on key people, places, and institutions. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Chinese Communist Party.