An Outline History of China

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This book combines, in one volume, the English editions of An Outline History of China, published in 1982, and An Outline History of China 1919-1949, published in 1993. In the autumn of 1997, the History of China in Chinese containing 22 sections bound in 12 volumes, of which I was chief editor, was completed. Mr. Wu Canfei, an editor at the Foreign Languages Press in Beijing, suggested that the two English edition books, which had been published and distributed for many years, be bound into one volume titled An Outline History of China , and be officially published by FLP after it had revised the translation. Prior to this, they had translated the Chinese editions of the two books into English, Japanese, Spanish, German, French and other languages. This was something I had wanted to do for many years. When I drew up the plan for compiling An Outline History of China, I considered writing about the period from 1919 to 1949 in the book, but failed to do so due to factual difficulties. The idea was realized in late 1987, and the second volume of the book came into being. It covers Chinese history from 1919 to 1949, and is now Chapter 11 in this revised edition of An Outline History of China. Though An Outline History of China, which now includes the second volume, cannot be regarded as a complete Chinese history, readers can gain an overall understanding of Chinese history more conveniently through this single-volume edition.