Joseph W. Esherick is a Professor Emeritus of the University of California, San Diego. He received a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on the intersection of social and political history of modern China. His major publications include Reform and Revolution in China: the 1911 Revolution in Hunan and Hubei (University of California Press, 1976), The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (University of California Press, 1988), and Ancestral Leaves: A Family Journey Through Chinese History (University of California Press, 2011). A volume on the fall of the Qing, China: How the Empire Fell, co-edited with George Wei, is forthcoming in 2014 from Routledge.
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Last Updated: August 21, 2017
Conversation
08.21.17![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/cambridge-sm.jpg?itok=MfxjNy34)
Should Publications Compromise to Remain in China?
The prestigious “China Quarterly will continue to publish articles that make it through our rigorous double-blind peer review regardless of topic or sensitivity,” wrote editor Tim Pringle on Monday after days of intense criticism of the brief-lived...
Viewpoint
10.14.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/162909955_0.jpg?itok=7mG7QQaK)
On Dealing with Chinese Censors
It was a hot afternoon in June in the East China city of Jinan. I was returning to my hotel after an afternoon coffee, thinking of the conference I had come to attend and trying to escape the heat on the shady side of the street. My cell phone rang...
Conversation
09.05.13![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/2643779.jpg?itok=1Tv_OxhS)
To Reform or Not Reform?—Echoes of the Late Qing Dynasty
Orville Schell:It is true that China is no longer beset by threats of foreign incursion nor is it a laggard in the world of economic development and trade. But being there and being steeped in an atmosphere of seemingly endless political and...