To Change China

Orville Schell The first book that is worthy of note is Jonathan Spence’s To Change China: Western Advisers in China. It’s the first book he wrote as a young professor. It really is about the discontinuity between China and the West, and efforts by various Westerners – largely Brits but some Americans – to change China from 1620 through 1960, starting with Adam Schall way back in the Ming dynasty, Peter Parker and the missionaries, then Chinese Gordon during the Taiping rebellion and various other people like the Russian Mikhail Borodin. (Source)