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A Chinese Mirror: Moral Reflections on Political Economy and Society . By Henry Rosemont Jr.. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1991. x, 130 pp.

Chinese officials appreciated Japanese expertise but controlled advisers and often maintained a patronizing sense of superiority; students could be cruelly unappreciative of Japanese teachers. How widespread Japanese advisers and teachers were remains uncertain, but the book shows their importance in devising and inaugurating new systems. Reynolds's assertion that Japan's later aggressions have diverted attention from its positive contributions in the decade before 1911 rings true, and recent work on the late-Qing reform policies also points to the roles of Japanese or Chinese trained in Japan. On the intellectual side, Reynolds effectively argues that a sense of cultural affinity (tongwen) fostered cooperation, and provocatively suggests that common reliance on Japan allowed foreign ideas selected by different Chinese officials to converge and adhere. The value of the book to scholars is enhanced by the informative, albeit cumbersome, presentation of both Chinese and Japanese romanizations for all terms and an exemplary glossary-index. If the arguments about Japan's role are generally convincing, the conception of the Xinzheng Revolution is more problematic. Reynolds sets it against two narrow views especially common among Japanese and Chinese historians: the republican founding myth that Sun Yat-sen and other revolutionary party members created the 1911 Revolution and the Marxist interpretation of it as a bourgeois revolution. In opposing these interpretations, however, Reynolds comes close to ignoring much scholarship already undermining these two orthodoxies in studies of such topics as revolution in individual provinces, provincially based reform and constitutionalist movements, state-societal competition, popular uprisings, or nineteenth-century backgrounds. The complexities of revolution at the end of the Qing have been well established. The importance of the Qing state's role in restructuring the Chinese polity is now also deservedly receiving more attention from China historians. Reynolds's interpretation fits into this trend, but doubts arise about the very broad claim that the Japanese-aided, state-directed Xinzheng Revolution was central to Chinese history in this decade—a claim symbolized by the leading part of the book's title, China, 1898-1912. Do, for instance, state policies and administrative regulations amount to so complete an explanation of change in China? Was politics, as opposed to administrative modernization, so unimportant? Definitions of revolution, reform, and conservatism need to be clarified, and the stark distinction between backward tradition and progressive modernity lacks nuance. The concept of a Xinzheng Revolution with its emphasis on the state and modern reform calls attention to certain aspects of this complicated period, and it is too bad that they are not placed in the context of the ongoing reinterpretations of revolution and state-societal relations in China. Despite such reservations, the book may profitably be read by scholars of modern China, not only for its information on Japanese involvement but also because the unconventional mixture of Japan, the Qing state, and modernization in Reynolds's definition of revolution snakes up thinking on this subject whether one agrees or not.