JINGI XUE: THE HISTORY OF THE INTRODUCTION OF WESTERN ECONOMIC IDEAS INTO CHINA, 1850-1950

Based on solid research, Jingji Xue presents how Economics, as a thought as well as an intellectual discipline, had been introduced to China. It identifies the Chinese who studied Economics in the West and evaluates their roles in teaching, research, and publication in China. Particularly, it describes and examines the activities of Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, Sun Yat-sen, and Yan Fu et al. in transmitting and interpreting Western Economics. The evolution of Economics programme in leading universities in China is also discussed.

Paul B. Trescott has taught Economics in the U.S. and in Thailand, China, and Poland. He has taught at Southern Illinois University since 1976. He has written textbooks in microeconomics and in money and banking, a history of banking in the U.S., and a study of Thailand's monetary system.

Professor Trescort's study of Western and Chinese economists prior to 1949 is a remarkable piece of archival research. It is the definitive work on the graduate training of Chinese economists prior to 1949. Trescort presents both a quantitative record of this experience together with an intellectual history of the research and teaching of many of the most prominent of those trained. While some of these economists migrated abroad after 1949, many stayed to work either with universities and governments in Taiwan or Hong Kong, while others, after their rehabilitation following the destructive influence of the Cultural Revolution, played important roles in the rchui kling of modern economic teaching and research in China itself. ~~~ Dwight H. Perkins, Harvard University

This book makes me feel grateful and ashamed, for obvious reasons. The Economics milieu in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong should be grateful to Trescott for telling us such an interesting story about how Western Economics was introduced into China. Ashamed, simply because we need an American scholar to tell us our own story in English.

For Western readers, what is an appropriate perspective to read this book? I think this book can be considered as an important link in the "internationalization of Economics", zealously advocated by A. W. Coats in the early 1980s. The Chinese case in the pre-1950 period, as Trescott laboriously worked out, is a significant addition to this subject. ~~~ Cheng-chung Lai, National Tsing Hua University