Posted By: Len Caric
Posted On: January 12, 2020
China in Transition: Economic Development, Migration, and Education is a wonderful resource from Stanford University that covers the unprecedented growth of Modern China. The book comes with a CD containing all of the charts graphs and readings within the unit.
The unit takes a traditional timeline view of the recent changes in China's economy, migration patterns, and urban growth. Ideally, the information would best suit a high school level economics or world history class. This unit would fit as study in Chinese economics in an economics class. A world history class would struggle to use the unit as a whole, but a wise teacher would use several of the resources within its pages to supplement a lesson. It is simply too focused to fit any curriculum today outside of an Asian Studies class in high school. Do not let that deter you though! The information found in its pages are valuable and are easily applied to other lessons outside of the format given within the book/CD.
Additionally, there is only one other review written here, which was in 2013, only one year after the book was published. The 2010's have seen the meteoric rise of the Chinese economy and world influence. This book is simply a snapshot of what had happened until 2012. Like China's rise, the past 10 years have seen exponential growth from China. Again, I urge the reader to use this book to support other material in their lessons. The data and charts found within it provide a great visual for learners as well as some of the questions to develop further understanding.
I would highly recommend this book to educators looking to highlight the growth from China in the past half century, but it is not the only resource an educator should be using as the world and China especially continues to change and grow.