Download or read book Quest for Power written by Stephen R. Halsey and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-12 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China’s late-imperial history has been framed as a long coda of decline, played out during the Qing dynasty. Reappraising this narrative, Stephen Halsey traces the origins of China’s current great-power status to this so-called decadent era, when threats of war with European and Japanese empirestriggered innovative state-building and statecraft.