The Search for Modern China is a 1990 non-fiction book by Jonathan D. Spence, published by Century Hutchinson and W. W. Norton & Company.
[2] Spence stated that he chose 1600 as the starting point so he could "get a full sense of how China's current problems have arisen, and of what resources [...] the Chinese can call upon to solve them.
"[3] Theresa Munford in Far Eastern Economic Review, described it as "more of a textbook" than The Gate of Heavenly Peace, which she described as lighter reading.
Munford stated the items of photography "are refreshingly different from the ones that are normally reproduced in Chinese history books", "especially the black and white" ones.
[7] Arif Dirlik described the book's writing style as an "easy fluency that makes it accessible to the nonspecialist reader.