GDP Forecast of Jinan and Hefei based on LSTM and the Transformation Enlightenment of Old Industrial City Jinan

Jinan City, Shandong Province, is one of the important cities in modern industrial production and development in China. It plays an important role in the industrial history of modern China and has a very rich industrial cultural heritage. Hefei City, Anhui Province, from a small city, through reform and innovation, has become a rising star of Chinese cities, with per capita GDP approaching Jinan. In this paper, the single variable time series prediction model based on LSTM is used to fit the Area GDP of Jinan and Hefei in 31 years from 1990 to 2020, and the Area GDP data of the two cities in the next three years is predicted. Finally, combined with the development of foreign old industrial cities, this paper puts forward some suggestions for the future development of Jinan.

Shadowlands of Objectivism and Comprehensiveness

The article aims at presenting an overview of the main concepts in the philosophical thought of Zhang Shenfu, one of the leading intellectuals from Republican China (1912–1949). The study sets out from a brief summary of Zhang’s intellectual achievements, and proceeds by offering a more concise picture of the main influences, developmental stages and finally also central ideas of Zhang’s thought. By offering a general view on the concrete confluences and dissonances between the keystones of Zhang’s philosophy on one side, and its alleged sources in Western and Chinese philosophy on the other, this study further aims at presenting a new insight into the unique characteristics of Zhang’s philosophy. At the same time, by setting the discussion on Zhang’s philosophy in a broader context of contemporary intellectual discourse, the article also endeavours to establish a tentative basis for the future critical analyses and potential revaluations of Zhang Shenfu’s role in intellectual history of modern China.

Chinese Studies, Scholars, and the Post-Pandemic Turn

The racialisation and weaponisation of Covid-19 has raised many significant concerns and troubling issues that invite urgent action from researchers. Informed by socio-political history of modern China, women’s/gender studies, and the sociology and social anthropology of Islam, the author considers the intellectual, academic, and personal responsibility of Chinese studies scholars during the pandemic.

Sir Robert Hart and the Writing of Modern Chinese History

This article examines the conflicts in writing the imperial modern history of China among various stakeholders, particularly Chinese and American historians, and their dealing with a set of personal documents of Sir Robert Hart, Inspector-General of the Chinese Maritime Customs Services (CMCS) during the Qing period. This set of documents is called “Hart Industry” and contains Hart's personal papers and seventy-seven volumes of diaries, among others. Revealing the imperial Inspector-General's view on “westernization” in modern China, the Hart Industry played a key role in the development of the history of modern China throughout the twentieth century. From around 1957 until 1995, the diaries became a source of a highly politicized academic debate between Chinese Communist historians of the People's Republic of China and western historians of the Hart Industry. By providing a “study of studies” on the historiography of the colonial modern history of China, this article argues that the Hart diaries were critical to historians’ understanding of their own academic discourse.

Mu Dan’s Poetry as a History of Modern China

An expeditionary force soldier. A jungle war survivor. A patriot who traded opportunities in the United States for a tedious journey home to the newly founded People’s Republic of China. A “counterrevolutionary.” A forced laborer who spent the last third of his life translating English and Russian literature.—A poet. Careful study of Mu Dan’s (1918–1977) poetry enables us to explore a string of moments in modern China’s transformation. Twenty-two poems by Mu Dan have been selected as a history of China from the climax of the New Culture Movement (1919) through the end of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1976). Fusing linguistic audacity, philosophical acumen, and historical vision, they weave a thread of themes illuminating the tortured path of a nation and an individual. Further, they span a spectrum of sentiments ranging from those of ordinary people to those of extraordinary intellectuals. To reveal the turning points in modern China’s history, the twenty-two poems have been contextualized along two axes. A vertical axis, the thread of themes, consists of eleven motifs developed and revisited by Mu Dan from 1940 through 1976; they are: Youth, War, Disillusion, Maturity, Sacrifice, Exposure, Enlightenment, Conversion, Awakening, Anguish, and Reflection. A horizontal axis, the spectrum of sentiments, exhibits Mu Dan’s contradictory attitudes toward modern China’s transformation by identifying him with his countrymen or distancing him from them as a free spirit and cultural critic. This conceptual framework assists in examining the interaction between history and literature. It demonstrates how modern China’s history informs, provokes, and shapes a poet whose life span coincides with it and, at the same time, how poetry can be and is being read as history itself. This reading allows more than new access to the historical events that mold a poet and his poetry. Reading poetry as history uncovers lost sentiments, struggles, observations, and critiques that advance our understanding of modern China.

How the Concept of “Nature” Emerged and Evolved in Modern China

The entrance of “nature” from English to Chinese and the transformation of the word ziran in Chinese had been intertwined together. In the formal process, “nature” was not translated as ziran at first while in the latter process, the western concept and Chinese ideas of nature combined together with multiple, comprehensive meanings in the history of modern China. This means the second process consists some major transformations of ziran as a key concept in modern China. Firstly, it has been a process of materialization for the traditional concept of ziran from ancient China. Secondly, traditional ideas of nature like tian, tianran, ziran, got revived during their association and collaborations with western understandings of nature as a concept of naturalist philosophy. Thirdly, it was also in this process where a humanistic and existential definition of ziran began to emerge, not only as a response to the materialized understanding of ziran, but also created the confrontation between a material occidental civilization and a spiritual oriental civilization. This dualist view not only ignored other thought like Romantism, Humanism and ideas which go against materialism or scientism, but also overlooked materialism and scientism itself in the history of Modern China.