Reconstruction in China.: A Record of Progress and Achievement in Facts and Figures.

Shanghai: China United Press,, 1935. First edition in English, first impression, of this comprehensive propagandistic account of the reconstruction of China since the foundation of the Republic of China in January 1912. The work was simultaneously published in French and German. Tang (1901-1970) was a journalist and politician who, in 1929, was appointed chief of the Communications Office to Europe for the Republic. Educated in England and Vienna, Tang was appointed as an adviser to the Foreign Ministry in 1933 and was influential in creating an international image of life in China, both through the China Today Series, begun in 1933, of which this is Volume III, and his English Encyclopedia of Modern China. In March 1940, at the establishment of Wang Jingwei's pro-Japanese collaborationist government in Nanjing, Tang assumed formal office in the regime as director of the International Publicity Bureau, until its collapse in 1945. The work provides a fascinating insight into how the newly established Republic wished to present itself internationally. Octavo. Original grey cloth, spine lettered in black, bottom edge untrimmed. With the pictorial dust jacket. Housed in a dark blue cloth flat-back box by the Chelsea Bindery. With 70 photographic plates, many of which portraits of key Republic figures. Jacket repaired with Japanese tissue. Light browning to contents and a little shaken. A good copy.