Since time immemorial China regarded its culture and statecraft superior to other nations, but in the ‘Age of Humiliation’ (1839-1949), it was reduced to a semi-colony. The old empire has now regained its strength, but what drives its domestic and foreign policy?

China calls itself a ‘Socialist’ country, but the appellation of philosopher Tu Weiming is more adequate: A battlefield of Socialism, Liberalism and Confucianism.

The outcome of this struggle will have profound repercussion...

The Asian Library of Leiden University houses the world renowned and extensive Asian collections. This includes the largest collection on Indonesia worldwide and some of the foremost collections on South and Southeast Asia, China, Japan and Korea.

"Voyage of Discovery" contains more than twenty essays of academics, curators and authors on various aspects on their experience with the Leiden collections.

Richly illustrated and showcasing twenty-five treasures from the Asian Library, such as uni...

Leiden University was founded as an institution that would embody a particular set of academic ethics that sought to improve society through the acquisition of knowledge. In this book, author Willem Otterspeer draws on the idea of Leiden as 'a “bastion of liberty”' and proposes that concepts such as 'equilibrium' and 'scale' are key to understanding the university as an institution, ultimately showing how universities are a form of social capital, one of Western society’s answers to the...