Xia Mingfang is professor of history at Renmin University of China and director of the Center for Ecological History and the Institute of Qing History (IQH). He is also vice chairman of the Disaster History Committee of China Associate for Disaster Prevention. Since becoming a graduate student in 1989, Xia Mingfang's research has been focused on the history of disaster and famine, and exploring the process of interactions between social changes and natural disasters. He contributed to The Sequel to the Chronological Record of Disasters and Famine in Modern China (1993), and The Top Ten Disasters in Modern China (1994) and is the author of Natural Disasters and Rural Society in the Republic of China (2000), and The Bumpy Road: China’s Modernization in Ecological Transformation (2012). He also co-edits the book series Ecology and People, which publishes Chinese translations of scholarly work on environmental history.
RCC Research Project: "Natural Disasters, Environmental Changes, and Rural Market Development in North China since the Ming Dynasty"
Suggested publications:
- The Bumpy Road: China’s Modernization in Ecological Transformation. Beijing: Renmin University Press, 2012.
- Natural Disasters and Rural Society in the Republic of China. Beijing: Zhonghua Publishing House, 2000.
- "Between Democracy and Absolutism: The State and Society in the Transformation of Disaster Relief since the Ming Dynasty." In New History, edited by Xia Mingfang, pp. 213–62. Beijing: Zhonghua Publishing House, 2012.
- "Old Question and New Perspective: the updated Research on Economic History of Jiangnan during the Ming-Qing Period." Tianjin Social Science, no. 5 (2005): 116–23.
- "The Tendency of Dehumanization in the Research on Disaster History of China." Journal of Historical Science, no. 3 (2004): 16–18.
- "Smithian Dynamic, Involution Theory and Ecological Transformation: Chinese Rural Commercialization Before 1949.” In Review on Chinese Society and History, edited by Zhang Guogang, pp. 150–65. Tianjin: Tianjin Ancient Books Press, 2000.