The origin of political modernity has long been tied to the Western history of protest and revolution, the currents of which many believe sparked popular dissent worldwide. Reviewing nearly one thousand instances of protest in China from the eighteenth to the early-nineteenth centuries, Ho-fung Hung charts an evolution of Chinese dissent that stands apart from Western trends. Hung samples from mid-Qing petitions and humble plaints to the emperor. He revisits rallies, riots, market strikes, and other forms of contention rarely considered in previous studies. Drawing on new world history, which accommodates parallels and divergences between political-economic and cultural developments East and West, Hung shows how the centralization of political power and an expanding market, coupled with a persistent Confucianist orthodoxy, shaped protesters' strategies and appeals in Qing China. This unique form of mid-Qing protest combined a quest for justice and autonomy with a filial-loyal respect for the imperial center, and Hung's careful research ties this distinct characteristic to popular protest in China today. As Hung makes clear, the nature of these protests prove late imperial China was anything but a stagnant and tranquil empire before the West cracked it open. In fact, the origins of modern popular politics in China predate the 1911 Revolution. Hung's work ultimately establishes a framework others can use to compare popular protest among different cultural fabrics. His book fundamentally recasts the evolution of such acts worldwide.

Ho-fung Hung is an associate professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University, and he researches and publishes on global political economy, contentious politics, nationalism, and social theory. His current projects include one that examines the changing dynamics of global capitalism in the context of the rise of China and other emerging powers from the developing world. He also scrutinizes the origins and limits of China’s export- and investment-driven growth. Another project traces China’s contradictory and unfinished transition from empire to nation-state through delineating Beijing’s contentious interaction with Tibet, Hong Kong and Taiwan since 1949. His award-winning book, Protest with Chinese Characteristics, expounds how the Confucianist legacy shaped China’s trajectories of state formation and popular protests from the 18th century to the present, in contrast to the Western trajectories, and reflects on the universality of Western modernity. Besides these major projects, He has also published about the orientalist origins of classical social theories, globalization of epidemics, China’s environmental movements, among others.

His articles have appeared in American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, New Left Review, Sociological Theory, Review of International Political Economy, Social Science History, among others. His works have been featured or cited in New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian (UK), New Internationalist (UK), Folha de S. Paulo (Brazil), Expresso (Portugal), Straits Times (Singapore), South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), Xinhua Monthly (China), Toronto Star (Canada), and others.