Global history has expanded the boundaries of academic exploration into regional and national trajectories. This course aims to tackle the challenge of reimagining the cultural-historical changes of modern China within global and planetary contexts. Adopting a longue durée perspective on cultural-historical changes in 20th century China, the course investigates selected moments and topics, ranging from the circulation of evolutionary and anarchist theories in the 1900s, the discourse on civilization preceding and during the New Culture in the 1920s, the 'science and metaphysics' debate and regional and ecological perspectives in the 1930s and '40s, to environmental discussions in the 1950s and post-1972. To gain a comprehensive understanding of modern Chinese cultural history within the context of the 20th century world, students will engage with scholarly works and conduct weekly case-specific research using primary resources. PhD students are encouraged to develop potentially publishable essays as their final projects.