A provocative account showing that âChinaââand its 5,000 years of unified historyâis a national myth, created only a century ago with a political agenda that persists to this day
Chinaâs current leadership lays claim to a 5,000-year-old civilization, but âChinaâ as a unified country and people, Bill Hayton argues, was created far more recently by a small group of intellectuals.
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In this compelling account, Hayton shows how Chinaâs present-day geopolitical problemsâthe fates of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, and the South China Seaâwere born in the struggle to create a modern nation-state. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, reformers and revolutionaries adopted foreign ideas to âinventâ a new vision of China. By asserting a particular, politicized version of the past the government bolstered its claim to a vast territory stretching from the Pacific to Central Asia. Ranging across history, nationhood, language, and territory, Hayton shows how the Republicâs reworking of its past not only helped it to justify its right to rule a century agoâbut continues to motivate and direct policy today.