Прочие
Автор Gregory B. Lee

Описание:
How did China become China? And where is it leading us? We talk as if it had always existed: eternal China with its 5,000 years of uninterrupted history. But the name "China" was first used by sixteenth century Europeans, and it's Chinese equivalent, Zhongguo, only gained currency in the mid-1800s. China Imagined is a thoughtful exploration of the idea of China, from the naming and mapping of it's territory and peoples to the creation and rise of the modern nation-state. China's early history describes a multilingual space, ruled by a homogeneous elite with it's own minority culture a far cry from Maoism's national mass culture, or Xi Jinping's state-controlled digital society today. Gregory Lee traces this complex, diverse entity's evolution since the Opium Wars into a China made in "our" image. Today, it is a great power integral to the global system, whether it comes to climate change, security or inequality. Given this rapid convergence with the West, Xi's China holds up a mirror to our own nations. Trump's America, Putin's Russia and post-Brexit Europe all betray echoes of "the Chinese Dream". If China is a product of Westernization, is it now the West's turn to become China?