This book is flawless and a great introductory tour to a vast history to this giant ancient land. The Chinese history simmers with larger-than-life characters, philosophical arguments and political intrigues, military conflicts and social upheavals, artistic invention and technological innovation. It progresses in twists, turns, leaps and returns. Chinese historical records are long and deep, stretching back at least 3500 years. Their themes and lessons, as well as the memories of wounds and triumphs, pulsate under the surface of contemporary Chinese life, language, culture and politics. The increasingly key role the People's Republic of China (PRC) plays in global affairs makes an awareness of this history essential, for it is the key to understanding China today.
The first appearance of the name 'China' in a European language is in a sixteenth-century Spanish text. The word seemingly derives from references to the ancient Qín dynasty (221-206 BCE), via Sanskrit चीन (cina) and Japanese (shina). In Chinese, the most common expression for China in the sense of a nation is Zhongguó in simplified characters - more on those shortly). This expression dates back 3000 years to the ancient compilation of poetry and song, the Book of Odes . Zhong means middle, or centre. Although Zhongguo is often translated as Middle Kingdom', zhong originally referred to the centre of the kingdom or city, rather than implying that the kingdom itself was at the centre of the world.
Nothing about China is small in scale. With some 1.4 billion people, the PRC boasts the world's largest population - nearly one in every five people on Earth (not counting another forty-five million people worldwide who identify as Chinese). At 9.3 million square kilometres, it occupies the third-largest landmass of any country after Russia and Canada, and shares borders with fourteen nations. The PRC is the world's largest trading nation and second-largest economy, a manufacturing powerhouse and an assertive military power, its army bigger than any other national armed force. It plays a steadily increasing role in global institutions and international affairs.
China is diverse in numerous ways. If more than 90 per cent of the population claim Han ethnicity, the rest belong to fifty-five other ethnic groups including Uyghurs, Mongolians and Tibetans. Many speak distinct languages and retain their own religious and cultural practices, despite pressure to assimilate. The Han, too, may identify with different regional cultures and subcultures, and speak discrete and even mutually unintelligible dialects including Shanghainese and Cantonese - the last claiming more native speakers (over sixty-two million) than Italian. The national language, Putonghuà, sometimes called Mandarin in English, is a constructed tongue. The PRC's own Ministry of Education admitted in 2013 that it was spoken with native fluency by less than 10 per cent of the population, and barely at all by 30 per cent, though it aimed to change that.!
China's human, cultural and economic potential is limitless. The CCP under Xi Jinping's leadership believes that the PRC can fulfil this potential without relaxing - and while even tightening - its control over Chinese society, culture and intellectual life, and suppressing minority cultures and populations. But historically, China has flourished most in times distinguished by their diversity and openness, such as the Tang dynasty. And what we think of as Chinese civilisation is the product of myriad interactions and exchanges between the Han and the peoples and cultures of Central Asia, the far southwest, the northeast and beyond.
The PRC's economy and technology industries may well overtake those of the United States, and militarily, the PRC is certain to keep flexing its muscles in the East and South China Seas and the Taiwan Strait in ways that will challenge, if not reshape, the world order. Yet the PRC may struggle to see its soft power - the power of attraction - match its hard power. The only way to learn from history is to learn history. Disparate voices and competing narratives inevitably inhabit a history as long as China's. The CCP prefers to keep it simple, using history to bolster its claim to be the legitimate rulers of this ancient nation. The author says that the new era of Xi Jinping is, so far, a blink of the historical eye. Conjectures on how long it will last or what will come next, but if the future is unknowable, history can at least make it less surprising.
the insistence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that Hong Kong and Táiwān, along with Tibet, Xīnjiāng and islands in the South China Sea, are part of China. The intensity with which the CCP pursues ‘reunification’ has roots The century of humiliation was a period in Chinese history beginning with the First Opium War (1839–1842), and ending in 1945 with China (then the Republic of China) emerging out of the Second World War and semi-colonisation of China by imperialist powers in the nineteenth century and the civil war of the twentieth century. It also speaks to violent periods of division that occurred as long as two thousand years ago but have left their stamp on the national psyche. That the first great unification, in 221 BCE – which also involved the epic standardisation of weights, measures and the written language – came with a high dose of tyranny is also part of this history’s complex legacy.
The argument is that a similar cycle would apply to the modern era of Mao to Xi Jinping (and beyond). Author implies that telltale signs are appearing again, with any eventual fall only delayed by brutal suppression. Xi Jinping’s China is but a blink in history, says the author, which if you follow along the general theory of empires, is an inescapable conclusion.
