China Imagined

Download or read book China Imagined written by Gregory B. Lee and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If 'China', as Lee argues, is a product of Westernisation, then the West is itself in a process of becoming China. 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 16th-century Europeans, and its 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 its territory and peoples to the creation and rise of the modern nation-state.