China Imagined : From European Fantasy to Spectacular Power Hardback

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 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.

China's early history describes a multilingual space, ruled by a homogeneous elite with its 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 Westernisation, is it now the West's turn to become China?